- "I need to find my little brother first before I can go home."
Halflight is a Taiwanese indie adventure game made by four students from Taiwan's National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, as part of their "graduation project", one which passed with flying colors.
Set in rural, 1970s Taiwan, a young boy named Xi-sheng is playing outside the kitchen one evening when his mother calls to him that dinner's ready, asking for Xi-sheng to fetch his brother, Mu-sheng. However, try as he might, Mu-sheng had mysteriously dissappeared without a trace, and in Xi-sheng's attempts to find his brother, the young boy unexpectedly uncovers a passage into the Chinese underworld.
Besides winning first place in Taiwan's 2017 Unreal Competition held by Epic Games, Halflight also managed to snag a multitude of nominations and accolades, including Best Student Game of 2017 (indiePlay China) and Best Indie Game of 2018 (Digital Content Awards). The students behind it's development would go on to establish their own indie company, MatchB Studios, besides releasing Halflight for the PC.
Halflight contains examples of:
- Creepy Long Fingers: In a vision where Mu-sheng was inexplicably back with him, Xi-sheng sees a pair of disembodied hands trying to grab him and his brother. Which he can tell isn't from a human but of supernatural origin because of how long the fingers are. Later turns out to be one of the slug-man's hands.
- Does Not Like Spam: From what the opening FMV shows us (before Xi-sheng realize his brother's missing), the protagonist really hates Kumquat Pork Roast. His father seems to like it though. At one point Xi-sheng comes across a Kumquat tree and stops to curse, "These nuts taste bad. They taste like some kind of cleaning agent."
- Eyeless Face: The slug-man painter doesn't have eyes, only a mouth and some dents on the face where eyes should be.
- Kid Hero: The player protagonist Xi-sheng looks to be around 7 years of age, at most. And he's venturing through a creepy underworld alone, to find his brother.
- Minimalist Cast: Besides Xi-sheng's mother showing up only in the first few minutes, Xi-sheng seems to be the sole named character. Even his brother Mu-sheng, whose dissappearances leads to the game's events, is taken off-screen and does not physically appear in person until Xi-sheng enters the underworld.
- Missing Child: Xi-xheng's brother, Mu-sheng, who's around the same age as him, unexpectedly vanished into thin air, and Xi-xheng's attempts to find Mu-sheng only to get lost himself too kicks off the game's plot.
- Monstrous Scenery:
- There's a huge room containing a bird-headed demon monstrosity sitting cross-legged, and almost as large as the room it's in. Said monster can't be interacted with in any way, simply preferring to ignore Xi-sheng as the boy explores around.
- While crossing a narrow alleyway in the netherworld, gigantic Chinese dragons can be seen floating in the skies. They don't serve any purpose other than background.
- Non-Human Head: Slug-man, a recurring NPC character Xi-sheng often encounters and ask for clues. His head looks like a pale banana slug while his body is human.
- Nothing Is Scarier: The game makes good use of dark rooms, empty corridors, and silent atmosphere to ramp up the creep factor, instead of filling an area with hordes of enemies.
- Scare Chord: Tends to pop up every so often to create a creepy atmosphere. For instance, Xi-sheng first runs through the netherworld tunnel after seeing who he assume was Mu-sheng, only for a sharp, audible and goosebumps-inducing chord to echo around. Then creepy things begin to happen.
- Silent Credits: The game ends with a montage of Xi-sheng and Mu-sheng walking down the dusty, empty streets of downtown Taiwan, seemingly leaving the underowlrd behind (whether they really made it out or it's an Imagine Spot isn't made clear). Accompanied by the game's developers, voice actors, Special Thanks (presumably to the teachers and professors of Yunlin University), and it's completely silent.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Xi-sheng doesn't seem to respond to the weird stuff he sees in the underworld like one would logically expect from a child his age, asking directions from a snail-headed man and chalking a lengthy conversation with a giant talking chicken. He does freak out when he sees Mu-sheng trapped in a cage filled with giant, skinless baby chicks, but it's closer to because he thinks his brother's in danger.
