The Store is Closed (Steam
, Patreon) is an upcoming multi-platform indie survival sandbox game based on the SCP horror story SCP-3008 (recap). It is currently in closed alpha, with a projected 2024 release date for the PC, Xbox Series X/S and PS5. The premise of the game is that the player character is trapped 24/7 in an infinitely large furniture store with no exit, trying to survive amidst hostile staff, whose behavior depends on the day-night cycle and becomes increasingly violent outside the store’s opening hours.
See also SCP-3008 (Roblox) for the currently available interpretation of its namesake.
This game provides examples of:
- Adaptational Badass: The staff in the original SCP-3008 story are described as faceless. In this game they look monstrous and the way they speak the titular line "The store is closed" are made distorted. The staff are also hostile in daylight, as opposed to being passive like in the original namesake.
- Benevolent Architecture: To upgrade your weapons, you’re going to need scrap metal. Which you can collect by dismantling the store’s wall lights.
- Bigger on the Inside: From the outside, the building appears like a normal big-box store. However, the inside is infinitely large.
- Cut and Paste Environments: Not unlike its real-world counterpart.
- Die, Chair, Die!: Destroying furniture gives you the materials you need to progress through the game.
- Dress-Coded for Your Convenience: The staff.
- Eldritch Location: The store where the entire game takes place.
- Equipment-Based Progression: The player character has to focus on items, building and crafting to get through the game, while their stats are fixed.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: Food and drinks are the primary means to restore your health.
- Humanoid Abomination: The mimic.
- Infinite Flashlight: It turns on automatically as the store lights go out.
- Large and in Charge: Managers are of much greater height than basic employees.
- Monstrous Humanoid: Staff members, especially the managers, have horribly disfigured faces but are still more or less neatly dressed in corporate apparel.
- Nice Day, Deadly Night: Staff members are already pretty hostile during the store’s opening hours, but they become even more violent at night.
- No Mouth: The basic employees. Somehow, they still manage to point out to you politely that you’re supposed to leave the store.
- Ominous Visual Glitch: While the player character is fighting against a mimic, the screen becomes blurred with chromatic aberration.
- Punch-Clock Villain: The basic employees, at least during the day.
- Ragdoll Physics: Justified. When you kill a staff member, their limbs become grotesquely contorted. However, the original story specifically mentions that staff members don’t seem to have any skeleton, muscle, or organs.
- Scare Chord: As the store closes, the lights go out with a loud click. Same when they turn back on in the morning.
- Scary Teeth:
- Pillow Creatures are also called biters for a reason.
- The manager has a single huge fang in place of a face.
- Schmuck Bait: Interacting with a customer service button will spawn a boss fight.
- Wide-Open Sandbox: Played for horror as it is set in an infinitely large IKEA-like store.
- Writing Around Trademarks: It's obvious that the entire game is set inside a supernaturally warped IKEA as it is the original SCP-3008 story, complete with the color and design, but without the actual branding.
