DRAWDOWN

The game

A lost late-’90s console horror game, made new

DRAWDOWN is a third-person survival horror game in the style of the PlayStation era: low-poly people in low-resolution fog, a flashlight on your chest, scarce bullets and long silences.

You play Elias Ward, a state dam-safety inspector sent to sign off the drawdown after the inspection team stopped reporting. His late father was the engineer on the dam in 1957. His brother Owen works at the waterworks. On the bridge into town, a figure steps into his headlights, and the car leaves the road. He walks in.

The story is told through 24 documents, radio broadcasts from the local night DJ, three survivors and the places themselves. It ends one of two ways, depending on what you find.

Harold’s Letter (2)

June 1971

There were thirty-one of them in St. Ione’s with Reverend Sayer. They had been told for two years. They chained the doors from the inside.

I went down in the rowboat on the last night. I could hear them singing through the doors. I did not knock. Then the water was too high to row.

— H.

One of the documents you find in the game

Elias standing in a fog-filled main street at night, the WCRB 88.1 radio station on the left and the lit Lantern Diner on the right — Carrow Bridge · Main StreetOver the shoulder

The HollowedTownspeople remade by the silt. Slow and persistent. Some lie dormant until you come close.
The MudlarkA fast ambusher that hides under beds and in water, strikes, then retreats.
The ChoristerBlind, and hears everything. Walk past it. Never run.
The ChoirWhat the drowned congregation became. The final fight, under the chapel.

Four connected areas

Carrow Bridge, Carrow Valley Clinic, the dam waterworks and the drained lake bed of Old Carrow. Locked doors, keys, shortcuts and backtracking.

Puzzles

A keypad lockbox, X-ray films on a lightbox, a three-valve sluice and four hand-bells hung in a chapel nave.

Survival

Eight inventory slots, items you turn over to find hidden details, combining, and saves only at cassette recorders in safe rooms.

Weight

Pistol, pump shotgun, bolt-action rifle and pipe wrench. Recoil, sway, hit zones and gunfire that draws things toward you.

Two ways to play

The same moment, through two different cameras

Both pictures below are the same second of play: Elias at the diner door with his pistol up as a Hollowed comes along the boardwalk.

A high fixed camera across the street from The Lantern Diner. Elias aims from the door at a Hollowed on the boardwalk, a faint red laser between them.

Over Elias’s shoulder, aiming his pistol down the lit diner boardwalk at an approaching Hollowed

New Game asks which one you want, with these two pictures on the cards. You can switch at any moment while playing, with one key.

Four looks

One scene, from a 32-bit console to a clean picture

The game draws a small picture and scales it up, with the faults of old hardware rebuilt on purpose: polygons that snap to a coarse grid, textures that swim, 15-bit colour and a curved CRT. The display options set how much of that you get. Drag across the picture to compare a look with the clean version.

The Lantern Diner at night with Elias aiming at a Hollowed, in the selected look

240p · 32-bit era 720p · clean

Left of the line: the selected look. Right of the line: 720p with every effect off.

Darkness

Some rooms give you almost nothing to see

Dobbs Hardware, on Main Street. The fluorescent tube over the aisles is dying. When it flickers on, you get the shelves for a moment. When it goes dark, the flashlight is all you have, and it finds what is standing at the end of the aisle.

A dark hardware store seen over Elias's shoulder, metal shelves faintly lit by a ceiling tube — The tube flickers onOver the shoulder

The same aisle almost black, a pale figure standing between the shelves at the far end — The tube goes darkOver the shoulder

Screenshots taken by Jolly while playing, with the interface on.

Footage

Four places, all of them captured in the game

Every picture on this page is a frame from the game, with the interface hidden. Select one to see it larger.

Carrow Bridge

The town at night

A wood-panelled radio station office with an ON AIR sign, seen from a high fixed camera — WCRB 88.1 · the boothFixed cameraThe first safe room

Over the shoulder, aiming at a pale figure walking out of the fog in an empty street — Main StreetOver the shoulder

A dim apartment lobby with a checkered floor, two figures standing under a hanging lamp — Linden Court · lobbyFixed camera

Carrow Valley Clinic

Failing fluorescents, a morgue below

A dark stairwell lit only by a flashlight circle, a green EXIT sign on the wall — Clinic · east stairsOver the shoulder

A cramped staff lounge with lockers and a red carpet, seen from a corner camera — Clinic · staff loungeFixed cameraA safe room

Carrow Dam Waterworks

Pumps, filters and the spillway

From a high corner camera, Elias aims into the dark with a thin red laser line — Filtration hallFixed camera

A tall pale figure standing at the edge of a flashlight beam in a dark hall — The ChoristerOver the shoulder

A green-walled control room with old panels, Elias standing in a pool of torchlight — Control roomFixed camera

Old Carrow

Forty-one years under the water

A dark chapel nave, black candles burning on an altar in the foreground — St. Ione’s · the naveOver the shoulder

A small plastered vestry with a cot and a candle-lit table, seen from above — St. Ione’s · the vestryFixed cameraThe last safe room

Damage

Every shot leaves a mark, and the marks stay

Bullets leave holes where they actually hit, and the rifle tears out an exit wound. Up close the shotgun takes the head off, or blows off an arm or a leg; a Hollowed that loses a leg keeps coming, crawling. Bodies stay where and how they fell when you come back.

Contains blood.

A pale creature standing with several small red bullet wounds on its chest and leg — Where it hitPistol

A creature's head bursting in a spray of red after a close shotgun blast — Up closeShotgun

A headless body lying in a pool of blood on a concrete floor — What staysRifle

Interface

Typewritten, like the case files it is built around

The New Game screen with two picture cards labelled Classic and Modern — New GameStyle and difficulty

The inventory screen with a pistol, shotgun, ammunition and a first aid kit, and a 3D pistol model — InventoryEight slots

A typed letter on yellowed paper titled Harold's Letter — Documents24 to find

Making of

Built from code, every model and every sound

Jolly designed and directed DRAWDOWN and play-tested every build. The code and the tools that generate its art and audio were assisted with Claude, an AI coding assistant, all final code were written, checked and verified by me.

There are no bought or downloaded assets apart from the gunshot recordings. Every person, creature, room, texture, animation, sound and piece of music comes out of the project’s own Python pipeline.

GeneratePython scripts (numpy, SciPy, Pillow) build the models, paint their textures, write the animations and synthesise the audio, in the game’s own file formats.
AssembleUnity 6 loads those files and builds each area from code as it loads. There are no hand-placed scenes.
RenderA custom renderer draws a small picture with snapping vertices and warping textures, then dithers it and passes it through a CRT filter.
TestBefore each build, an automated run tours every area, looks for holes in the world and broken screens, and saves screenshots for review.
Play and fixJolly plays the build and notes what feels wrong, like a stiff free arm on the run or a flat-sounding gunshot. The next round fixes it.

Production sheet

Engine	Unity 6 (6000.0 LTS), C#
Game code	About 21,500 lines in 65 scripts
Asset pipeline	About 10,000 lines of Python
Models	161
Textures	141
Sound files	215
Animation sets	5 (44 clips for Elias alone)
Custom shaders	6
Display modes	240p, 360p, 480p, 720p
Testing	Automated in-game tour before every build
Development	AI-assisted (Claude)

Ten frames of Elias jogging with a pistol, from the side and the front, drawn by the pipeline's preview tool — Pipeline previewElias’s jog with the pistol, written as curves in Python. The free arm swings bent instead of hanging straight.