Understudy [Horror]

⚠ THIS MOD REQUIRES GECKOLIB (4.4 or newer) ⚠

WARNING: This mod contains jumpscares, sudden loud noises, flickering lights and bursts of on-screen static. It also contains meta horror: the game may change its own window title, pause menu and death screen, and it writes a text file of notes about you into your .minecraft/understudy folder. It never touches anything outside that folder. All of this can be turned off in the config. Please read the Settings section below if you are sensitive to flashing lights.

Somebody is learning your part.

Understudy is a slow-burn psychological horror mod. It does not start with a monster. It starts with someone watching.

From your first day in a world it keeps a ledger on you: where you walk, when you sleep, what you carry, how you fight, the house you build and the way you always come home. Nothing happens for a while. Then small things are slightly wrong. Then you see someone on the horizon walking the route you took yesterday, at the time you took it.

It is rehearsing. And an understudy only goes on when the lead can't.

Will you finish the performance, or will it finish it for you?

What's inside

• 21 entities, every one hand-built and animated slowly and smoothly at 60 frames per second, with swaying threads, rags, hair and strings.
• 55 dimensions: a hub, four handmade places built out of your own world, and 50 endless, procedurally generated Sets, each with its own music, colours, builds and residents.
• A haunting that learns. It copies your habits, your routes and your fighting style, and uses them against you.
• No cheap kills. There are no cinematic death scenes. It is deadly, but every danger can be seen, learned and escaped.

The Haunting

The mod plays out in three acts over your first in-game days (configurable):

• Act 1: Noticed. Footsteps a moment late. A spent torch where you left a lit one. Pages of notes start to appear, written in a clerk's hand, and everything on them is true.
• Act 2: Studied. Things that measure you. Things that copy your poses. Birds that repeat what you did. Someone knocks at the exact door you are standing behind.
• Act 3: Taken. Its places open up, and the Traveler comes to collect you.

The more it watches, the higher its Readiness climbs. At full Readiness it stops rehearsing. It takes your house and your bed, and you will have to take them back.

The Cast

The Understudy: the lead. A marionette seven blocks tall with a cracked porcelain face, its arms rising and falling on strings from somewhere above. It stands where you stood and walks where you walked. It folds down at night to look through your window. It fights the way you fight, and it resists everything it has seen you do. Do something you have never done in front of it, and it forgets its lines.

Yesterday: you, faded and sepia, replaying what you did a day ago. The Surveyor: a thing on tripod legs that plants stakes and measures where you live. The Stand-In: a jointed mannequin that copies your poses while your back is turned. The Recorder: a bird that learned to repeat you. Wick: a robed snuffer that puts out every light along the tunnels you dig. The Visitor: an empty coat on a hanger that knocks on the door you're standing behind. The Traveler: plain white, one pink glowing eye, a trunk on its back full of voices. If it touches you, you're packed. The Infill, the Drench and the Drafts live in its places, in the walls, in the rain and in the unfinished grey.

The Margin

The Traveler is the only way in. Its places are made out of your own world:

• The First Morning: your world as it was on day one, drained of colour, with chalk outlines of everything you've built since.
• The Rehearsal: endless copies of your house. Only one of them is right.
• The Seam: your own mine, going on forever. Something walks behind the torch line.
• The Stillframe: the exact moment you last died, frozen mid-storm. Every flash of lightning, everything there takes one step closer.
• The Greybox: an unfinished draft of a world, where crowds of grey half-people stand perfectly still between steps.

Every place has exactly one way out.

The Sets

Fifty endless stage sets from a production that never opened. Each Set goes on forever in every direction, with a place to start, one real way out, and many that are lying.

• Start on the mark. Every Set begins on a taped X on the floor.
• One real stage door. It is somewhere out there, hundreds of blocks away. A trail of small lights points the way, roughly.
• Painted doors. They look exactly like the real one. Open one and you are back on your X. Only the real door is cold. Watch the handle.
• No shortcuts. The scenery can't be broken, built on, pearled across or flown over.

Some of what you'll find:

Every Set has its own looping music, its own fog and colour grade, and its own residents:

• Extras: cardboard cutout people. They only move while you're not looking.
• The Usher: a lamp where its head should be. It will gladly point you to a door.
• The Stagehand: dressed all in black, no face, rearranging the scenery behind you.
• The Audience: masked, seated, every head turning to follow you. Don't stand still near them.
• The Rigging: lives on the ceiling and drops down to hang face to face with you.
• The Wader: two eyes above the water, a little closer every time you look back.
• The Host: a paper bag with a smile drawn on, a tray, and a teacup. Always exactly eight blocks behind you.
• The Effigy: a scarecrow that is always facing you.
• The Reacher: very long arms, wrapped all the way round the tree you're about to walk past.
• The Seeker: a small figure in a paper mask that wants to play hide and seek. Catch it, and it might show you the way out.

If one of them catches you, it's back to your mark.

Tools of the Trade

• Field Notes: its notes on you. They keep being written, sometimes while you're reading them.
• The Prompt Book: someone else's notes on the things here. An entry only fills in after you've seen the thing three times.
• Wax Seal: press it on a door, trapdoor or chest. What knocks will not come through a sealed door.
• Plumb Line: swings toward things that have been quietly changed, and puts them right.
• Home Thread: once a place has let you go, it shows you the way out.
• Ghost Light and Still Lantern: lights that stay lit when others don't.

Settings & Accessibility

Everything can be adjusted in serverconfig/understudy-server.toml and config/understudy-client.toml:

• Pacing: how many days before each act, how fast it learns, how deadly it is.
• Sets: how many Sets each trip passes through (default 3), whether the scenery is locked, and how many residents each Set has.
• Flickering lights: can be turned off (server).
• Jumpscare static: can be replaced with a plain fade to black (client).
• Gentle stings: makes sudden sounds quieter (client).
• Colour grade, desaturation and Set music: each can be switched off (client).
• Meta horror: the window title, pause menu, death screen and notes file can each be switched off (client).
• Builder safe: it will never change a block you placed.
• Every change it makes to your world is logged and reversible.

Compatibility

• Minecraft 1.20.1, Forge 47+
• Requires: GeckoLib 4.4+
• Shaders: compatible (Oculus). The mod's own colour drain switches itself off under a shaderpack. For the intended look, play without shaders.
• Performance mods (Embeddium, etc.) are compatible.
• Best played in survival, at night, with headphones.
• The haunting is per player and should work in multiplayer, but the mod is designed and tested for singleplayer.

FAQ

Nothing is happening! That's on purpose. It watches for a few in-game days before it does anything. Keep playing normally. It's paying attention.

How do I get into the Sets? The Traveler brings you in, once it's ready. With cheats on you can visit any Set with /understudy set <name>.

I keep ending up back at the start of a Set. You opened a painted door, fell off something, or got caught. The real door is cold.

Does it delete my files or harm my computer? No. The meta features are cosmetic. The only file it writes is a plain-text copy of its notes, inside .minecraft/understudy, and that can be turned off.

Is it finished? It's playable from start to finish, but more Sets, cast members and acts are planned.

Credits

• Created by vexiramc.
• All models, textures, animations, sounds and music are original, made for this mod.

The show must go on. With or without you.