Planned Release Date: To be announced

About This Game

Madelen Lunde was eighteen.

You bought the old Haugen place cheap at the estate auction, because nobody from here would buy a house built on a burial mound. On the morning your bus pulls away and leaves you with a suitcase in the rain, Madelen Lunde is found dead, wrapped in a tarpaulin.

Everyone knew her. Nobody saw anything. She was last seen the night before, walking up the road to your house.

You're the outsider, and the village's first suspect.

Everyone has a secret

Six hundred people, one road, and the next ferry is Thursday. Every lie in the village hides something smaller than murder, and every one of them opens into a story of its own.

• Coffee and waffles at the Kafe, a grocer who remembers every sale, and a choir folder in the bedehus that somebody wants back
• The lensmann runs the case and signs the gun permits, and what he thinks of you decides both
• The village watches you as closely as you watch it: what you do, and who sees you do it, follows you

Something under the mound

Haug means "mound". In the old stories, the farm's first owner lies inside it and guards the place, and the hidden people live beneath. There are dreams in the Haugen bed. There's a man in a sou'wester, seen only at the edge of your headlights. The hymn numbers on the board don't exist, and the coffee is always warm.

Every uncanny thing has a worldly explanation, and every worldly clue has an uncanny echo. The game never tells you which is true.

An immersive sim, played straight

• Systems, not scripts: pick things up, carry and throw them, open doors and pick the locks that won't, pour, soak and set things alight, and solve problems your own way
• No quest markers and no health bars: the world tells you what you need to know
• A full day and night, with opening hours, street lamps and lit windows, and people who keep their own hours
• Hunt in the woods above the village, and roast what you bring home over a fire
• Old Haugen's Volvo and motorcycle stand dry and flat in the garage. Get them running
• Norway in 1988, with nothing invented: every weapon and every law in the game existed at the time

In development

Utkant is a solo project in active development. This page will grow as the game does. Wishlist it to follow along.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

Utkant is a solo project developed with the help of AI coding assistants. The store page text and some in-game writing were drafted with AI assistance, then reviewed and edited by the developer. Nothing is generated by AI while you play.