Wickhouse

in Night Rounds: End of Watch

END OF WATCH, and turning back is not a way out

Night Rounds: End of Watch 1.3.5 is on itch.io, in the browser and as the Windows download: wickhouse.itch.io/night-rounds. Your ledger and your settings carry over.

END OF WATCH

The title screen with a new line under START SHIFT: END OF WATCH

Fill all 31 lines of the ledger and a second shift opens on the title screen: END OF WATCH. It is the same wing on a worse night.

  • There is no safe first round.
  • More of the rounds are scares, and more of those scares are the ones that can catch you. In the last three rounds, nearly all of them can.
  • When you miss something, the panel no longer tells you what kind of thing it was.
  • The door at the end of the airlock stops counting for you.

A normal shift is still there, exactly as it was. END OF WATCH is for when you know the wing.

Turning back is not a way out

The placard in the airlock says you may turn back to report, and you still may. But until now, turning back was also the safe choice. You could see something wrong, turn round, walk back to the panel, and nothing would happen. People worked that out.

Now, if you have seen it and you turn your back on it, it notices. I'm not going to say which ones or what they do.

There was a second bug in the same place. A scare could go off while you were already sealed in the airlock, staring at a shut door, with nothing to see. That can't happen any more.

The ledger, sorted by place

The ledger in two columns, grouped under LINE-UP, CELLS, CORRIDOR, INTERVIEW ROOM and BOOKING DESK, each with its own count

The ledger now groups its 31 lines by where in the wing they happen: the line-up, the cells, the corridor, the interview room and the booking desk. Each area has its own count, so you can see where you have not been looking. The lines you haven't found are easier to read now, and there is a line at the top saying what the book is, because people asked.

The end-of-shift card, with a new line under the numbers: NEW IN THE LEDGER: UNDER THE COUNTER

The end-of-shift card names what that shift added to your book. The title screen shows your count beside LEDGER, and the pause menu has the ledger too, so you can check it mid-shift.

Smaller things

  • The door at the end of the airlock shows how many rounds you have done, the same number as the counter above it.
  • The game pauses when you click away from it or Alt-Tab. In the browser it pauses when you press Esc.
  • QUIT TO MENU asks twice, because it throws your count away.
  • The links and key hints at the bottom of the title screen were cut off on most screens. They aren't now.
  • The controls hint uses the same lettering as the menus and stays out of the way of the pause screen.

Play data

If you switched play data off, the game now stops sending at once. Before, anything already waiting still went. RESET TO DEFAULTS used to switch play data back on, which it should never have done. It doesn't now. And the question before your first shift no longer has YES picked for you. Both answers look the same and you choose.

If you said yes, thank you. Your shifts are how I found the scares that let you walk away.

Tell me what got you

And if you open END OF WATCH, I want to know how far you get.

All devlog entries