Going UP

A young man is trapped in a terrifying nightmare every time he falls asleep. In this dream, he always steps into an elevator that leads to a rooftop, where he is forced to relive his own death over and over again. A fortune teller on the street sees through his torment and grants him a precious relic, allowing him to fight back within the nightmare.

You only need to control the game with your mouse. Remember the appearances of everyone inside the elevator. The moment you spot anyone who has changed, click on them!

This game was independently developed solely by me, Shize Zhong. Aside from the background music and sound effects, I handled every aspect of the development. The core theme I chose for this work is The Weird and the Eerie. Initially, I attempted to portray memories through dreamlike imagery in the style of Ingmar Bergman’s films, yet I ultimately failed. Fundamentally, my personal experiences are too trivial and insignificant to sustain such a narrative. As a result, the theme settled into something far more accessible — a nightmare.

I believe many of you have had similar dream experiences. In a dream, you may instantly recognize someone as an acquaintance from reality, only to see their features twist and merge with another person’s in the next moment, their voice replaced by a stranger’s too. Logically, we would cry out, “Who are you? How can you change your face?” Yet our dreaming self never questions this oddity. Is that not deeply unsettling? For this game, I resolved to force players to notice these distorted, altered figures lurking in the dream and capture them. They are the demons tormenting the protagonist, and leaving them uncaught will lead to game over.

As for the core setting — the elevator — I chose it first and foremost because it is a perfect liminal space: suspended between departure and destination, devoid of any sense of safety. Furthermore, a compact, confined space like an elevator is entirely manageable for a solo indie developer like myself.

I put great thought into designing the gameplay loop. Structurally, the game shares a cyclical core with The 8th Exit, centered on observation, memorization, and comparison. However, I added strict time limits to each step: players have only three seconds to observe and memorize the NPCs’ appearances, followed by fifteen seconds to identify every anomaly one by one. This deliberate design turns the game into a test of players’ eyesight and short-term memory, delivering tense, thrilling challenges.

I also prioritized crafting a suffocating, oppressive atmosphere. In creating the art assets, I deepened shadow areas and filled the frame with dense, chaotic linework to cultivate a disquieting, unsettling visual tone. For audio design, I extensively used field-recorded real-world sounds. These sound layers not only amplify the tense ambiance but also carry key narrative weight in the ending. Players who read the opening prologue will be able to fully grasp the final outcome solely through sound cues.