Rainbow Friends Survival

A survival horror game structured around shifts. Each night gives you a set of tasks spread across a building, and hunting you while you complete them are several large mascots with different behaviours — so the game is a routing problem under threat rather than a chase. The differences between the pursuers are what give it depth. One patrols predictably, one responds to sound, one appears where you have just been, and learning which is which determines whether a corridor is safe. Tasks are positioned so that the efficient route and the safe route are not the same, and the decision between them gets harder as the shifts add pursuers and remove hiding places. Each shift is five to ten minutes with an escalation across the set, which makes it a game of sessions rather than a single sitting. It is more tense than frightening — the threat is constant rather than jumping out — and that suits the task structure. It needs a keyboard and mouse, benefits considerably from headphones, and runs in the browser without a download on moderate hardware.