A Man Outside
https://litrouke.itch.io/a-man-outside

A Man Outside is a short vocabulary quiz game. This twist is that, while you play, a creepy shadow man watches you from outside your bedroom window. You’re tasked with doing three sets of ten vocab cards as spooky ambient sounds play in the background, and you can look out of the window at any time to see if the man has gotten closer. Between quiz sets, you can text a friend to update them on the situation.

I hope it doesn’t spoil this game to say that there are no jumpscares. The vocabulary gets progressively creepier, though, and there are fun distortions in the quiz interface. The vocab game itself is quite good, even without the added attraction of the creepy man. Necrophagy is my new favorite word.

Based on what I’ve seen in YouTube playthroughs, your vocab score doesn’t matter, and the choices you make in the text conversations simply add a bit of extra flavor. In order to get the true ending of the game, you have to play it from start to finish three times. There are three different vocab difficulty levels, so I suppose that adds a bit of replay value. Each run only takes about seven or eight minutes, but I don’t think the second or third ending is anything special. The alternate endings are nice bonuses for vocab flash card enthusiasts who want to try every difficulty level, but the first ending is perfect.

As an aside, as someone with ADHD, I often have to pretend that someone is watching me in order to get past executive dysfunction. I used to “have someone watch me” by going to coffee shops, but that only worked in Tokyo and Washington DC, which are beautiful and walkable and filled with cafés. Philadelphia has many charms, but it’s not that sort of city. Now, if I’m having trouble sending emails or whatever, I have to conjure an amorphous imaginary person who’s sitting in the room with me just out of eyesight like some sort of sleep paralysis demon.

So, for me, playing A Man Outside was kind of comforting. Cozy, even. Honestly, this might actually be a decent way to study vocab.