Night Study: Korean Ghost Stories

You fell asleep during night study. You woke up alone.

The front gate is locked. The lights are out. And in the dark hallways of an old Korean high school, every ghost follows a rule of its own.

Night Study: Korean Ghost Stories is a first-person school horror game. Learn each ghost's rule, find the keys, and get out before dawn — while the traces of a student who vanished ten years ago slowly come to light.

Every ghost has a rule

• The girl from the next classroom only moves while you aren't looking. Turn your back, and she comes.
  
• The Eodukshini grows taller the longer you look up at it.
  
• The Jangsanbeom calls you in voices you know.
  
• The music room lets you pass only in the eight seconds the band stops playing.

Learn the rules by watching, listening and reading what was left behind. Red beans, salt, a talisman, a mirror — Korean folklore is your only defence.

Korean folklore meets the school ghost story

Dokkaebi, Jangsanbeom, Eodukshini, Yagwanggwi — creatures from Korean tradition share the halls with the ghost stories every Korean student has heard. "Night study" (야자) is the after-school self-study period at Korean high schools, often running until 10 p.m.

Three nights, one truth

Each night is a different school. On the first night you only want to escape. On the second, a Dokkaebi turns the floors upside down. On the third, you finally climb to the rooftop where it happened.

• Three nights of about 30–40 minutes each
  
• Multiple endings — escape, seal the classroom, be taken, or wait for dawn
  
• 18 pieces of evidence that piece together what happened on May 13, 2016

A horror game on a single floppy disk

The entire game — graphics, sound, voices and three nights of story — fits in one executable under 1.44MB. It passed the first round of the 2P GAME ARCADE 1.44MB Game Dev Contest, which received over 360 entries.

Content warning

This game contains loud sounds, flashing images and jump scares, and depicts school bullying and the death of a student.