Everyone was afraid the world would end at midnight, January 1, 2000. On the Kenai, it did.
The opener
It's years after the last night of 1999. You are thirteen. Your dad's truck is still loaded in the drive, the radio is on with fresh batteries, and every clock on the peninsula reads 00:00.
Get a fire going before dark. Find your coat. Then find out why everyone left, and where your dad went.
The game
Valheim's freedom to build and roam. Red Dead's grounded, cinematic feel. Set on a real piece of Alaska, emptied overnight.
Your family's cabin on the bluff above Cook Inlet, modeled on a real Alaska cabin. Dress for the cold before you go out: the coat is on the rack, the gloves are on the table. After the first night, the cabin is gone. Only a circle of bare, steaming ground is left.
Make every tool from what you gather: the bow, the fishing pole, the bait. King, red, pink and silver salmon run by season. Moose, caribou, black and brown bears, wolves, Dall sheep. Everything is food or something useful.
Snap walls, roofs and stovepipes while you walk, Valheim-style. Hang your trophies, line shelves with what you've found, and keep a sealed room with a stove so the cold can't reach you. Breaking something down gives you the parts back.
Some of them carry a mark. They stare. They stand still and breathe. Sometimes they come for you. Their eyes shine green, fire doesn't scare them, and they hit harder at night. You'll hear the rest before you see it: booms far off, cracking in the trees, lights over the Inlet.
Turnagain Pass to Homer, laid out like the real peninsula. Every town is walk-in and loosely where it sat in 1999: looted, or full of finds. Cassettes, CRTs, bag phones and Y2K-readiness flyers. Four people stayed behind, plus a trader who seems to be everywhere at once.
Host a world and invite your friends. Split the work: one hunts, one builds, one keeps the fire going. Two difficulties: Casual for exploring, Alaskan for people who want the cold to bite.
The Kenai Peninsula
Drag or scroll sideways · tap any shot to open it full size
The story
On the solstice, an old radar left running by a ham operator painted slow tracks over Cook Inlet. Fishermen in Homer reported lights sitting on Kachemak Bay "like anchor lights, no boats." Small quakes came every night at exactly midnight. Hundreds of people went missing overnight and came back a day later, confused, each with the same mark on the forearm.
On December 30, the evacuation order was read at the Ninilchik church. Everyone went. Almost everyone.
At midnight on New Year's Eve, with the whole peninsula outside looking up at the fireworks, the lights came down on the bluff.
You were going back in for the dog.
Thirteen, knows his Scouts basics, and grows older and stronger with the seasons.
Left notes all over the cabin. "MORE COFFEE," underlined three times. His log stops mid-sentence.
The family dog. Walks out of the trees on the second day. Marked. No collar.
Gold miner. Thinks the evacuation was a federal raid on his blasting. Password: halibut.
Trapper and taxidermist. Names every mount and critiques your shots. Won't go out after dark.
Rang the church bell at midnight on the 31st, and every midnight since, "so they know someone's still here."
The last DJ on The Bluff. From Missouri. "Finer than frog hair." Kept the signal up for years for nobody.
The trader. Shows up at every trading post. Knows your dad. Knows more than he'll say.
What the lights are. A survey: something very old, asleep under the Harding Icefield until the 1964 quake cracked it awake. It does to living things what we do to salmon. It catches them, reads them, tags them and puts them back.
The Inverse. The only thing that can hurt it, built from five parts. Each Kenai legend guards one.
The end of the Kenai. The ship rises out of the ice. Tear it loose, and it limps north and comes down on Anchorage. Chapter 2 starts in the fallout.
Build journal
An empty Godot project, a warmth meter and a campfire. The player is a capsule.
Cone trees, grass, and a brush fire that spreads. Still a capsule.
The first aurora, the first snow, and the bush plane's view from altitude.
The peninsula laid out at 1:10 from Turnagain Pass to Homer. Rivers, bridges and towns where they really are.
Bears, wolves, foxes and hares replace the placeholders.
Y2K becomes the spine of the story: everyone was afraid of midnight, and on the Kenai they were right.
Snow-loaded forests, the homestead yard, and a first look at the cabin.
The skid steer, Dad's red truck, and cabins built log by log.
A 21-point bar every scene now has to clear: light, water, faces, weight, sound, story, performance.
The first boss fights: Old Antler and the River Bear.
A cinematic opener running in-engine, 110 new item models, and a new build for testers tonight.
Roadmap
Invited testers. That's you.
Wishlists open. Testing moves to Steam with free keys, then opens to anyone who signs up.
The first hour, polished.
The demo in Steam's big festival.
The full Kenai chapter: the whole story through the finale, every legend, co-op for up to 4.
The fallout, all the way up to Denali.
Playtester HQ
The page is private: use the password from your invite, and please don't share it.
Mac: unzip, right-click the app → Open → Open. If macOS refuses, go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway.
Windows: unzip the whole folder and run the .exe. If SmartScreen appears: More info → Run anyway.
Soon you'll get a free Steam key instead, and updates will install themselves.
Then tell Abe what confused you, what you wanted to do but couldn't, and the moment you liked most.
Crash reports send automatically: the error and your hardware, never your name or saves. You can turn this off in Settings → Gameplay.
Host: Play → pick a world → Host. The pause menu shows your join code.
Friends: Join a friend → paste the code. Everyone needs the same build (the version is shown top right of the title screen).
Known rough spots: the first launch on a Mac can sit on the loading card for a few minutes while shaders compile. Only the Kenai is open.
Stay in the loop
Your email is only used to reply to you or to send game updates you asked for. Updates are sent through Kit, our email provider. Your email is never sold. Every update has an unsubscribe link.
00:00
For my dad, Wayne: a man who defines what it is to be Alaskan.