Night one: the doors are open

CLOSED CASKET alpha 0.1.0 is up. It's free, it runs in your browser, and it's the first thing this studio has put out in public. So hello. We're a small, anonymous studio, and we don't put our names on things.

The pitch hasn't changed since the first sketch: you and up to three friends are the night crew at a funeral home. You carry the client down a staircase that was never built for this, strap them into the hearse and drive across town before the sun comes up. The clients are... not always cooperative.

What's in the alpha

• A whole night: 3–5 linked jobs across Old Town and the Docks, about 15–25 minutes, ending in a stamped shift report.
• Online crews of 2–4 with room codes, plus a public room list. Browser, phone and the PC app all play together.
• Solo with Dale (an AI coworker, in the old-fashioned video game sense: a bot), and same-screen for two on one keyboard.
• A 60-second First Shift that teaches by doing and contains exactly one scripted disaster on the stairs.
• Touch controls, gamepads, remappable keys, subtitles, reduce motion and a photosensitive mode.

What's held together with tape

It's an alpha. Here's what we already know about, so you don't have to tell us twice:

• If the host leaves, the room closes. No host migration yet. It's at the top of the list.
• The PC builds aren't code-signed, so Windows will grumble. There's no Mac build; Mac folks, the browser version is the same game.
• Four of the dispatcher's spoken lines are held back because they didn't come out clear enough, so a couple of jobs are a little quieter on the radio until they're redone.
• The optional crew radio (voice chat, off by default) needs a relay server we haven't switched on yet, so it says "not set up" for now.
• We've tested on a lot of emulated phones and not enough real ones. If it stutters on yours, tell us which phone.

About the dispatcher's voice

Straight answer, because people will ask: the dispatcher on the radio is an open-source computer voice (Kokoro-82M, Apache-2.0), run through a radio effect. Everything else (the art, the music, the sound effects, the writing) is made by hand or drawn and synthesized by our own code. No AI images, no AI video. We'd like to replace the voice with a real person one day. You can turn it off in Settings › Audio. The full statement is on the AI use page.

What we'd love to hear

1. Did joining a friend's room with the code work first try?
2. What was the funniest thing that happened? (We have a list of suspects.)
3. Did carrying and driving feel funny-hard or just annoying?
4. Was the night too long, too short, or about right?
5. Did the dark humour ever go too far for you?

The alpha survey asks exactly these, anonymously, in about two minutes. Or leave a note: keep it private (only we see it, and you get a ticket code to read our reply) or ask for it to go up on the public wall.

What's next

Host migration, signed builds, a Mac build, more clients and districts. And the big one: 3D open world coming soon. You'll be able to pick 2D or 3D. Small towns and villages, still free, still cross-play. No date. We'll ship it when it's ready and not a minute before.

Thanks for clocking in.

Night desk, CGH