SCP – Containment Breach

SCP – Containment Breach is an indie horror game developed by Joonas "Regalis" Rikkonen, based on fictional stories from the SCP Foundation collaborative writing project. The player takes the role of a human test subject imprisoned in an underground testing facility devoted to containing and studying anomalous entities and artifacts known as SCPs. The goal of the game is to escape from the facility during a breach of these anomalies while evading those threatening the player. The game has a procedurally generated environment featuring multiple popular SCPs from the SCP Wiki.

SCP – Containment Breach

Original author(s)	Joonas "Regalis" Rikkonen
Developer(s)	Undertow Games
Initial release	15 April 2012 (2012-04-15)
Stable release	1.3.11 / 29 July 2018 (2018-07-29)
Repository	github.com/Regalis11/scpcb
Written in	Blitz3D (BlitzMax in 0.1 to 0.1.2)
Engine	Blitz3D
Operating system	Windows XP and later
Platform	Windows
Type	Survival horror
License	CC BY-SA
Website	www.scpcbgame.com

The game was released digitally on April 15, 2012 for download and was supported with digital content updates until its most recent update 1.3.11 on July 29, 2018.

Gameplay

The player controls a disposable test subject, referred to as D-9341, as they attempt to escape an underground research and containment facility amidst a breach of its numerous anomalies, known as SCPs. During gameplay, the player roams the facility while being pursued by multiple SCPs and later Mobile Task Force (MTF) militia units, which must be avoided in order to not die.

The game plays from a first-person perspective with the player directly in control of D-9341, being able to walk and sprint in any direction. One of the characteristics of gameplay is the blink meter. Throughout the entirety of the playthrough, the blink meter will gradually decrease and eventually force the player to blink, though the player can also blink on command. This mechanic is directly tied to SCP-173 who operates based on whether or not the player can see them. If you blink or stop looking at it, it will get closer until it manages to get close enough to snap the player’s neck. The player can save and load games depending on the difficulty the game was set to, with the game's easiest difficulty (Safe difficulty) allowing saving at any time and any place, medium difficulty (Euclid difficulty) only allowing saving at predetermined points, and the game's hardest difficulty (Keter difficulty) not allowing saving at all.

One of the game's primary features is procedural generation of the facility. This feature is controlled by a system called seed generation, which is a string of text that controls how a map generates. By design, the layout of the facility in every playthrough will be different, though every playthrough will contain the same key areas and rooms. As the player progresses through the facility, the number of threats present to them increases, including new SCPs which begin to hunt the player. The "Entrance Zone" area also marks the appearance of a Foundation Mobile task force (Epsilon-11 Nine-Tailed Fox), a squad of three soldiers which attempt to recapture SCPs and will shoot the player on sight. The player must then find an exit gate in order to reach the end.

Along the way, the player can find a wide variety of items to assist them in survival. These include tools such as gas masks, various electronic devices, and keycards allowing progression, but there are also items which hinder the player. Some of the items are themselves SCPs, such as SCP-500, which will heal any negative effects.

Plot

The game takes place in a containment facility ran by the SCP Foundation, which possesses and researches multiple anomalous artifacts and entities. During gameplay, a breach occurs, allowing numerous entities to exit containment. Throughout the facility, clues in the form of documents and computer terminals are scattered hinting towards how the breach may have occurred.

SCP-096 attacking the player upon viewing its face

The player, along with two other D-class test subjects, is forced to perform tests on SCP-173, a concrete statue that can move at high speeds and attack by causing cervical fractures at the base of the skull or strangulation when not in the direct line of sight of a person. During this testing routine, the facility's system malfunctions, allowing SCP-173 to kill the other two test subjects and escape while D-9341 escapes the containment chamber. The site is then put under lockdown, and D-9341 must attempt to escape the facility.

Many other breached SCPs roam the facility, including SCP-106, an entity resembling a decaying old man that attempts to drag the player into a pocket dimension to kill them, and SCP-096, a tall humanoid creature that will chase and kill the player if they view its face. The player must additionally evade an MTF unit "Nine Tailed Fox" or E-11, which are the elite Foundation soldiers deployed to recontain the SCPs and secure the facility, as they have been ordered to target and terminate any stray and rogue Class-D personnel. Later in the game, the player encounters SCP-079, a sentient A.I., and learns that it caused a power outage resulting in the containment breach. SCP-079 proposes that the player reactivates the door control system, in exchange for helping the player escape.

After the player follows its demands, four different endings can be reached, depending on choices the player made while playing the game and how the player leaves the facility. After the ending, when returning to the menu, a radio transmission presumably from the Foundation will play detailing events after gameplay. These messages vary largely from ending to ending.

Development

The game was created by Finnish developer Joonas "Regalis" Rikkonen. Before creating SCP – Containment Breach, Rikkonen had played the game SCP-087 (about a seemingly endless stairwell and a mysterious entity that lurks within) and was impressed at how terrifying the game was given its relatively simple premise. Rikkonen decided to work on his version, which he released as SCP-087-B; this minigame eventually became so popular that he decided to work on a larger game that included more SCPs. Rikkonen started to design his game in Blitz3D because, in his own words, "I was too lazy to start learning some other language or engine." As the game was being designed, Rikkonen decided that the main enemy would be SCP-173 because it was a personal favorite and he also felt that implementing a blink function into the program would make gameplay more interesting.

The game is highly atmospheric, as Rikkonen felt that the best way to create a truly scary game would be to focus on the environment and soundscape, rather than exclusively the monsters. In an interview with Edge magazine, he said:

I think one of the things that makes Containment Breach so scary is that the player is almost never safe, and even the slightest slip can end the game. You have to constantly stay alert for SCP-173, listening for any scraping sounds and carefully looking around when entering a new room. The randomly generated map and randomly placed events are an important part of making CB scary too. No matter how many times you play it, you can never be 100 percent sure what happens next. I’ve also spent a lot of time looking for and making the sounds and music clips for the game. [The] atmosphere is one of the key elements of a good horror game, and a well-made soundscape adds a lot to the atmosphere.

And while Rikkonen found them to be "a somewhat cheap way of scaring people", he implemented several jump scares to "keep the players on their toes." He explained, "When you’re making a game about a creature that charges at you with supernatural speed when you’re not looking at it, you pretty much have to have some jump scares."

When Rikkonen first started working on the game, he was graduating from upper secondary school. While he enjoyed making games, he had always considered it a mere hobby and a "pipe dream". However, after the success of the game, Rikkonen decided to pursue game programming at the University of Turku.

Reception

The game has received generally positive reviews. Gaming website Rock, Paper, Shotgun said "It's Warehouse 13 without the quips and the quirks but with a lot more panic, screaming and hiding from creatures made of teeth and wire" adding that "it has a fairly weak model and texture at the moment but hopefully it’ll turn into a massive collaboration". Edge magazine gave the game a positive review, calling it an "indie title made in the low-end Blitz3D engine that casts a cheap-looking creature", but adding it "somehow manages to be scarier than most recent big-budget horror games combined." Jay Is Games wrote that while the game was "not perfect and still a little buggy", it nevertheless "has some serious moments of inarticulate, squealing terror." Nicholas Greene of GeekInsider wrote positively of the gameplay, specifically applauding the use of the blink timer. Greene also noted that its "somewhat dated appearance does absolutely nothing to make it less frightening". The game was featured at the number 22 spot on PC Gamer's top 50 best free PC games, saying that "Containment Breach's power is doubled by drawing on the SCP mythos: a set of invented (or are they?) internet stories about horrors and monsters locked up by a shadowy organization". With the release of version 0.8 in late 2013, Ian Birnbaum of PC Gamer once again reiterated the site's praise for the game, calling it "excellently scary".

Adaptations

SCP – Containment Breach's basic formula and assets have been adapted into multiple other games, such as the free multiplayer game SCP: Secret Laboratory, the (now discontinued) modern interpretation SCP: Unity on the Unity game engine, and the virtual reality-supported interpretation SCP: Labrat.

External links

• Official website
• SCP Foundation wiki