Utkant

Utkant

Norway, 1989. You step off the last bus with 40 kroner and a letter offering you a job at the boatyard. The gate is chained. An immersive sim about getting by in a small fjord village: ask, work, pick a lock or freeze. The village remembers which.

The gate is chained.

It's a Friday evening in late October 1989. You step off the last bus with a bag, 40 kroner and a letter offering you work at the boatyard, with lodging, from Monday. The yard went bankrupt on Wednesday. The notice is nailed to the gate, and the social office in town is shut until Tuesday.

It's dark by half past five and getting colder. Where you sleep tonight is up to you.

Many ways through

There are no quest markers. Knock on a neighbour's door and ask. Find the man still working late in the yard office. Offer to work for a bed. Pick the lock of a shuttered summer house with the paper clip from your letter. Or sit it out in the bus shelter and feel it in the morning.

Every choice starts something: a friendship, a debt, a secret or a rumour.

A village that watches back

People keep their own hours. The shop is open when Kjell is, the lensmann walks his round, and there's always someone at the Kafe window
Pick a lock where someone can see you, and by the next morning the whole Kafe knows
Paper clips bend and snap, a slip rattles in the dark, and a clumsy job leaves scratches the owner finds the next day
The lensmann wants to know where you slept, what brought you here, and whether you're a drinking man. What he thinks of you decides whether you'll ever own a gun

Who you are

Choose where you come from and what kind of person you are: a background and a handful of traits. Some people arrive with savings, and some with a creditor's letter following them. After that you become what you do: skills grow with practice and settle while you sleep. There are no levels and no numbers on the screen.

An immersive sim, played straight

Systems, not scripts: pick things up, carry and throw them, pour, soak and set things alight, and solve problems your own way
Every tool has a use. Saw a crate into firewood, board up a broken window, force a lock with a chisel, or pick it pin by pin
No quest markers and no health bars: the world tells you what you need to know
Hunt deer in the woods above the village, fish the fjord, and cook what you bring home over a fire
Kroner are earned: sell what you catch at the shop counter and take the odd jobs people offer
A motorcycle and an old Volvo 240, with real gears and fuel tanks that run dry
Norway in 1989, with nothing invented: every weapon and every law in the game existed at the time

Utkant is Norwegian for "the outskirts", the edge of things. This is a game about arriving there with nothing and slowly becoming someone the village has an opinion about.