Before the Silence Claims: In Absentia

About the Game

“The abyss never frightened me… but its silence did.”

You don't fight. You interfere. Survive an impossible city by using sound frequencies to traverse memory, guilt, and absence.

***

“Hannah… how did I get back here?
Every lapse… takes a piece of me.
I can feel her… but I cannot see her.”

1984, East Berlin.

Anton Bormann is a scientist consumed by old age, grief, and a promise he could never fulfill.
Upon playing an old Schubert record in his decaying apartment, something impossible happens.

The sound does not merely echo.
It reconstructs.

Dragged into a deep state of ecmnesia, Anton awakens in Eisenschall — an impossible city shaped by distorted fragments of memory, guilt, and absence.

The deeper you venture, the more reality deteriorates.
The more the city seems to remember who you were.

Before the Silence Claims: In Absentia is a first-person psychological horror game about memory, loss, and obsession. Explore a collapsing mind and decipher the remnants of Hannah — your missing wife — before the silence claims the last note of your sanity.

A CITY THAT REACTS TO YOUR PRESENCE

Eisenschall does not exist to be understood. Only relived.

Explore abandoned stations, monumental squares, decaying neighborhoods, impossible corridors, and subterranean structures where memory and architecture have begun to merge.

In Eisenschall corridors rearrange themselves without warning, paths vanish before your very eyes, distant sounds respond to your movements and the city itself seems to resist your presence.

The horror is not just in what is hunting you.

It is also in the weight of what Anton insists on preserving.

100% DIEGETIC HORROR

No HUD. No menus. No artificial indicators.

Everything exists within the game world.
Your perception is your only interface.

Utilize an experimental Crystal Radio to manipulate analog frequencies, reveal hidden fragments of reality, and temporarily interfere with whatever inhabits Eisenschall.
There are no visual markers, glowing icons, or highlighted paths.

Every detail must be perceived through action: tune into sound interference and static noise, decipher visual distortions, feel the subtle changes in the environment's atmosphere, and chase the echoes scattered throughout the city.

You don't fight.
You interfere.

ENTITIES BORN FROM GUILT

The entities of Eisenschall do not behave like conventional predators.

They watch.
They manipulate.
They distort.

They force you to confront fragments of a past that insists on returning.
Each presence alters not just your survival — but the very logic of reality around you.

THE PRICE OF NOT FORGETTING

Saving your progress is not a neutral act.

Record your journey on old gramophones using limited bakelite discs.

Each save temporarily stabilizes your mind…
But further degrades reality.

Areas transform.
Paths disappear.
Eisenschall slowly rejects your presence.

Wishlist now and tune into what history tried to erase.