The story is written. Your fate is not.
What Is Survive The Day?
Imagine if Finch and Jason Voorhees had a baby. That would be Survive The Day.
Survive The Day is a solo horror gamebook system that blends roleplaying, resource management, and real-world productivity into a single experience.
The main component of Survive The Day will be a physical book guiding players through a linear narrative. At the end of each chapter will be a chance for the player to roll dice to gain knowledge or resources to help in the final stand-off with the villain of the story.
A good roll may help you get one step closer to survival.
A bad roll may get you one step closer to death.
The Productivity Twist
What sets Survive The Day apart from other solo RPGs is the real-world productivity aspect. This is how it will work:
The player will develop a daily to-do list, a task list of sorts. The closer the player gets to finishing their task list, the higher their modifier and thus, the better chances of a good roll. If they don’t finish all their tasks, it’s not the end of the world. It just means it’ll take a little more to survive. There’s always tomorrow.
Companion App
Survive The Day began life as a standalone mobile app where the entire game would be played on a mobile device. As development continued, I found myself increasingly drawn to the tactile nature of books, dice, character sheets, and handwritten notes. It became clear that the experience I wanted to create would be better served by a physical gamebook, with the app acting as an optional companion rather than the primary platform.
So, why the change?
During development, I realized I was spending more time building systems to deliver stories than I was actually telling stories. By moving the narrative into a physical gamebook and repositioning the app as a companion tool, I can focus on what matters most: creating memorable horror experiences.
We hope this approach makes Survive The Day feel more tangible, more immersive, and more reusable while still offering the convenience of a modern companion app for those who want it.
As many TTRPG players will tell you, there is some “bookkeeping” that has to be done while playing these types of games – keeping track of your character’s stats is a process and calculating modifiers on your rolls adds an extra layer of math. Adding the maintenance of a daily task list will add more homework.
To help alleviate some of that, we’ve simplified the traits each character will use, and will also offer the use of a multifunctional companion app that can keep track of a player’s task list, their character sheet, will offer the use of digital dice in case the player doesn’t want to use physical dice, and discovery resolution. If a player wants to use any or all of these functions, they can, or they may elect to do everything on paper. That’s fine too, the game plays exactly the same regardless of if you use the app or not, it just may require a little more maintenance on the player’s end.
Some seasoned RPG players might prefer that, even.
But, the app will offer one thing that the print version won’t and that’s the ability to gain virtual collectibles exclusive to the app, whether it’s a physical artifact, an extra bit of exposition or a lore drop. Again, the game will play the same whether they chase these collectibles or not.
Journaling
An additional component to the game will be the ability for the player to journal their thoughts about certain aspects of the game, whether it’s how a found resource might help the character get through a situation or how the character might feel about a piece of knowledge dropped on a discovery roll.
Or, the player may elect to use the journaling space as a place to track their IRL moods and emotions, to talk about how they actually feel about a situation presented to them in the story, or even to talk about the challenges or successes they had in their day that led to the scenario presented by the game.
Flexibility
What we want to focus on is this project’s flexibility. It can be a paper and pencil only game, or the player can live mostly in the app, or any combination therein.
They can journal their character’s emotions, or their own challenges, or not journal at all.
Hell, they could even read the story straight through without playing the game at all.
The choice is 100% theirs.
Plus, we plan on offering two different modes of play:
- Story Mode where penalties are not applied for incomplete tasks, and the campaign does not end early
- or Survival Mode where not completing tasks penalizes the player, and added stress gained during game play can cause the campaign to end early.
Timeline
Shyeah, right. You want us to commit to a hard and fast timeline? Not gonna happen. This venture is a one-man operation with a full time job and a travel bug bigger than he is. Finding time to dedicate to the production of this game is going to be a challenge, especially now in the middle of the summer season.
But, if you put a gun to my head and told me I needed a definitive timeline, I would say I can get the core mechanics situated, the story written, discoverable tables developed and test playthroughs all done by the end of the winter.
Then I will have to start on the app development. Now, the good thing is, I already have a framework down and started from the previous iteration, it just needs to be adjusted to fit the new gameplay. If I can get that done and tested and launched, I imagine I could realistically see a full-scale launch of a finished product in the later third of 2027, just in time for the next spooky season.
But don’t hold me to that.