When I first started playing White Knuckle, I was ready to give up. In that first hour, I was put off by how the controls felt to grasp. When you pair that with the impending threat of something so unsettling about the setting, and the dread that comes with trying to climb up a unsecure and dangerous environment, it would have been easy to just turn it off. Yet I am so glad I didn’t. It was still a struggle to keep climbing. It was still frustrating to fall after doing so well, but I kept on going.
Substructure 17 is dark and claustrophobic. There are different areas to climb through, and while you have different routes going upwards, one false move can mean permadeath and a quick start back to the beginning. However, it is this drive that makes you want to continue. To uncover its secrets. To go further than before. To escape a potentially grisly fate. The majority of the horror comes from what you don’t see – what lurks in the shadows.
When looking solely at gameplay, it’s simple yet challenging. All you see are your two hands. Each trigger button controls a hand, and by gripping onto a crevice, pole, piton, or rope, you’re able to ascend. If you hold onto something for too long, you hands will go from white to red. This indicates your stamina. Once they turn bright red, you’ll lose grip and fall to the surface below, or to your death. Hoisting yourself up and getting to a flat surface becomes your main focus.
There’s an inventory to manage in White Knuckle. Picking up ropes, pitons, health, and other items can be stored, but there is a limit. You can also equip two items for each hand. When you’re climbing a wall and need to bash in a piton with your hammer, not only to you need the hammer equipped in one hand, you need the piton in the other. This is where the main challenge lies. It requires a ton of precision and patience to use your items when ascending, with one false move leading to a grave mistake.
This was the main stress for me. Thankfully, the more you get used to managing your inventory while climbing, it becomes exciting and terrifying trying to secure a safe route to the top. You’re going to fail. It’s a given. This might turn you off in the first few hours, but there’s a lot of satisfaction in victory here. Keep pushing. Keep going. Never give up. If you’re willing to push forward and become familiar with the gameplay, there’s a hell of a lot to gain from the learning experience White Knuckle provides.
Substructure 17 is a menacing setting in itself. The bowels of the beast harbour monsters biting at your toes, yet it is the daunting silos that draw your breath a way from you. I held mine so many times, with the threat of death always there. As you get better and keep climbing, you’ll reach another two areas, and while everything is dingy and bleak, the location is an impressive labyrinth. Just stay focused, don’t be disheartened, and embrace the danger in order to succeed at whatever is thrown at you.
White Knuckle is in early access, so there are plenty of tweaks, improvements, and new content to be added over the next year. At present, there’s more than enough to keep players occupied. The need to push yourself and progress, to get faster and survive longer is a great motivation, and with the horror being just as much about the grim location as it is about the things that reside in Substructure 17, it’s quite the unique idea and I loved how challenging it was, even if I did feel like pulling my hair out from time to time.
White Knuckle is in early access on PC via Steam now.
