WARNING: This mod contains jumpscares, sudden loud noises, flickering lights and bursts of on-screen static. It also contains meta horror: the game may change its own window title, pause menu and death screen, and it writes a text file of notes about you into your
.minecraft/understudyfolder. It never touches anything outside that folder. All of this can be turned off in the config. Please read the Settings section below if you are sensitive to flashing lights.
Understudy is a slow-burn psychological horror mod. It does not start with a monster. It starts with someone watching.
From your first day in a world it keeps a ledger on you: where you walk, when you sleep, what you carry, how you fight, the house you build and the way you always come home. Nothing happens for a while. Then small things are slightly wrong. Then you see someone on the horizon walking the route you took yesterday, at the time you took it.
It is rehearsing. And an understudy only goes on when the lead can't.
Will you finish the performance, or will it finish it for you?
The mod plays out in three acts over your first in-game days (configurable):
The more it watches, the higher its Readiness climbs. At full Readiness it stops rehearsing. It takes your house and your bed, and you will have to take them back.
The Understudy: the lead. A marionette seven blocks tall with a cracked porcelain face, its arms rising and falling on strings from somewhere above. It stands where you stood and walks where you walked. It folds down at night to look through your window. It fights the way you fight, and it resists everything it has seen you do. Do something you have never done in front of it, and it forgets its lines.
Yesterday: you, faded and sepia, replaying what you did a day ago. The Surveyor: a thing on tripod legs that plants stakes and measures where you live. The Stand-In: a jointed mannequin that copies your poses while your back is turned. The Recorder: a bird that learned to repeat you. Wick: a robed snuffer that puts out every light along the tunnels you dig. The Visitor: an empty coat on a hanger that knocks on the door you're standing behind. The Traveler: plain white, one pink glowing eye, a trunk on its back full of voices. If it touches you, you're packed. The Infill, the Drench and the Drafts live in its places, in the walls, in the rain and in the unfinished grey.
The Traveler is the only way in. Its places are made out of your own world:
Every place has exactly one way out.
Fifty endless stage sets from a production that never opened. Each Set goes on forever in every direction, with a place to start, one real way out, and many that are lying.
Some of what you'll find:
| Mazes | box hedges at dusk, mirrored glasshouses, corn rows, gardens of bone, the dark under the stage |
| Impossible houses | front rooms that lead into front rooms, stairs into ceilings, chairs all facing one empty corner, doors opening onto walls |
| Offices & waiting rooms | failing fluorescent lights, rows of chairs facing nothing, a rehearsal hall where the mirrors are a little late |
| Corridors | a hotel where your key fits every door, a hospital after visiting hours, a school where the bell has already gone, one hall that never turns |
| Water | bright empty pools, a drained deep end, black water to your shins under lamp posts |
| Open ground | a field of standing doors, a red field under a black sky, an orchard with no fruit, white trees in white fog |
| Theatres | endless auditoriums, the gods, a matinee where nobody breathes, and a curtain call where everyone comes back out to bow |
| And more | catwalks over nothing, an endless identical suburb, archives, warm red caves, a blank white plane |
Every Set has its own looping music, its own fog and colour grade, and its own residents:
If one of them catches you, it's back to your mark.
Everything can be adjusted in serverconfig/understudy-server.toml and config/understudy-client.toml:
Nothing is happening! That's on purpose. It watches for a few in-game days before it does anything. Keep playing normally. It's paying attention.
How do I get into the Sets?
The Traveler brings you in, once it's ready. With cheats on you can visit any Set with /understudy set <name>.
I keep ending up back at the start of a Set. You opened a painted door, fell off something, or got caught. The real door is cold.
Does it delete my files or harm my computer?
No. The meta features are cosmetic. The only file it writes is a plain-text copy of its notes, inside .minecraft/understudy, and that can be turned off.
Is it finished? It's playable from start to finish, but more Sets, cast members and acts are planned.
The show must go on. With or without you.
