About this game
The developer's description, from the game's Steam store page.
The Standardized Assessment for Continued Existence
Pass mark: 70%. Pencils ready.
PENCILS DOWN is an analog horror exam roguelike. One sitting is 44 questions across four sections. You wager 1-5 confidence chips on every answer, win them back or lose them. Erasers are your lives. Questions printed in red ink stake an eraser. And the proctor, heard but never seen, is walking the rows.
The Exam Studies You Back
From Section C onward, it asks about you:
- Which of your earlier answers was a guess?
- How many times have you erased?
- What did the chalkboard say during the break?
Every one of these is generated live from how you actually took the test. There is nothing to look up. There is no wiki. There is only what you remember.
Features
- Pencils down means pencils down. When the shadow crosses your desk, stop working, or it notices.
- Look up (TAB), if you must. The clock is on the wall. Sometimes other things are too.
- The ink does not wait. On harder forms, slow readers watch questions rot on the page. And check your bubbles before you lock. The sheet moves.
- Three examination forms: Standard Administration, Honors Track, and the District Protocol, where the test misbehaves and question 45 of 44 is waiting.
- Five endings with secrets to uncover.
- 400+ period-accurate 1999 questions.
- School Store meta-progression, where every study aid is a blessing and a curse.
Personalization
Optionally, the exam may know your name. You can deny this request in Settings. The District notes all denials.
System requirements
As Steam lists them.
Windows
Minimum
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS
- Windows 10 64-bit
- Processor
- 64-bit dual core, 2.0 GHz (Intel Core i3 / AMD equivalent)
- Memory
- 2048 MB RAM
- Graphics
- GPU with OpenGL 3.3 support, 1 GB VRAM (Intel HD Graphics 4000 or better)
- Storage
- 400 MB available space
- Sound Card
- Any Windows-compatible audio device. Headphones strongly recommended.
- Additional Notes
- Mouse and keyboard required. No controller support. The game is played entirely offline and never connects to the internet. Contains sudden loud sounds and flashing imagery; the video interference effect can be reduced or switched off in Settings.
Recommended
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS
- Windows 11 64-bit
- Processor
- 64-bit quad core, 2.5 GHz (Intel Core i5 / AMD Ryzen 3 or better)
- Memory
- 4096 MB RAM
- Graphics
- Dedicated GPU with OpenGL 3.3 support, 2 GB VRAM
- Storage
- 400 MB available space
- Sound Card
- Any Windows-compatible audio device. Headphones strongly recommended.
- Additional Notes
- Mouse and keyboard required. No controller support. The game is played entirely offline and never connects to the internet. Contains sudden loud sounds and flashing imagery; the video interference effect can be reduced or switched off in Settings.
News
What PENCILS DOWN™'s studio and the outlets Valve syndicates on Steam have said recently.
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