KW-003 · Variable star
Rumor Has It: Urban Legends
Spread a rumour, then survive it. A co-op horror game where the story your crew tells sets the rules of the night.
Where to play
In development for Roblox
- Designation
- KW-003
- Class
- Variable star
- Genre
- Co-op horror
- Platform
- Roblox · Phone, tablet, PC and console, through Roblox
- Players
- 1–4
- Status
- In development for Roblox
- Position
- Outer orbit
Somewhere in Pest, after the last tram, a rumour is going round, and tonight your crew is going to find out whether it is true.
Rumor Has It starts at a night bus and tram terminus. You change your hat at the outfitter, try the three basic moves in the yard, and wait at a stop with your crew. Bus 13 goes to Bus Street, Tram 4 to the riverside, and the line decides which legend is waiting at the other end.
There, a case runs like a small investigation that turns into a siege. You find three clues, a call-in tape, a small ad in the evening paper, a witness, and each one tells you something the creature will obey. Then you decide together which stories go out on the radio. What you broadcast is true from that moment on, for the creature and for you.
Two legends so far
Kuchisake-onna follows people who walk alone. You hear her heels before you see the red coat and the yellow scarf held over her mouth. Then she asks her question, and the right answer changes every night. The clues hide tonight’s word in the voices of the neighbourhood: a schoolgirl at the stop, the caretaker’s notice in the stairwell, the conductor of the night tram.
The Vodník works on the riverside. “There are five of us on the quay tonight,” the old angler says. “Count six, and you run.” Ask a stranger for a light: an honest man’s match catches. His hisses out, in a hand with no left thumb. Whoever he drags under ends up in a clay pot with their name chalked on the lid, and a friend has to break it to get them back.
More legends are on the way, each one retold as it might have been told in Budapest in 1986.
Why it is in English
The streets look like Pest, but the shop signs and the voices are in English, so players anywhere can read the town. The interface is available in English and Hungarian.
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What makes it
The story becomes the rule
At a press kiosk that doubles as a radio station, the crew votes on which rumours go on air. Each card names a benefit and a price, and once it is broadcast, the creature obeys it. So do you.
Light stops it. Salt holds it. A song keeps it away.
Every lamp draws on one shared power grid. It holds six, the circuits want eleven, and if you overload it the whole district goes dark at once.
Legends from around the world
On Bus Street, Kuchisake-onna, the masked woman of a 1979 Japanese rumour, asks “Am I pretty?”. On the riverside, the Vodník hides among the men on the quay, and his left side is always wet.
Night shift, 1986
A night bus showing 13, a yellow tram on line 4, tenement gateways, sodium lamps that buzz, phone boxes, cassette recorders and the evening paper. No mobile phone is coming to save you.
Cases, not levels
Find three clues, take the vote, build the sealing device from three parts and hold the creature at the edge of the light until the device does its work. Close the case before dawn.
Eerie, not gory
The worst moments happen off screen. There are settings for reduced flashing and high contrast, and the hats you unlock change your look and nothing else.
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Trailer
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Plates
Fig. 1 Spring-heeled Jack, one of the legends still on the way. 
Fig. 2 The quay after dark. Five men tonight. Count six, and you run.
