In the Walls of Eryx

The Game

You are Kenton J. Stanfield, a prospector for the Venus Crystal Company. You followed your detector to a crystal blazing at the centre of a plain of mud… and walked into walls you cannot see. In the Walls of Eryx is a first-person sci-fi horror game based on the story by H. P. Lovecraft and Kenneth Sterling.

🌀 An Invisible Maze – A circular labyrinth of glass you can barely see. Throw mud at it and it will show you where it is, for a moment.
🫁 Air That Runs Out – Your mask's oxygen drains with every step, and faster when you run. Every wrong turn costs you.
🔥 A Carter M-33 – A flame pistol with very little fuel. Use it wisely.
👁️ The Watchers – One by one, the man-lizards come out of the jungle and stand around the maze. They don't come in. They watch.
🎧 Total Immersion – Sound, mud, haze and silence, built to make you feel every minute of it.

Someone got there before you. Find the crystal, find the way out…

💀 Or join him in the mud. 💀

Click to capture the mouse, move with WASD and look around with the mouse. Hold Shift to run (it burns more oxygen). E: scoop a handful of mud and throw it – where it splats, there is a wall. Q: draw or holster the flame pistol, left click to fire. M: map. H: a brief glimpse of the way to your next goal (only once per stage). Esc: pause.

Play with the device held sideways. Left thumb: walk (push the stick all the way to run – it burns more oxygen). Right thumb: drag to look around. MUD: scoop a handful of mud and throw it – where it splats, there is a wall. GUN: draw or holster the flame pistol, hold FIRE to fire. MAP: map. HINT: a brief glimpse of the way to your next goal (only once per stage). ❚❚: pause.

Synopsis

Venus, in a year no one bothered to record. Mankind has crossed the void for the energy crystals, egg-shaped stones of such power that a single one can keep a city warm for a year. The natives, whom the men of the Crystal Company call man-lizards, worship them, and watch the newcomers take them.

Kenton J. Stanfield leaves the post at Terra Nova on a routine run. His detector leads him across the jungle to the Erycinian Highland, a plain of thin, sucking mud, and to a light blazing at its centre: a crystal finer than any he has ever seen. Between him and the crystal stands something his eyes cannot see. A wall. Then another. A labyrinth of glass, built by no human hand.

Inside, the mud swallows every footprint and the glass gives back no reflection. Each turn looks like the last. His mask holds air for a few hours, and the oxygen gauge ticks down with every step. Out in the jungle, the natives gather around the walls in silence, as if they had been waiting for him.

He is not the first man to come here. What he finds inside the walls of Eryx will decide whether he is the last.

Inspiration

"In the Walls of Eryx" is a science fiction and horror short story written by H. P. Lovecraft and Kenneth Sterling in 1935 and first published in Weird Tales in October 1939, after Lovecraft's death. It is one of the few Lovecraft stories set on another world, and it blends science fiction with horror.

The story is the record of Kenton J. Stanfield, an operative of the Venus Crystal Company, written on a decay-proof scroll as events unfold. The company mines Venus for energy crystals, which the native "man-lizards" hold sacred; Stanfield sees the natives as little more than vermin.
Following his crystal-detector across the jungle, he reaches a muddy plateau where a crystal shines in the distance. Running toward it, he is knocked flat by a wall he cannot see. Feeling his way around the barrier he finds the crystal clutched in the hand of a dead prospector, Dwight, who had been missing for months, and an opening that leads inside. He takes the crystal and steps in to explore the invisible structure.
It is a labyrinth. Stanfield loses his way, and every attempt to find the exit fails. Natives gather outside the walls and watch him, seemingly amused, but never come in. As his water, food and oxygen cubes run out, he understands that the maze is a trap and the crystal its bait. Dying, he urges his fellow men to leave Venus's crystals where they belong. A rescue party finds his body the next day and discovers that the exit was just 23 feet away. The company plans to send troops to wipe out the natives.

• Colonialism and Exploitation: The story turns on the clash between the human colonizers and the natives of Venus, and on the arrogance with which the colonizers take what is not theirs.
• Isolation and Despair: It captures with great intensity the helplessness of a man trapped in plain sight, slowly running out of air and hope.
• Alien Technology: The invisible walls are a technology far beyond human understanding, and they shatter the colonizers' sense of superiority.
• Cosmic Horror: In his last hours, Stanfield wonders which species, his or theirs, truly stands higher in the scale of things.

Like many of Lovecraft's tales, it is told as a first-person record with detailed descriptions of the environment and of the narrator's state of mind, here written as a diary that grows more broken as the end approaches, followed by the cold official report of the rescue party.

• "A Martian Odyssey" by Stanley G. Weinbaum: The strange Venusian jungle and its creatures recall Weinbaum's alien worlds and unknowable cultures.
• The Minotaur and the Labyrinth: The invisible maze is a futuristic version of the labyrinth of Greek mythology.
• Lovecraft and Cosmic Indifference: The idea that humanity cannot fully grasp alien technologies and cultures runs through the whole story.

Credits

IN THE WALLS OF ERYX
This game is a free adaptation of the science fiction story "In the Walls of Eryx", written by H. P. Lovecraft and Kenneth Sterling, first published in 1939.

Developed by DFX — defectosespeciales.com

Built with Three.js
AI coding assistant: Claude (Anthropic)

Man-lizard: designed by DFX, generated with Tripo, rigged and animated with Mixamo
Dwight (dead prospector): designed by DFX and generated with Tripo
Ancient stone platform: "Ancient Stone Platform – Runic Ritual Floor" by Unreal Joelab, via Sketchfab (CC Attribution)
Oxygen bottle: RigModels
Carter M-33 flamethrower, crystal, jungle and creatures: procedurally built by DFX

Poly Haven and ambientCG

Cover image generated with ChatGPT

Background music: "Primordial Jungle" by Nightmarish Compositions
Intro music: "Suspended" by SoundReality, via Pixabay

Stanfield's voice generated with ElevenLabs

Pixabay

Windsor Pro Bold · Futura Medium

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