Black Figure

The Black Figure

Something tall and black is standing at the edge of your render distance. It was closer yesterday.

A classic stalker for Minecraft. No face, no name, no sound. Just a thin black shape that is always somewhere you weren’t looking a second ago.

How it hunts you

It gets bolder every in-game day you survive.

• Day 1: it watches. It stands far off at the edge of a treeline, perfectly still, facing you. Look straight at it and it’s gone. Walk toward it and it’s gone.
• Day 2: it follows. Footsteps behind you that stop when you stop. Turn around fast enough and you’ll catch it walking after you, and then it isn’t there.
• Day 3: it gets close. It leans out from behind a tree trunk to look at you. At night it comes to your house: a door you closed is open, a torch is out, and something is standing outside your window. Branches snap behind you when nobody is there.
• Day 4 and on: it runs. At night it stands and stares, and then it comes for you, faster than you can walk and almost as fast as you can sprint. Your heart starts pounding. Get into a lit room with a roof or outlast it. If it reaches you, you’ll see its face up close. It doesn’t have one.

Features

• A custom-made 3D model (built and rigged in Blender) with its own animations: standing, head tilts, walking, running, peeking around trees, and the lunge.
• Pitch black under any light. It is a hole in the world shaped like a person.
• It can’t be killed. Hitting it only makes it leave.
• Every appearance is placed by looking at your real surroundings: treelines it can be seen from, real tree trunks to hide behind, the actual windows of the room you’re in.
• Chases come with a heartbeat that speeds up and a closing vignette, and they end in a full-screen jumpscare with camera shake.
• Your progress is saved per player.

Commands (operators)

• /blackfigure status shows your stage, how many times you’ve seen it, and how often you escaped or got caught.
• /blackfigure stage <0-4> jumps to a stage.
• /blackfigure summon <distant|behind|peek|house|chase> makes it appear now. Good for recording.

Config

config/blackfigure-common.toml sets how often it appears, how many days each stage lasts, how long chases last, chase speed, damage, and whether it’s allowed to open your doors and put out your torches. A snuffed torch always drops as an item, so it never destroys anything.

Details

• Minecraft 1.20.1, Forge
• Needed on the server, and on the client for the model and jumpscare
• Singleplayer and multiplayer: every player gets their own haunting
• Nothing spawns naturally, so it never fills your world with mobs. There is only ever one of it per player.

Made for recording. Play it at night with headphones.