Most of the games I discuss and play are full of story and cinematic moments, but tend to be relatively light.
Ten Candles by Stephen Dewey is not that game.
It’s a bleakly immersive tale of tragic horror played in the dark. For it to work the players must lean into these themes and become emotionally invested in the characters and their fate. Chilling, yes. Emotional, yes. Scary, yes. But, wow is it fun.
What is Ten Candles?
Ten Candles is a collaborative, tragic horror roleplaying game built on a simple, brutal truth: Your characters will die.
There are no hit points to cling to, no clever builds to save you. Instead, the table is lit by ten real candles. As the game unfolds, those candles go out one by one, each extinguishing tightening the noose of dread. When the last flame is extinguished, so are the characters.
The mechanics are elegantly cruel. Dice pools shrink. Characters lose what makes them human. Hope erodes. The darkness, quite literally, closes in. There is no winning in this game. But as the rules point out, you have to play your characters with hope. Hope that everything will work out. Even though we all know it wont.
Martycon 2026: Not Enough Light
We played during Martycon 2026, crammed around a large dining room table, the rest of the house in darkness. Everyone was aware that we were in for an immersive horror game and I think we were all slightly on edge.
We had eight players and Rich, our GM. Too many, really. But to his credit, Rich conducted the game beautifully and kept everyone involved and on the edge of their seat.
Rottnest Island, but Very Wrong
Our session of Ten Candles was set the game on Rottnest Island a location known to all Western Australians as a place of holidays, sun and rest. Rich made a clever move to set the game in a place known to the players. It immediately grounded the game in reality. No magic potions for us. And no guns either. Instead our characters were armed with torches, chair legs and bottles of vodka.
In our version, the island was a trap. Blood soaked the beaches and strange unformed creatures ranged the darkness. The mainland was pitch black and felt impossibly far away. Our only hope: a rumour of rescue from the western edge of the island. A boat. If we could get there. If we could stay in the light.
One of the key premises of the game is that if you Step into darkness, “They” will take you.
“They” were never fully explained. Just glimpsed. A black, roiling smoke. Something that moved with intent. Something that could be breathed in. Ambiguity did the heavy lifting. Our imaginations happily supplied the nightmare.
Meet Jerry (Briefly)
My character, Jerry, was a plump water monitoring technician. Cheerful. And just a little bit manipulative. The kind of man who smiles while quietly steering the boat.
Character creation involved writing a vice and a virtue and passing them to other players. I got joyous and manipulative and worked from there. We also had to write a moment of hope. Jerry’s was that he got to see the stars. Finally, another player handed me Jerry’s brink. Which is how he acts when all hope has gone. He would break down crying.
These four items made up the character and each could be literally ripped up to gain a reroll of any one’s rolled on the dice. Each time the character lost a little of who they were.
Before the game began, we each recorded a short voice message in character. A small slice of life before the end. Jerry’s was simple:
“Hey Sarah… job’s almost finished. I’ll be home soon.”
Joyous optimism for his wife on the mainland. After we had all recorded our messages, some bleak, others frantic, we started to play.
Ten Flames, Then Nine…
The candles were lit and we turned house lights off. And just like that, the world shrank to a circle of firelight.
We began in a small holiday cabin. The town was empty and the sky dark. We argued. We clung to the idea of the boat. Jerry got stomped by a pack of young thugs trying to steal his car keys. Not villains, just desperate people with the same bad idea we had: survive at someone else’s expense.
We got to the car and drove frantically towards the west of the island. We (well Jerry) crashed. Things in the dark began to notice us. One of us got infected. His mouth blackened, like ink spreading through paper. And all the while:
Candles went out.
Each extinguishing was a tiny tightening of the vice. The table grew quieter, more focused, our inevitable doom creeping closer. And yet our characters clung on, believing that escape was possible. By the time we were down to the last few candles the mood was tense.
The End Is the Point
Of course we didn’t make it. Our party made it to the rescue boat, but everyone onboard was infected. The last candle went out as Jerry was splashing in the dark water desperately clinging to the side of the boat.
Total darkness. Just eight people and a GM sitting in the void. Silence for a few heartbeats. Then Rich pressed play.
The Voices We Left Behind
Our recordings filled the darkness. Fragments of lives that no longer existed.
Hopeful. Ordinary. Human. Made much more poignant by the harrowing ordeal they had just experienced.
No one spoke.
For what felt like an eternity we sat in the dark, lost in our thoughts of the game and what had transpired.
Lights On, Breath In
When the lights finally came back on we all stared at each other for a moment and breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Then there was laughter and incredulous sharing of our favourite moments. We’d just shared something strange and intimate. A kind of collective ghost story where we were both the storytellers and the ghosts.
Of course, Ten Candles is not a game to be played every week. Rather it’s an experience. A ritual, almost. Something you step into, knowing it will be a unique and unsettling experience
With eight players, it was a little crowded. With four or five, I suspect it would tighten into something even sharper. More personal and possibly even scarier. But even as it was? It was unforgettable, an absolute highlight of the gaming year and one of the best gaming sessions I’ve ever played in. A big shoutout to our GM Rich who did a masterful job of running a new game, while keeping the atmosphere and tension at an all time high!
Would I play again? Most definitely. I would also like to try my hand at running a session and I have some ideas already beginning to percolate. Should you give it a go? 100%! Just make sure your group is on the same page with creating and maintaining the atmosphere. And of course remember:
The light goes out. What matters is what you do before it does.
