Reaching rock bottom simulator. The Office episode looping in the background really manages to gel that representation of uttermost inner decay.
It’s all fun and games until you clip through reality and find yourself stuck in an eldritch hellscape. That’s not a spoiler.
I’m following SirCartaux work with great interest since Why is the sky red? and Hotel Grundrow is a massive step-up bordering on genius. The seemingly basic level of the hotel hides deep unnerving secrets requiring all your glitch/exploit detecting skills, building an eerie ambiance with few elements (and amazing sound design).
I have been waiting for the full release of this game for a long time and it didn’t disappoint. Between spatial exploration, interactive visual show, and raymarching wizardry, this is the result of Jesse Aidyn master’s thesis on video games experimentation (available here in French: https://papyrus.bib.umontreal.ca/xmlui/handle/1866/26504). I strongly recommend throwing yourself first in the chopper-riding level for Ginger Breaker’s track “Ginger Breaker Discovers LSD” – one of Montreal most interesting electro producer for whom I directed a music video a few years ago.
The constant ambiance of spleen, lifelessness and subtle humour of both franchised uncannily mixes well together.
One of those games generating extreme eeriness with few visual clues. ‘The waves beckon’.
If you need a fix of cursed abandoned PS1 development, this will satiate you. Totally nails the dreamscape of neoliberal fatigue.
As vile as a Harry Harlow experiments. Discomfort design times 100.
Drugs. Cronenbergian mutants. Beat ’em up ultraviolence. Danny Brown. Colourful 2D hallucinatory vibe. What’s not to like? This is clearly a labour of love, dealing unreservedly about being uprooted and chemically imbalanced. Support!
I like Mike Klubknika games. I like Stephen King’s short story The Jaunt. This is the best of both worlds.
Another “classic” basement game from 2015. I had the urge to replay it recently and was still entranced by the great music, the brilliant level design and the cynical “social” commentary. This is pure cyberpunk vibe check.
Is this supposed to be a creepypasta based on a fake kid show? Because I can’t see the difference with the stuff my friends’ offsprings are tube-fed.
ZXspectrum-punk unadulterated mess. What’s more to say? It’s beautiful in its vulgarity, brilliant in its dumbness.
Annihilative procedural dissolution of reality—my mug of pilsner/cup of tea. Interactive trepanation of the highest order.
It’s another 3D “photorealistic” domestic fps horror game. But this one is good, uses the House of Leaves references well, and as some perverse tricks up its sleeves (I say yes to screen size/resolution manipulations). Even the jump scare is great.
Another game that feels like the corrupted reflection of our covideconomy. Although I think I’d rather spend my last days on this dirtball in this exquisite nightmare of Play-Doh mutants and polluted cancerous architecture. Oh, it’s also funny as hell.
Another extremely important game, and more relevant than ever. It’s a title that leaves a space for interpretation, but not in abstractness. It’s about where you, yourself, as a gamer, is positioned towards this unfolding narrative and the choices made. I played two runs, and both were dealing with the insidiousness of a specific form of hatred: self-hatred and a certain capitalistic posthumanism contempt. Amanda Beech, in her essay “Death of Horror”, ends by stating, “If horror is determined as the space in which we can explode the myths of our existence, then it must also be a space in which we can explode the myth of our precarity, the central axis of horror. It must risk losing the make-up that has defined it. Horror must reject horror.” I believe An Outcry does exactly that—an angle I hope I will be able to explore further.
I feel there’s an underlying pressure to get back to pre-Covid speed recently that’s way more damaging to mental balance than the restrictive health measures. This is an excellent game about depression, well required in the current context.
A little blast from the recent past. MSPaint/Quickbasic-punk 2D projectile heaving of glitching beats and fluorescent landscapes. We need more of those beautiful messes.
Selfish Dream offers here an abstract synthesis of his unique approach to game design. This is noise as interaction—the dissolution of architectural benchmarks and sensorial saturation.
I say yes to more FMV interactive experiences/games. Way more efficient than that Black Mirror episode.
A very interesting top-down 2D horror/puzzle experience reminding me of Flesh, Blood & Concrete. This game really distinguishes itself with a superb soundtrack, extremely well-written dialogues and a visual style mixing retro and Francis Baconesque melting fleshy masses. The trials and tribulations of this amateur psychopomp are worth exploring.
