Wow! You played THAT?! Vol. 7 - The return of the unspeakable horror

Fair warning, i've mainly been working on the site instead of blogging so each game might not be as fresh in my mind as they could be and the order i talk about them might not be correct but what the heckle. There have been games i've played that i've felt haven't warranted a post because i didn't really find anything in them to talk about, but i'm trying to give everything i play a fair shot. Keep reading for guaranteed fun!

Arctic Eggs

Can you fry an egg on top of Mount Everest?

Arctic Eggs is a thoroughly strange game. i got it as part of the Humble 'Indie Fears' bundle, and while i'd argue it isn't a horror game it's definitely got very weird vibes i could see people being unsettled by. It's set in a dystopic Antarctica, which is becoming the Arctic through polarity-reversal shenanigans, presumably because Arctic Eggs is a catchier title than Antarctic Eggs. Your character is left intentionally ambiguous, you're only told that you tried to escape and as a punishment have been stripped of all non-essential functions, explaining your lack of dialogue for the runtime of the game. You're left with enough control to cook eggs, being told that you might earn your freedom if you can feed enough people in the city and earn an audience with the saint of six stomachs. So you get to work, cooking eggs on both sides, as always.

You do this by placing eggs and other delights into your pan, swirling it with your mouse to generate heat and delicately flipping to cook the other side when ready. The game quickly complicates this simple task, by adding other ingredients that your customers will request alongside their eggs. These range from simple extras like bacon and sausages, to hazards like beer bottles and cockroaches. If you spill too much beer you'll have to start over, likewise if a cockroach jumps out of the pan. Combinations of hazards can make otherwise simple dishes tricky, as you have to generate heat by moving the pan but also keep track of the hazards, tipping the cockroach back towards the centre of the pan and keeping the beer level. The most dangerous moment is the flip, thankfully it doesn't require much momentum to get the egg successfully flipped but it's definitely a delicate balancing act.

Accompanying these bizarre orders are the equally bizarre customers, who along with weird dystopic-futuristic bodies have some of the greatest weird one-liners i've experienced. The writing team nailed this aspect, there were so many times in my playthrough that i'd read a line and be caught off guard. This also serves to reinforce another aspect of Arctic Eggs, being that it's a weirdly cozy game. You're in a dystopia and things generally seem to be quite miserable, but everyone's sort of alright? It feels like you're in a world that's accepted that it's ending and is trying to make the most of a worsening situation, not going out with a bang but relaxing into their doom. There are armed guards dancing in the club, people discussing how to tell which is the left or right sock (by taste), even the cyborg prisoners are surprisingly OK. It's a peculiar vibe, and one i haven't seen a huge amount of elsewhere.

Arctic Eggs is yet another little indie game that knows what it wants to do and does it, without overstaying its welcome. The introduction of new mechanics is well-paced, keeping things interesting but not overwhelming. A lack of lives or any similar mechanic also greatly help, you're free to mess up as much as you want while preparing those eggs. And you will mess up, your control of the pan will be awful at first but you'll quickly get into the swing of things and cook up a delicious storm. i give Arctic Eggs 10 cockroaches out of 10.

Daemonologie

OoOoOooOH i wonder what's next maybe they're going to talk about a short indie horror game OoOoOoOoOh very clever you know all my tricks

Daemonologie is a short horror game that you can roll credits on in about 30 minutes, but that i feel is vastly more unsettling than a great many games that i've played, whether they be AAA, indie or the elusive B. The game is set in 17th-Century rural Scotland with you taking on the role of a nameless witch hunter, travelling to an isolated town to, well, hunt a witch. Your suspects number 5, they are the old crone, the maiden, the blacksmith, the priest, the shepherdess and the fisherman. Gameplay consists of you talking to each of the suspects, with you having a limited amount of time each day to do so before your week-long investigation is up. Unfortunately polite conversation isn't enough to progress things, with you 'having' to resort to torture to reveal the 'witch'. Foreshadowing is a literary device tha-

What makes Daemonologie so grim and so cool are intertwined, and i'll go for the latter first. The game is available to play in 2 languages, modern english and scots! This is really cool, playing in scots is obviously the intended experience and it does a great job in creating an atmosphere, particularly for a language that's so infrequently used. The pixel art is also great, each character feels distinct and yet all follow a cohesive artstyle. The game takes a break for the limited cutscenes and instead chooses to use 3D animation for the beginning and ending scenes, and for the nightmare sequence at the end of each day. These nightmares portray each of the suspects in a spooky, witchy way, leaving you guessing by sowing the seeds of doubt for each character in your mind. The clash of artstyles for gameplay and these sequences also makes them feel uncanny, as what you're seeing is so different from the rest of the game that they feel genuinely surreal. The grimness comes from, well, the artstyle and atmosphere. The cutscenes are gloriously grotesque, and the regular pixel art is in delightfully dreary greyscale. i always feel art like this creates a sense of cold and mud, it's the same kind of feeling as Berserk where i'm just wondering how cold my fingies would be in this setting. However, most of the grimness comes from the setting. 17th-Century living would already be miserable enough, but living through the witch trials must have been absolutely nightmarish - especially for the women who made up the overwhelming bulk of those accused. In my eyes the witch trials are probably one of the most important examples of how organised religion is bad, witch trials were driven by religious zealotry as the accused were believed to be communing with Satan. The villages who burned and executed their own neighbours were drived by fear, their local priest (or other religious figure) delcaring that they and their children would be killed and damned if they didn't find this 'witch'. This is illustrated ingame by interactions between characters, most notably the priest and the maiden.

The maiden is perhaps the most traditional candidate for a witch hunt (along with the old crone), she's an attractive, childless woman who forages for medicinal herbs. This subjects her to the priest's ire whenever he is interrogated, with him taking every opportunity to throw her under the, uh, wagon. Other character interactions also play into your investigations, the blacksmith and the shepherdess also have it out for each other and take every opportunity to incriminate the other. The blacksmith made a shoddy fence, the shepherdess left a slaughtered lamb on his doorstep, he sent wolves to attack her sheep, she cursed him and made his jaw fall off, etc. Eventually it's revealed that both are lying or exaggerating their stories of the other, the fear in their minds causing a single strand of doubt to twist and grow into a full-on witch accusation. The other 2 characters, the old crone and the fisherman, have a sort of relation in that they both don't give a flying fuck and don't respect your 'authority' at all. The old crone declares she's the witch immediately and threatens you with curses, with no amount of torture and threats of damnation stopping her. The fisherman is just a chill guy, subtly making fun of you and your zealotry and not taking the whole thing seriously. The one time he's fully serious is when he tells you the most truthful thing in the game, he tells you that nobody here is a witch and begs you to leave them in peace. And that's the big twist, while also not being a surprise to anyone who knows about the witch trials. It's the ideal outcome for the game, and leaves you with a much nastier feeling than if there actually was a witch executed at the end. All your zealotry and torture have been for nothing, all you've done is bring immeasurable pain and fear to a small community - all in the name of god.

Daemonologie is a great little game, passionately made with a genuinely unsettling atmosphere. Amazing art, amazing vibe and atmosphere, amazing grace (not). The reveal that there is no witch is subtly referenced throughout the game, one example of this is the blacksmith's jaw. He claims the shepherdess cursed it to fall off, but with some digging we find out how it actually happened. His other dialogue reveals he's come into possession of a brilliant new powder that burns bright and hot (which the shepherdess thought was witchy hellfire), that he bought from a travelling merchant. Based on his description we can identify this as Phosphorus, which would fit for the setting and uses as described. Prolonged exposure to Phosphorus can lead to deterioration of the jaw, causing necrosis and, well, falling off. AAHHHHH. It's so well thought out how each of these interactions play into each other, and form a short yet fully cohesive story. i give Daemonologie 10 hell-demons out of 10.

Threshold

OH LITERALLY SHUT UP I DON'T CARE ALL I'VE BEEN PLAYING RECENTLY ARE INDIE HORROR GAMES BLAME HUMBLE BUNDLE

Threshold is a dystopic independently-produced game, which is horrifying. Right from the start it grabbed my interest, mainly through its difficulty choice. For a start there are lots of them, and the game doesn't elaborate how they'll actually affect difficulty - because the choice you make is what country you play in. i'll explain later how it's relevant to the difficulty, but i chose Vietnam. After spawning into a dingy locker room, you're prompted to hand over a contract through a slot, while choosing a 2-letter name for yourself. i chose LP, after League Points, of course. You then ride an elevator on a lengthy journey to the surface, having been accepted into whatever government position this is. The reason for this lengthy trip is revealed, as you've come out on top of the tallest mountain peak in your chosen country. i was placed on top of Vietnam's majestic Mount Fansipan, at the dizzying height of around 3100 metres. You're introduced to Mo, your shift buddy of sorts who'll show you the ropes and what you've actually got to do. Mo communicates with you by writing on a notepad, preferring not to talk as oxygen is scarce up here! Introducing you to the job, Mo shows you the train. It's a constantly running train, that you're tasked with making sure is running at the required speed set by the capital. You do this by blowing into a big horn when it's going too slow, causing it to speed up. This does have the unfortunate side-effect of emptying your lungs though, which can only be remedied by biting down on an air canister. These are little glass tubes full of air, which have the unfortunate side effect of bloodying up your mouth because, well, you're biting down on glass. You can collect more air canisters by collecting tickets based on the amount of train carriages that pass the checkpoint, and then trading these in for that sweet, sweet oxygen. And the other gases as well. That's essentially the core of the game! Manage the train speed while also managing your breath, sprinting and jumping will make you gulp in more air than usual. That's where part of the country difficulty comes in, the height of the peak determines how much time you'll have between needing to chomp down on another canister. It's a very unique thing to have essentially the hard mode of a game be called 'China' but that's how it works! There's another aspect to difficulty i'll cover in a moment.

This train-speed-monitoring is broken up by several other tasks you can do around the outpost, like collecting mysterious white goop from the river grates that can be recycled into more tickets. Or you can collect spare planks to fix up various run-down structures, if you feel like some DIY and have the breath to spare. You can also call Mo, who you can then get to tell you about certain things around the outpost to give some tasty lore, but they'll only be able to tell about a few things before they head back down because they've 'got a dentist appointment' or 'need a shower' yeah right Mo. You can also call the capital for some DEEPER LORE questions at certain points, but there's a chance they won't answer because they've got much more important things to do so don't waste your breath on them too much. The game is obviously carried by its environment and story, the gameplay isn't anything to write home about. It's perfectly serviceable for the hour or so it takes but any more would get BORING. The most interesting part is the spOoKy MysTErY which i'll talk about....now!

The biggest mystery is what actually is the train transporting? Along with that, what happened to the previous worker in your position, Ni? Mo points you to their crude grave in the corner but doesn't reveal anything about how they died. The only clue you get is Mo rather sinisterly saying that Ni attempted to find out what the train was carrying, which Mo and the higher-ups did not approve of. Mo advises you against continuing Ni's line of investigation. Naturally, you use some spare planks to build a makeshift bridge up to an overlook and have a peek inside. And you see...lots and lots of animal corpses. Mo sees you sneaking around, reports you to the capital who issue swift punishment. You're now expected to make up for your TRANSGRESSIONS by maintaining a breakneck pace for the train, which you do manage to do but it doesn't quite have the desired effect. The processing facility the corpses are being delivered to can't handle this level of input, and the corpses begin to overflow. As in, there are dead cows and pigs raining from the sky levels of overflowing. Have you ever heard the song Raining Blood by Slayer? It's like that. i won't go too into the ending, but various hijinks ensue on your path to one of several endings. This is where the second country difficulty aspect comes in, a higher number of animals slaughtered each day results in a more devastating gore tsunami. It's something that clicks after you finish the game, which i think is really cool and unique!

Threshold is another great example of an indie game that fully understands what it wants to do and how to do it, which almost always results in a smooth experience with little to no bloat. Thresholds runtime is short but sweet, i mentioned above how the 'minigames' are balanced and spaced well enough to prevent them from becoming too repetitive over the course of a playthrough. However, i can see certain sections becoming quite monotonous on repeat playthroughs, which for a game with multiple endings are quite likely. Certain sections will lose their charm and mystery when you're aware of the games wider story, and will instead become the slog a first playthrough skillfully avoided. This is a problem that many games of this sort suffer from however, and Threshold does try to remedy this through its wide range of 'difficulty settings', but thankfully doesn't have an achievement for completing a run as each country because that would be shameful play-maxing. i give Threshold 10 air canisters out of 10.

Scorn

Game the final today is Scorn! Scorn is a difficult game to identify, in equal parts to its benefit and to its detriment. God that sentence sounded pretentious. Unfortunately the crowning glory of Scorn is its world design, which i'm going to mulligan talking about here because i want to do it in an upcoming post about dungeons. SO WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO TALK ABOUT??? HOW ABOUT THE GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE

Scorn is a bloody disgusting game, in the best possible way, or the worst possible way, depending on your stance on body horror. To give you just a brief taste, one section requires you to put not one but three whole evil mutant foetuses into a hydraulic press. And they've all got separate crushing animations which i was very impressed by. And they're dead before you put them in, even evil mutant foetuses deserve A LITTLE respect. i feel it's also important to mention that Scorn never felt like it was trying to shock me with its content, everything felt like it had a place in this nightmarish, biomechanical hellscape. VIOLENT GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE can be difficult to manage without just feeling like a splatterfest, and although they have their place too Scorn does not feel like one of those. i feel that one of the primary themes present in Scorn is suffering, with the cruel and impersonal treatment of its...inhabitants(?) playing into this. It's the same sort of hyper-violence as Berserk, not exploitative but still horrifying.

Scorn's main fault is a lack of a solid identity, its part survival horror, part puzzle game, part walking simulator, part exploration game, part dating sim. One of these isn't true. It never feels like it particularly excels at any one aspect, and instead feels like its trying to appeal to as many audiences as possible when it probably should have focused on one or two. Survival horror fans are going to get tired of the long, action-less sequences while walking simmers are going to resent the gun-heavy portions of the game. i personally found the shooty bits to be quite dull, combat wasn't difficult enough to be engaging but not easy enough to feel good about. Your primary weapon is a close range boltgun, and by close range i mean basically melee. It's got a recharge time of around 4 seconds, which makes combat using it a sequence of hitting an enemy, then running and hiding while it recharges. Which gets old very quickly. The pistol and shotgun are satisfyingly well animated and fun to use, but ammo is scarce so this is a rare treat.

Scorn also has a problem with pacing, some sections really, REALLY drag. The worst offender is the third act, it's a dense maze with a bunch of puzzle elements you've got to find in a specific order. There are little to no landmarks to guide your way, leading to a LOT of backtracking. This is the only really bad offender, most other sections are fairly decent but this DRAGGED. i found myself wishing for ANYTHING to happen, not to break the tension just so i knew my game hadn't glitched out and a puzzle element hadn't spawned in or something. i don't like using walkthroughs, but i had to use one for Scorn several times because i simply could not be bothered to scan an entire level for the 5th time to proceed. It feels like i've been quite negative in this 'review', which is a shame because i don't really enjoy being negative. This is probably because i intentionally held out on talking about some of Scorn's best features, be on the lookout for a post about dungeons for Scorn's redemption arc. But i still give Scorn 10 foetus tanks out of 10 because numbered reviews aren't real. You get a prize if you can remember the only game i've given a non-10 score to.

Thanks for reading!