The Alien Landscape of Dreams: Scriptwelder's Deep/Deeper/Deepest Sleep

"It was all just a dream."

Raise your hand if that line, or a slight variation thereof, sends you into paroxysms of rage.  In modern media, this is one of those unforgivable clichés, a flimsy explanation for events told in a fictional narrative that has been so thoroughly trod over that it could be repurposed as a doormat.  There was time when it was charming, even fresh, but that time is roughly about the same period when Dorothy and Toto were traipsing around Oz.  So if you want to set your work in a dream, you'd better bloody well have a good reason, or at the very least be bringing something fresh to the table.

Scriptwelder, thankfully, does, in his series Deep/Deeper/Deepest Sleep.

Yes, the title(s) is a bit of a lead brick, but what sets this little series apart from other "dream exploration" horror games I've played is the upfront acknowledgement that you are dreaming.  More to the point, you are dreaming deliberately.  You play an unnamed person who is fascinated by the concept of lucid dreaming, and is convinced that tapping into this space of imagination and self-awareness holds some strange power and may, in fact, be interacting on some level with reality.

The games are all point and click adventure games, which hold a special fondness in my heart, and feature the same style of graphics as The Last Door, all pixelly goodness.  The main difference, however, is that the third-person perspective of that series is replaced here with a first-person view more akin to Uninvited.

Throughout the three games, you traverse a strange landscape mainly reminiscent of a hotel, with a few outdoor environments, uncovering clues about the land of lucid dreams and its fearful inhabitants, the Shadow People.  There's not very much story here, and it gets a bit confused in the third instalment with the introduction of a new antagonist, but what Deep/Deeper/Deepest Sleep does well is atmosphere.  Since you know this is all "just a dream," it helps explain a lot of the strange architecture, and it also gives you a sense of false safety.

There's an exceptionally well-done sequence at the beginning of the second game where you make a trip to a library to research other peoples' experiences with the dream world, only to find that you have fallen asleep at some point and are now trapped in the realm along with the dreaded Shadow People.  It's very subtle and the transition is well done.  I know I said earlier that saying "it was a dream all along" is terrible, but here, the assumption is that you've played the first game, understand that dreams are a key plot point, and the turn is not lazy writing, but skillful development.

The stakes, unfortunately, are not wholly clear until partway through the second game, but in the third game they are made especially real and terrifying.  That game kicks off with a great moment where you wake up, in bed, unable to move.  You gradually become aware of the silhouette of a figure looming at your feet, standing in grim silence as you struggle to make your limbs come to life.  Then, it lurches toward you, shrieking horribly.

The whole sequence, incidentally, bears an eerie resemblance to the tale of Everything is Scary's own Peter Counter...  Coincidence?  Maybe..

It's clear that, with Deep/Deeper/Deepest Sleep, Scriptwelder is creating work from a place of personal experience and love of a genre.  There are visual callouts to horror classics all over the place, mixed in with environments familiar and alien.  It's a short experience even spread out over three games, but it's a memorable one.  What at first seems like a retread of clichés is in fact a rewarding experience, and though dreams are well-explored territory, Scriptwelder proves they are worth going back to again and again.  For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come...

We Do It Because We Love It: An Intro to Scriptwelder

People always say that you should do what you love for a living.

I feel like there's some truth to the perception that my generation was raised on that old adage, spoon-fed the belief that anyone can and should be able to do anything.  The thing is, though, real is just more complicated than that.  Sometimes, we fail.  Sometimes, we don't get our dream job.  I think what we should learn, from the very moment we're old enough to have an idea of the things that make us happy, is that we should make time for the things we love, even if we don't get to do them all the time.

I love writing.  I really do.  I can honestly say that I've wanted to be a writer since I was in Elementary School.  I still have the hilariously bizarre comic strips that I made as part of a class project.  "DUCKMAN" my little hero was called (no relation, I promise, to the show starring Jason Alexander).  I made several Duckman books for class, with varying levels of poop and butt jokes in them.  They were a great source of amusement for me, my sister, and my friends (and still are, in some ways, to this very day).  It wasn't until I wrote the Grade 6 English provincial exam that I really knew why I loved writing so much.

The exam - which, if we're being honest, should only be loosely referred to as an exam - had only one question on it:  write a story based on the prompt as given.  In this case, it was a picture of a young woman, eyes wide with fright, and a couple accompanying lines about her being pursued by parties unknown.  From there, I took it in the direction of a young man uncovering a Scooby-Doo-esque situation with fantasy touches, with old man impersonating a mythical beast to drive villagers away from his ancestral lands (and he would've gotten away with it too, etc.).

Yeah, it was silly.  It was Grade 6.  Cut me some slack.  Thing is, though, my teacher liked it well enough that she read it to the class.  Much to my surprise, they liked it too.  I made something, and people felt happy after reading it and hearing it.  And that felt...good.

Since then, I've written blogs, plays, stories...and I've only been paid for it maybe 1% of the time.  I don't do this because I'm trying to be rich.  I do it because it makes me happy.

It is a feeling, I think it is fair to say, that is shared by Scriptwelder, maker of many Flash games, all free to play on sites like Newgrounds and Kongregate.  Scriptwelder is a Polish programmer who has been making games in his spare time for the past 5-6 years.

I'm going to be devoting my posts to Scriptwelder's games over the next two weeks, and I wanted to give you an intro that drove home the respect I have for this fellow and his abilities.  It's not merely that he makes things for free; it's that they are of a quality and depth that are always surprising and interesting.  They are not, by virtue of the interface, of great length or graphically stunning, but what I find time and time again is that they are full of heart.  It's obvious when you play one of Scriptwelder's games that it is a project made by someone who genuinely cares about what he does.  He isn't doing this for money, or fame.  He's doing it because every now and then he has a great idea for a video game, and he wants to share it with the internet.

One such game, which is perfectly apt for the remaining space in this post, is A Small Talk at the Back of Beyond.

In this game, you awaken in a strange place in pitch darkness.  Across the room, a green monitor draws your attention.  Text appears...someone is trying to communicate with you.  The game invites you to answer back.

From there, the game is essentially a text-based RPG, albeit one with a small graphic display.  You talk to the mysterious person on the other end of the line.  You question them about your surroundings.  You might play a game with them.  But ultimately, your path - driven by the natural curiosity of the human mind - will take you to a final, powerful choice.

A Small Talk at the Back of Beyond lives up to its name.  The entire game can be played in as little as two minutes.  In that time frame, it somehow manages to find time to be emotional resonant, driving down to one of life's most basic fears (which I will not reveal here for sake of spoiling the surprise).  It's not meant to be a widely distributed commercial project.  It's not something which I think anyone would ever charge money for.  It's a little snippet meant to provoke an emotional response from an audience.  And that's enough.

Next week I'll take a look at the first of Scriptwelder's trilogies:  Deep/Deeper/Deepest Sleep.

Otherworldly Pixel Worlds in THE LAST DOOR

With a lot of modern indie games, we tend to label the graphics-style as "retro."  Truthfully though, this is only slightly accurate; 16 or 8-bit video games did have the chunky pixels that we find in games like Superbrothers:  Sword and Sworcery or Cave Story, but they didn't have the smooth animation, the many shades of colour, the ability to pan over large areas spanning more than a couple of screens, and progressive lighting effects and shading.  There's a bit of an uncanny valley effect with retro games trying to emulate 16 or even 8-bit era graphics.  We know, on some level, that these indie games are in fact very new, and can differentiate them from the games of our childhood.

So if it's not a literal illusion, why the fondness for retro graphics at all?

In some cases, it's a throwback to the renowned difficulty of retro games, like in the case of I Wanna Be the Guy (which is jam-packed with nostalgia references).  In other cases, like in To The Moon, it's an attempt to conjure up the magic of old-school JRPGs (there's even an obvious shout-out to old Final Fantasy battles in that game).  But in some cases, it's obviously done as a stylistic choice, because there's just something about pixels that evokes the right emotion.  In Superbrothers, it's a dreamlike, charming, "fairy-tale" quality.  In The Last Door, it's an otherworldly, unknowable quality.

The Last Door is an episodic point-and-click adventure game, the sole release from indie developer and publisher The Game Kitchen.  A Kickstarter Project, The Last Door has been steadily released since 2013 and is currently into its second "season" of episodes.  For the first four-episode season, you are transported to the Victorian era to take on the role of Jeremiah Devitt, a graduate of a remote boarding school near Aberdeen, Scotland, who receives a letter from one of his old classmates imploring him for unspecified assistance.  Journeying to his friend's manor, Devitt is forced to confront the dark secrets of his past, uncovering a secret cult, a series of brutal murders and deaths, and, most hauntingly...the possibility of another world that lies hidden beyond our own.

The plot from there is very heavily inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft (happy birthday you brilliant, crazy, fish-mongering creator of nightmares) and Edgar Allen Poe.  It largely revolves around a student society that was founded by Devitt and and his classmates in their boarding school, and their attempts to communicate with a world "beyond the veil."  Which naturally leads to all kinds of delightful insanity, themed around the game creators' unique take on a Great Old One that takes the shape of a bird-like monstrosity.

The gameplay of The Last Door is itself a throwback, going back to the old point-and-click adventure game style popularized by Lucasarts Studios.  You collect inventory items, solve puzzles, and occasionally converse with the loopy inhabitants of this increasingly mad, mad world.  A mad world of 16-bit blocky pixels.

It probably seems unlikely that a game that has you controlling a faceless stick figure could be scary.  But it is, for a number of reasons. 

The Last Door is tremendously well-written and paced, though some players might find the information a bit scanty and the ending to each episode (and the first season as a whole) too much of a cliffhanger.  For my part, I was wholly engaged, and the backstories of each character had obviously been planned out well in advance, as the developing narrative of the episodes demonstrates.

The sound design is superbly done.  The floor creaks and groans inside the buildings you explore, while your footsteps echo on the cobblestones in the streets of London.  In between, ambient sounds fill the void:  dripping drains, howling beasts, the incessant scratching of a quill pen on paper just to name a few.

And the MUSIC.  Carlos Viola's work, though fairly simplistic, is evocative not only of the atmosphere but also of the time period, immediately transporting the player back to the Victorian era with some great string progressions.  The main theme song, in particular, is memorable and eerie, and perfectly compliments the title sequence of Crows Over London.

But really, what scares me about this game is the graphic choice.  Maybe "scares" isn't actually the right word though.  There are, to be sure, some genuinely freaky jump-scares in The Last Door, which I won't spoil here, but what it accomplishes very well is a general sense of unease.  This suits the Lovecraftian style very well.  What makes Lovecraft Lovecraft is the impression that what we see as our world is merely the top layer of a whole cake of creepy-crawlies that make our skin crawl at the very sight of them.  It's why insanity is such a frequently recurring motif in Lovecraftian works.  Our minds literally can't wrap themselves around the alien nature of the world beyond, and the mighty beings that dominate it.  With The Last Door, the pixelated graphic style compliments this quite well.  There's just something naturally...off about everything.  It's familiar, inasmuch as we as gamers have played games like this before, but it's also wrong, in the uncanny valley way that I described before.

There is a quiet, soothing fondness in the gamer culture for those old video games.  We could wrap ourselves up in them like a blanket, knowing that they'd hit the old beats and strike the same notes we were always used to.  Mario would save the princess.  Megaman would catch Dr. Wiley.  Simon Belmont would slay Dracula.

The Last Door is a creepy, wonderful twist on that comfort blanket.  It is playing it's own nostalgia:  a fondness for Lovecraft and Poe and terror and nightmares.  And it does it really, really well.

As the game rounds out its second season, I invite you to take a peek behind the door as well, and see what lies beyond.

The Unimaginable Cruelty of Children in LIMBO

When I was growing up, one of my best friends was a kid who listened to Heavy Metal music, casually studied (and may have practiced) cyber hacking, and owned and built his own weapons, including (but not limited to) a pellet gun, a telescopic baton, and a slingshot.  None of this made him a bad kid.  On the contrary, he was one of the best sons and brothers a family could have:  loyal and obedient to his parents, a decent enough student, and a great friend.  He just happened to be interested in things that could be used, in the wrong hands, to kill or maim.

I remember though, that there was a seminal moment when he vowed to be non-violent his whole life.  I wasn't around when it happened, but he told me of a time when a family of skunks took up residence in his parents' backyard.  Naturally, they wanted the pests gone, and my friend took it upon himself to take out his slingshot to deal with the problem.  He killed the mother of the family with a well-placed stone.

Pip R. Lagenta via Compfight cc

Here you go.  A picture to drive home the horror.

Afterwards, he told me he had never felt more guilt and heartbreak in his life.  The thought of taking one creature's life was bad enough, but having robbed the skunks of their provider and caregiver, the pups were also doomed to die.  This was to say nothing of the trauma of watching the mother die before his very eyes.

Now, some people would say that the skunks were pests, and they wouldn't be wrong for saying so.  We kill animals all the time.  For food.  For clothing.  Even just because they annoy us.  But imagine, if you will, being a child in your pre-teen years, and coming to grips with mortality in such a sudden, brutal way.

My former friend was a great kid.   But I have no doubt he weirded out a lot of the other kids.  That was because they didn't know him like I did.  All they saw was the slingshot and the baton, and they heard the metal music, and they kept their distance.  The thing is, I get it.  Because until kids are actually able to understand the hurt and pain a human being can cause, they are terrifying.

I was reminded of this as I re-played LIMBO.

LIMBO is a side-scrolling platform game where you play a child navigating a stark, black-and-white landscape filled with surreal imagery, deadly traps, and monstrous creatures.  Your only clue to the plot is the game title, which would suggest that the place you find yourself in is some level/version of the afterlife.  As to what/who you are seeking, you only find out at the end...and really, the ending is so ambiguous that I couldn't tell you for sure what happened anyway.

Like so many other games, though, it's much less about the ending than it is about the journey, and LIMBO's journey is filled with unforgettable, horrifying moments, many of which are punctuated by the other human inhabitants you meet.  And all of those fellow humans are children as well.

None of these other children want to be your friend.  At best, you find them in the process of committing suicide, or already long-dead (the question of what happens when you die in the afterlife is not one you want to dwell on).  At worst, they attack you on sight, either by manipulating the booby traps found throughout this strange world, or with crude blowpipes they have fashioned themselves.

What makes this truly unsettling though, is that they do all of this in an entirely childlike way.  Though there is malice in their actions, you can see that to them, it is all merely a game.  The children adorn their heads with feathers and crude bucket helmets.  They flee into clubhouses, pulling up their rope ladders behind them.  They are, for all intents and purposes, children.

Indeed for all we know their acts of murder ARE totally harmless; your own deaths (which will probably be very frequent on your first playthrough) are but the consequence of a moment.  You regenerate an instant later from the closest checkpoint.  Perhaps they, too, regenerate.  This creates an interesting, if somewhat unsettling, idea.

The thing about morality, and finding one's own place in it, is that it relies very heavily on social development.  When someone does not function properly with other people, or disregards their emotions and needs to the point of appearing to not have a conscience, we call that person a sociopath.  Now, obviously, this is an extreme designation reserved for people who actively have an actual personality disorder, but it also relies heavily on the frame of reference of normal societal structure.

What happens if we take the structure away altogether?

This is what makes the children in LIMBO so terrifying.  Their cruelty is unimaginable because they literally cannot imagine anything past it.  If we were in some terrible world where our lives repeated within the same age, over and over again, with no chance of developing a conscience, what kind of children would we be?

My friend didn't scare me because I knew he had imagination.  He understood that actions have consequence, and he came to develop his own moral framework.  But if we strip away those moments of understanding, we are left only with madness, trapped in a limbo of unimaginable cruelty.

Stayin' Alive, Stayin' Alive - The Horrifying Nihilism of Don't Starve

The other day, a friend asked me to explain what exactly Don't Starve is to him.  "Well," I said uncertainly, "it's a roguelike.  You play a character in a strange little world, and there's crafting, and a tech tree, and monsters and things.  It's a bit like Minecraft, I suppose."

"But what's the point?"

What indeed?  After a long, thoughtful pause, I said "To not starve."

Don't Starve is described by its creators, Klei Entertainment, as "an uncompromising wilderness survival game full of science and magic."  Which, admittedly, doesn't say much more than what I outlined to my friend.  Really though, as games go, this one is both deceptively simple and surprisingly complex.  Simple, insofar as the objective is the title:  Don't Starve.  Complex, insofar as your character is plopped into an environment that they know nothing about and must learn to adapt to if they are to continue not starving.

In terms of instruction, in the single-player Sandbox mode (yes, there is a "campaign" of sorts; one which you will horribly fail at if you have not familiarized yourself with the game through multiple Sandbox games) your character is visited by a strange spectre of a man who calls himself Maxwell (though again, this information is only revealed through completion of the campaign mode).  Maxwell says to the player "Hey pal, you don't look so good.  You'd better find something to eat before night comes!"

And poof, he's gone.  From there, you have freedom of movement to explore the island you now find yourself on.  Your mouse is your guide, and hovering over objects tells you what action you will perform when you click on them.  You can see trees.  You can examine the trees.  You can see saplings.  You can pick the saplings.  You find flint.  You can pick up the flint.  What was that dinging noise?  Oh, a button on the left sidebar has become illuminated!  I can make the flint and the sapling twigs into a crude axe.  Hmm, that warning about the darkness coming seemed important.  Maybe I'll chop down some trees...

And so it goes.  Common sense will dictate a lot of where you go from there, but common sense is apt to go right out the door when you start to enter the Lovecraftian nightmare that seems to haunt the island at every turn.  Yep, turns out this game, like so many others, implements a sanity meter, and it's not just for show.  This island has problems, and the giant spiders are just the beginning.

If I were to look at this as a normal video game, I'd call the next step you take "progress" but that would imply a goal beyond that of not dying.  In truth, the only goals in this game besides basic survival are those that you set for yourself.  As such, only those players who choose to do so will discover a plugged sinkhole, and descend first to the Caves, and then to the Ancient Ruins.

I had mentioned the sanity meter before.  A further word on this before I explain the ruins is necessary.

Above and below ground, as your sanity steadily decreases, bad things will happen.  Sometimes they're harmless:  weird noises, blurry vision, and of course the inevitable nightmare visions of otherworldly beasts.  However, at a certain breaking point...the visions become all-too-solid.

In the Ruins, no matter your sanity, at certain hours, when the statues weep blood and the runes glow bright red...the nightmare monsters are omnipresent.

Why, oh why, would you ever choose to come down here?  Well, aside from housing the latest rejects from the Amnesia universe, the Ruins is also where you can discover the rarest and most valuable crafting items in the game.  With which you can build...!...more stuff that will keep you alive just a little longer in the overworld.

Huh.

It's somewhere around this point that you'll realize you're trapped in a lesson on existentialism, or maybe nihilism, depending on how you interpret Don't Starve.  There certainly is merit in either argument.  You either make your own fun in Don't Starve, and have a great time building absurd things and killing monsters and nomming down on delicious food, or you become numb to the experience, watching your character bounce about the environment like a wee little puppet on a string (there is no way this animation cycle was unintentional), and you realize that everything you are doing is meaningless and your last act in this universe will be to die spectacularly as your equally meaningless possessions explode out of you like nihilism confetti.

I think this is the real horror of Don't Starve.  Forget that exploration is rewarded all too often with hellbeasts, the true nightmare is coming to terms with a shallow existence.  Some people may take pleasure in the magical trinkets that can be uncovered, and some may simply stare at it and go "that's it?"

So what if existence were to boil down to animal instinct?  What if the perfect nihilist was plopped down into a solitary existence with no goals, no religion, no friends, no family?  What would they be left with?

Two words:  Don't Starve.

A Knife on the Playground: XCOM: Enemy Within

"Those who play with the devil's toys

will be brought by degrees

to wield his sword."

- R. Buckminster Fuller

Last week, I talked about how XCOM thematically and narratively justifies its renowned difficulty curve with a strong emphasis on combating an alien (in every sense of the term) enemy.  You do this primarily through researching and developing the technology that you recover from your various battles.  After all, what better way to conquer an unknown enemy than by coming to understand them?  Their strengths become your assets, their weaknesses your ammunition.  It is a foolproof plan.  Right?  You might think so, until you add-on XCOM:  Enemy Within, the expansion pack for XCOM:  Enemy Unknown.

Having conquered the Enemy Unknown, it only seems appropriate that XCOM would move on to tackle the Enemy Within.  But just what is the Enemy Within?  Infiltrators?  Bacteria?  Republicans?  No, in this case the enemy within emerges in the shape of another human organization that has been doing almost exactly what you have:  plundering the secrets of the alien invaders' technology, and turning it to their own purpose.  Unfortunately for you, that purpose is less about combating the menace from outer space, and more about taking over the world.

Aside from introducing this new threat, nicknamed EXALT, XCOM:  Enemy Within also expands the game's features to include new troop types, new special abilities, new armaments, and new missions.  The vast majority of these features are all tied to a new resource:  "meld."  Like most of the items you obtain in-game, meld is a limited quantity item that you obtain from fighting the aliens.  The major difference is that, unlike the weapon fragments or alloys you scrounge from downed spacecraft or broken guns, meld is a substance that interacts with your soldiers on the molecular level.  The usage of meld is divided into two broad categories along your two primary advisors:  Doctor Vahlen proposes altering the genetic code of your soldiers, while Doctor Shen suggests creating mechanized soldiers that can use meld to control massive combat suits.

The beauty of this addition to the gameplay is once again echoed in XCOM's narrative.  Aside from EXALT's own corrupt use of the alien technology, you get the distinct impression that you and your comrades are treading a very fine ethical line when you make use of meld.  Doctor Shen cheerfully acknowledges that in order to make his MEC project viable, a soldier will first have to have all of their limbs amputated.  Doctor Vahlen, meanwhile, sees no serious harm in giving soldiers genetic modifications that cause their skin to become electrified, or to emit pheromones that cause those around them to go into a berserk combat rage.  It's all in the best interests of humanity...right?

Even without the expansion of Enemy Within, it is often hinted at that the XCOM project is sinister and in danger of being a corrupting influence on the direction of humanity.  Your scientists dissect and torture the invaders without a second thought.  Following one interrogation, Doctor Vahlen casually mentions how the alien expired before they could even establish an actual line of communication.  Maybe it's only fair; the aliens after all have mercilessly attacked civilian populations with complete indifference to men, women and children.  How far would humanity go to protect its own survival?

When we look back on human history, we can see the awesome change that technology has wrought on our lives.  The benefits are undeniable:  we now live longer lives, have better understanding of the world around us, and can travel vast distances in a fraction of the time it took our ancestors to migrate across the landbridge from Asia to North America.  Yet we can also see the pitfalls of unrestrained knowledge:  the atomic bomb, weaponized anthrax, even the possibility of space-based weaponry.  Each discovery that takes us up the ladder of human evolution can be put to great good, and great evil.  That is the warning presented by EXALT in XCOM:  Enemy Within.  In every sense, their organization mirrors yours, to the point that when you finally assault their headquarters Doctor Shen remarks that they even managed to mimic your global hologram display to a T.

It was probably tempting for the writers at Firaxis to use the classic Nietszche quote referring to the Abyss, but ultimately this one from R. Buckminster Fuller is much more apt.  Scientific discovery is wondrous, and in the context of a video game, fun.  The new "toys" you get to better dispatch your enemies are put to amazing destructive purpose, and there's no denying that Enemy Within makes a fun game even more fun.

But the warning is clear:  temper your sense of curiosity with a sense of respect, lest your toy become a sword.

Difficulty and Narrative: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Pt. 1 of 2)

"Two possibilities exist:

Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not.

Both are equally terrifying."

-  Arthur C. Clarke

This is the quote that opens XCOM:  Enemy Unknown, the sequel/remake to the classic sci-fi strategy game XCOM:  UFO Defense.  In every sense, 2013's Enemy Unknown is a cathartic piece of work, even bearing the non-North American title of the original game.  Aimed at healing the wounds of failed remakes, troubled development stories and outright cancellations, and bizarre forays into other genres (first and third-person shooters, flight simulators), this was the game fans of the original XCOM had been waiting for:  more of the same, but with fresh graphics and sound.

Yes, this was the game that finally kept the awesome combination of Sim City-like base management mixed with individual squad-based tactics that have never really been replicated before or since.  Above all else, though, it kept one of the most vital aspects that endeared XCOM to the hearts of PC gamers everywhere:  insane difficulty.

I'm not sure what it is exactly about classic PC games and difficulty curves, but the two always seem to go hand in hand, such that the "Hard" mode of Firaxis' 2013 game is nicknamed "Classic" in recognition of the 1994 original's teeth-grinding frustration.  At first blush, if a game is too difficult, it seems like it won't be enjoyable.  In some cases, this is definitely true.  The key is in design; if a game is difficult because the designers apply a steady curve of aggression, and the player has a chance to become accustomed to that curve, it feels like we can conquer that hump with practice and perfection.  If the difficulty is a direct flaw of gameplay design (like, for instance, the execrable Superman on Nintendo 64), or simply starts hard and remains hard (or follows a bizarre pattern of easy-hard-moderate-hard-easy-hard etc.), then it's just frustrating.

With XCOM, though, I feel that the key to enjoying the difficulty lies in the narrative.  The story behind XCOM is simple:  you are in charge of the XCOM organization, a shadowy international body that protects Earth from threats that are beyond the scope of any one nation.  In other words, you are E.T.'s worst nightmare.  Formed in the wake of rumours of alien abductions, bizarre terrorist attacks, and strange sightings in the night sky, you represent humanity's last, best hope of survival.

And you all have terrible, terrible haircuts.

The challenge, of course, is that though you have fairly massive funding (in the original game, your budget starts out around $6 million/month), and the best technology humanity currently has to offer...that budget and that technology pales in comparison to that of the alien race(s) hell-bent on conquering you.  XCOM understands that in the incredibly unlikely scenario of an alien invasion from outer space, any race attempting this course of action would not only be decades ahead of us in technology, they would also have access to a massive amount of resources in order to traverse interstellar distances, arm and equip an invasion force, etc.  Think of it this way:  when the Nazis invaded Russia, they did so with 3.8 million troops, armed to the teeth, and that was just for one country.  Imagine the scale of resources necessary to invade an entire planet.

Essentially, from the get-go you are completely, hilariously outgunned and outmatched, and the entire game is a rush to catch-up to a force that continuously changes its tactics, troops, and methods.  This is the other way that narrative drives difficulty in XCOM.  When you do confront the aliens face-to-face on the ground (and that's when you either catch them in the act of killing civilians, or if you're extremely lucky and shoot a UFO down), you have essentially no knowledge of their capabilities, appearance, weapons, anything.  They are a wholly unknown enemy.

It all goes back to the quote from sci-fi legend Arthur C. Clarke.  Recently, the human race was thrilled to finally have some clear pictures of one of our most distant solar neighbours:  Pluto.  When you consider that we have only just begun to thoroughly understand our own solar system, and weigh that against the infinity of possibility that lies behind each star that makes up our galaxy, and then expand that even further against the ocean of galaxies that make up the universe...is it any wonder that we might be a bit terrified?

Despite this, however, there is a sliver of hope at the heart of XCOM.  Given time and research, you can gradually plunder the aliens' technology, adapt it, and turn it against them.  It's a delicate balancing act of acquiring resources, protecting the various funding nations, and keeping your own soldiers alive, but with skill and patience it can be done.

I find it actually kind of poetic, in a strange way, that the solution, as always, is to learn more.  The more you come to understand your enemies, the less unknown they are, and the more easy they are to defeat.

The unknown can be terrifying.  Therefore knowledge can be comforting.

Usually...

(stay tuned for XCOM:  Enemy Within...)

The Sights and Sounds of Routine in One Late Night

There is comfort in routine.  Much as we may complain about the doldrums of daily life, be it in caring for our homes, our families, or our jobs, we also derive a sense of security in knowing that no matter what may happen, we will repeat the same steps day after day.  So when the routine is disrupted, when we are taken out of our comfort zones, we inevitably experience a negative reaction.  The extent of that reaction naturally varies from person to person by scale of the level of disruption and the level to which we hold to that routine.  It might make us angry.  It might make us sad.  But it is always traceable to fear.

The reason we fine comfort in the routine is because it brings certainty.  At our most basic level, human survival is paramount, and certainty indicates that we are assured of that continued survival.  Our homes will remain our homes, where we can sleep and eat.  Our families will remain our families, a source of comfort and love.  And our jobs will remain our jobs, where we earn our living to ensure our living.

It is that very basic idea that is at the core of the indie horror game One Late NIght.

One Late Night is a "short immersive horror-game experience" made by Black Curtain Studio as Freeware in 2013.  It's a very simple story:  you are working one late night, alone in your office.  And it turns out your office is haunted.

That's it.  Your goal in this game is merely to leave the office without being killed by a spectre referred to by a deceased co-worker, Robert, as "The Black Widow."  It's simplicity itself.  The gameplay, graphics, and sound are all simplistic too, as one should expect from a free indie game, but that's not really what I enjoy about One Late Night.

What I really like about it is that this is a situation I have been in before.  No, not the ghost part, I mean the office part.  I've worked in a number of offices in my time, and I have often been in a situation where I was working late, alone.  It's evident that the makers of the game have been there, too.  They know the sounds of the office late at night:  the whirs and clicks of the fax machines and printers, the hum of your computer, the gurgling from the coffeemaker as you struggle to stay awake long enough to get that badly-needed project emailed to your boss.  During the day, these sounds are masked by the people around you.  Even if they're not talking, their mere presence is sufficient to distract from the omnipresent buzz that comes from office life.

Alone, at night, the sounds turn oppressive.  

If ever you are in a situation where you are working alone at night, I want you to try something for me.  Turn everything off (or as much as can be allowed without causing you to be fired when you accidentally wipe the company server).  Lights, computers, printers, everything.  You will be amazed at the silence.  Now consider how you live with that noise every day.

What makes sound so important is that we absorb a lot of it on a subconscious level.  It's why it's tied so strongly to the sense of routine.  Sometimes, when I've gone on vacation to a quiet place, like a beach, or a camping trip, I've been struck by how the silence is simultaneously a source of relaxation and a source for stress.

With One Late Night, it's taking those familiar noises and sights and turning them into another context.  You know you're playing a horror game.  You know something bad is going to happen.  You're just waiting for the other shoe to drop.  And in the meantime, the office hums around you, as if to say "but it's just another ordinary night, isn't it?"

No.  No, it really isn't.

Turn and Face the Strange: Gone Home

Now that I've basically caught up to the present day (or close enough) with my review of Amnesia:  A Machine for Pigs (2013), I'm going to be breaking away from my more historical approach to video games and focussing instead on more personal aspects; those things that have stuck with me, resonated with me, or reminded me of my own experiences.  One such game being 2013's Gone Home.

If you've already played Gone Home, it probably seems like a strange choice of game for a scary game.  After all, the supernatural elements in it are rather limited.  There's only one ghost, and he might not even exist (he certainly doesn't make any kind physical appearance in the game).  That's not really what the game is about, though.

So what is Gone Home about, then?  Well, purely from a literal perspective, it's about a 21 year-old high school grad coming home from a backpacking tour of Europe to find her house strangely empty, and piecing together what happened in her absence.  From a metaphorical perspective, it's about change.

Change is scary.

Any change, really.  It could be very small, like a new hairstyle or a pair of shoes.  It could also be very big, like losing a close friend, or moving to a new city.  The scale of the change itself isn't the defining factor in the level of fear, though.  It's in the scale of what that change meant to you as a person.

What originally attracted me to Gone Home was its setting:  your home.  That is, your house in Arbor Hill, Oregon, in the role of the protagonist, Kaitlyn Greenbriar.  That the player is immediately able to tell something is wrong from the very beginning of Gone Home is partly, I think, a testament to the writing, but also a testament to our expectations of what a home is.  Home is a word that implies much more than a house.  It implies comfort.  Safety.  Warmth.

Stability.

Now upend that home.  Take every assumption you had about what you left behind, and shake it up.  Pack up your memories and belongings into boxes, and leave cryptic notes telling you not to seek out answers.  What is home now?

Confronted with this foreign landscape, you have no choice but to explore.  Your path is guided by clues in the form of recorded messages, documents, photographs, and other bits and bobs.  Most interestingly, you uncover not only letters to and from various members of your family, but also the postcards you yourself sent back to them.  These are perhaps among the most poignant pieces, yet subtly so.  These communicate, time and time again, what you remember leaving behind, and contrast it with what you've returned to find.

That personal dissonance extends to every aspect of the game.  Highlighting over certain objects occasionally gives you a text description that shows Kaitlyn's own connection to that object:  "One of the postcards I sent!" or simply, "Jeez, Sam."  It even extends to the map of the house that you can consult:  room's are labelled as Kaitlyn labels them:  "Sam's Room," "Mom and Dad's Room."  There is Kaitlyn's association with what she remembers, and there is the new context that the space has taken on. 

This is the effect that change has, and this is why we fear it.

Yet, the more you dig, the more you find out, the more you strive to find the familiar...you discover that everything has fallen into a new order.  You learn that the instigator of all this disruption - your sister, Sam - was left in a situation where the alternative to change was to stagnate, and ultimately to dwindle away in misery.  She chose instead to face her fear, step through it, and make a change. 

Fear of change, like any other fear, can paralyze.  We don't know what the change might do to us.  It's that unknown, that unfamiliarity, that drives us to just keep the status quo, but change has a way of finding us whether we want it to or not.  At one point or another, cliché as it is, we all must change.  Whether or not we are bold enough to conquer our fear is up to each of us individually.

And with luck, and a little bit of light to guide the way, we can all find our way home.

Remember to Forget: Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

Given how much I gushed about Amnesia:  The Dark Descent in my post from last week, you can imagine my excitement when I heard that Frictional Games was planning a sequel.  For me and other fans of Amnesia's pants-crappingly scary style, the buildup to Amnesia:  A Machine for Pigs was huge.   Really, if you're a fan of anything and you hear there's a sequel being made, you want one thing and one thing only:  the exact same thing as before, only with updated and/or new visuals.  Seriously.  Think about any franchise announcement you've heard in recent memory.  Mad Max:  Fury Road.  Jurassic World.  What made you excited about these things?  Was it...the chance for Max to get in touch with his emotions and start a family in a nice, never-moving community?  Was it...the chance to finally see Alan Grant teaching at a university?  NO.  We wanted to see cars exploding in a never-ending chase scene and dinosaurs noshing on people, preferably after some ill-advised "science meddling."

So when they started putting out screenshots and trailers for Amnesia AMFP, everything looked great.  They still had the first person perspective.  They still had the ubiquitous lantern.  They still had the same terrifying sound design, the same shocks and gasps from the player character.  And they'd clearly taken it up a notch in the graphics department.  Early screenshots showed some very detailed, high-definition environments, in a new and exciting setting.  The marketing for this was almost too clever for its own good.  Early on, it became apparent to Frictional that they just didn't have the development time to devote to an Amnesia sequel, so they turned to a partner.  The reveal for this came in the form of a hyperlink on the Frictional website that took the visitor to a Google Maps location in China.  Further Maps hints told us that the new developer would be The Chinese Room.

I'd heard very little about these folks.  I knew of them because of Dear Esther, a "game" that I deliberately refer to in air quotes because it is much less a game and much more a strange interactive story.  I won't get too much into it because, well, I haven't played it, but my understanding is that Dear Esther consists entirely of an uninhabited world that you wander around while listening to letters.  OK.

You can see how I started to get a little concerned.

That said, upon sober reflection that is essentially what you're doing in Amnesia: The Dark Descent.  With the added complication that it's mostly pitch black and monsters are trying to eat your face while you slowly mouth out the words on paper.  And you know what?  That's pretty much what we got with Amnesia:  A Machine for Pigs.

And Now, the Game

Like it's predecessor, Amnesia AMFP puts you in the role of - you guessed it - a man with amnesia.  Although this time around, the "amnesia" is less a case of memory loss and more a state of delusion and psychosis.  Though I'm getting ahead of myself.

You are Oswald Mandus, a wealthy industrialist in London at the dawn of the 20th century.  You awaken in your bed from a nightmare in which you saw a huge machine rumbling to life.  Your first thoughts immediately turn to the whereabouts of your children, twin boys named Edwin and Enoch.  Setting off to find them, you discover your mansion empty, and hear the same rumblings beneath your feet that you heard in your nightmare (which may not have been a nightmare at all).

The story unfolds in a few lateral ways.  First, there are the letters and documents you find scattered about, which tell of Mandus' journey to an Aztec temple, his return, and his subsequent construction of a new factory and business.  Second, there are a number of phonographs, which contain recordings of an interview between Mandus and "Professor A," a man sent by an organization to determine Mandus' mental well-being.  Finally, you are also contacted in real-time by a mysterious stranger via several phone-boxes that are installed throughout Mandus' factory and facilities.  This stranger advises you that your missing children are trapped far below in the factory, and will drown in floodwaters that have been released by an unknown saboteur.

As you may have already guessed, there is much more at work here than meets the eye, and the titular Machine for Pigs' origin and purpose are inextricably tied to Mandus' own mental problems and mysteries.  Most of the puzzles of the game come from repairing the damage done by the saboteur to the machine, which involves a lot of pulling switches and spinning wheels to activate a colorful variety of steam-driven technology.

The puzzles (such as they are) are much more simplistic than The Dark Descent because you no longer have an inventory.  Indeed, you no longer have a status screen, since A Machine for Pigs also takes away Flints, Oil, and Sanity (Health remains, though it regenerates automatically over time and thus a health bar is not shown or needed).  The lantern you receive is electric, and never needs refilling.  Light sources in the environment are now permanently lit or are lamps that can be turned on or off with a click.

OK, but is it Scary?

The removal of a lot of the mechanics of The Dark Descent definitely does hurt A Machine for Pigs in the scare department.  With TDD, remaining in the dark had some serious penalties.  You treasured the light, and at the same time had to strike a balance with it to avoid being killed by the monsters.  Here, you can simply plunge yourself into permanent darkness, or, if you're feeling bold, keep your light on all the time knowing that it will never run out.

The environment is absolutely stunning, answering my complaint about TDD's static level design.  Here, you have a richly decorated mansion, a creepy church basement, a variety of brass and copper in the factory, and a grimy sewer.  There's even a few outdoor segments, which admittedly do have the usual problems of outdoor areas in any 3D game (especially poorly defined boundaries that are usually forced by unrealistic scenery placement such as overturned carts).

And, though the sanity meter's loss is keenly felt, this game still manages to be very, very scary.  As with TDD, there's a real sense of dread and despair throughout this game, punctuated by the jolts and bumps of the machine groaning like a sleeping Old One underground.  There's also a fantastic musical score in this game that effectively enhances moments of suspense - and also moments of surprising emotion.

Where AMFP excels is in the story department.  Every piece of dialogue and written record in this game is a work of poetry, with evocative language that communicates the time period and sentiments of the age wonderfully.  It can, at times, be a bit ham-fisted (pun most definitely intended), with so many pig metaphors thrown in that you'll be ruminating on the origins of bacon for weeks after your first play through.

There's also a lot of sexual imagery and religious undertones thrown into the mix, the intent of which seems to be to disturb more than to frighten outright.  Indeed, this game, while containing a number of "NOPE NOPE NOPE" moments, strives to leave a lasting impression of unease more than a sense of outright terror.

The final sequence, in particular, is an impressive monologue that brings into question the very nature of human progress.  The game's obsession with machinery echoes Mandus', demanding an answer to the cost of the industrial revolution.  The recurring theme of children and birth is obviously tied to this; so much of the Victorian British empire - and many others before and since - was created on the backs of child labour.

Mandus teeters on the brink of sanity with the aid of a selective memory, or a selective Amnesia.  Perhaps society at large has a selective memory as well.  When we think about how far we've come, we feel a sense of pride.  But A Machine for Pigs reminds us that we may have forgotten a sense of horror.

Breathing New Life into Death: Amnesia: The Dark Descent

When I was first talking to Less and Peter about how I wanted to write about Horror in video games, I deliberately planned out my approach as a timeline, because I wanted to try to plot a trajectory of how I think the genre has progressed.  The most difficult part of doing things that way, however, was arriving at the period roughly encompassing the mid-late 2000s.

In private conversation with them, I confessed:  "I'm trying to figure out a way to talk about the latter 2000's without simply saying "everything sucked."  Will come back to it."

Having come back to it now, I'm not sure I can think of a better way to summarize my feelings.

Somehow, not longer after the turn of the millenium, the genre seemed to slide into dull repetitiveness.  I've talked a little bit about this already in my review of Eternal Darkness:  Sanity's Requiem, and how big franchises seemed to take over the mainstream gaming scene.  But more than that, gameplay-wise, the shooter took over as the new face of horror.

If you've followed my reviews, you'll notice a conspicuous absence of shooters (with one or two exceptions).  Why?  Because in my opinion, shooters are not very good horror.  Shooters distance you  from the horror, literally and figuratively.  Literally because popping enemies from a distance with large-calibre weaponry smacks of safety.  Figuratively because by virtue of the interface, you are making your player aware of the mortality of the horror around him.

Horror is at its most successful and frightening when not everything is explainable or quantifiable.  It's fear of the unknown that drives all our other basic fears.  The phobias we experience in daily life (arachnophobia, claustrophobia, even dare I say homophobia) all derive from a confusion or ignorance of our surroundings.  Faced with a void we do not comprehend, we fill that void with our invented nightmares:  spiders will poison us while we sleep, small spaces will suffocate us, the gays will destroy the fabric of our society.

The majority of "horror" games of the 2000s failed to understand us.  They solidified the fear by letting us shoot at it.  And so they lost touch with their scary side.

Luckily, while pretenders to terror like Dead Space or The Darkness or Manhunt were revelling in their ability to showcase all new ways of destroying a human body (none of which elicited much of a response me aside from a dull yawn), there were studios quietly working in the background, trying to capture just an ounce of the magic of the classics.

One such studio was Frictional Games.

By now, you'll almost definitely have heard of these folks.  Their first title, Penumbra:  Overture, came out in 2007, and was a modest venture for a company getting its feet wet.  A sci-fi horror with isolation and paranoia elements reminiscent of The Thing (the movie, not the execrable video game), Penumbra also featured its own take on combat:  a strange, click-and-drag system that required players to manually swing equipped weapons.  It did not work well.

Aside from this setback, however, the game was reasonably well-received and fairly well-distributed via the Humble Indie Bundle.  The results encouraged Frictional, and they released two followup expansions:  Black Plague and Requiem.  Black Plague, the first expansion, reduced combat significantly, to the point where it was almost extraneous as a game mechanic.  It was also more well received.  They were on to something here...

Two years later, Frictional Games released Amnesia:  The Dark Descent.  And the internet hasn't been the same since.

And Now, the Game

Amnesia:  The Dark Descent is a first person puzzle/adventure game that takes place in the mid 19th century, in a Prussian castle.  You are Daniel, but aside from that the plot is unknown to you because, as you may have deduced, you have amnesia.  You awaken in the upper floors of the aforementioned castle, a trail of blood your only clue to how you got there.  As you traverse the empty hallways, you find a note, supposedly from yourself, telling you to kill the master of the castle, Alexander.  How and why you must do this is pieced together by recovery of further notes, including pages from a diary you kept of your experiences on an archaeological dig in North Africa.

The puzzles of the game crop up as you try to work your way down to the Inner Sanctum of the castle, where Alexander resides.  The castle is in massive disrepair, and several areas are caved-in, flooded, or blocked by various devices and traps that Alexander installed to keep his secrets safe.

In order to overcome these obstacles, you either make use of the environment around you in first-person perspective - pulling switches, moving rocks, etc. - or you recover inventory items that allow you to remove / alter the obstacle blocking your way.  As such, like all adventure games, it implements an inventory screen, which is where you may also view your collected notes, journal pages, and mementos (or objectives).  It is also where you may view your current state physical and mental health.

Yes, Amnesia sees the return of the sanity meter, a mechanic that I enthused about when it appeared in Eternal Darkness and will gladly enthuse about here.  Like Eternal Darkness, the effects of low sanity in Amnesia are felt in the of strange sounds and sights.  The first and most obvious difference between these two games, however, is that Amnesia is first-person.  Secondly, however, is the manner in which sanity decreases.  In Eternal Darkness, each monster you fight has a fixed value that it reduces from your sanity when you first start fighting it.  You can regain that sanity by beating the shit out of the monster while it lies on the ground writhing.  In Amnesia, your sanity is falling any time you are in the dark, and any time you even LOOK at a monster.  And with a subtitle like The Dark Descent, you can bet you're in the dark a great deal.

When your sanity gets REALLY low, you'll get chills.  They'll be multiplyin'.

Which leads me to my final point about gameplay in Amnesia, before I move on to the nitty-gritty of my personal opinions.  Survival.  It seems like any time a game is "horror" these days, critics and gamers alike feel the need to slap the label "survival" on it as well, as though the two are inseparable.  Well, it's hokum.  Sure, there may be limited ammunition or machetes in a game like Dead Island, but you know, I know, we all know that they parcel it out enough that you really don't ever feel pressured by the constraints of resources.

In Amnesia, you are limited in two BIG ways.  

First, in lighting.  As I mentioned, your sanity dwindles in darkness, and as such you are encouraged to stay in lit areas.  This is done either by use of a portable lantern with a (very) limited supply of oil, which can be turned on or off at will, or by use of tinderboxes, which are used on fixed pieces of the environment such as candles and torches.  

Second, you are completely, utterly defenceless.

Oh, there are monsters in Amnesia.  Horrible, unsightly beings whose origins are terrifying to read about.  And your only option when confronted with these nightmare beings is to cower and hide and pray they don't find you.

OK, but is it Scary?

If you've played through Amnesia, you may have noticed that all of my screenshots for this review come from roughly the first two hours of gameplay.  There is a reason for this.

I did not want to have to play through this entire game again.  Not because I didn't like it, not because I was too busy.  Because I was terrified.  

I didn't want to have to go through the anxiety of crawling through the Prison, simultaneously peeling my ears for the telltale groans of an approaching monster while plugging my ears and humming loudly to keep the terror at bay.  I didn't want to have to sprint through the flooded Transept, frantically raising a metal gate with a wheel that turns oh so slowly while the invisible Kaernk screeched its fury and splashed towards me.  I didn't want to, I didn't want to, I didn't want to.

Yet, as the game observes in one death sequence, "you have to carry on..."

Aside from being one of the most terrifying THINGS I have ever experienced (that crosses all media:  video games, movies, books, whatever), Amnesia is also one of the most well-written.  The story is compelling and interesting, the surprises and twists both logical and unexpected.  There is a huge amount of flavour thrown in in the form of brief passages that appear during Load Screens, strange snippets that both raise questions and answer them.

The atmosphere of the game is oppressive, dark, and unrelenting.  Your sense of helplessness in the face of the monsters you encounter is exacerbated not only by the lack of combat, but by your character's sheer inability to comprehend the ghoulish terrors.  As I mentioned briefly, your sanity is depleted not only by the darkness, but by looking at the monsters as well.  In fact, looking at a monster so rapidly depletes your sanity that the screen blurs and shakes to the point that you can't even really make out just what it is you're seeing.  This.  Is.  Genius.

I made a point of explaining the nature of fear and the unknown, because to me Amnesia knocks it out of the park.  It knows that the best way to keep a monster scary is to show as little of it as possible (a lesson both learned wonderfully by the first hour and a half of Signs and then unlearned just as tragically in the last twenty minutes).  And if the sanity meter is insufficient encouragement to keep you away from the shambling Cthulu spawn, then the audio cues that play when you're spotted will surely help:  screeching, off-key music played at deafening volume.  Just what the Lovecraft ordered.

"Oh hai didya just get something to fix your health?  Lemme help you with that."

I rate Amnesia as one of my favourite games of all time, not just for being awesome but for breathing new life into a genre that I had relegated to the back shelf of my library.  Amnesia showed us how to make horror scary again in video games, and one need only look at subsequent indie releases like Slender or Outlast to see its influence.  But, if you need further proof of how this game blew the market up...this is without question the game that made Pewdiepie (which, regardless of how you feel about the world's most famous Youtuber, says a lot).

Amnesia:  The Dark Descent isn't perfect.  It's a bit short, the level design is fairly static (due in large part to its indie origins), and the puzzles are incredibly simplistic.  But what it does right is fear, a lesson that all subsequent horror games should strive to emulate.  Fear comes first.  Everything else is meaningless.

The Shoggoth Inside: Board Games And Horror

Talking With Nothing

When I was eleven I tried to speak with the devil using a piece of plastic and cardboard. It was at my cousin’s home, and she had a Ouija board. She, her brother, my brother and I were playing with the spooky toy for days, and while the experience was always oddly intimate and scary, nothing quite affected me like the ten minutes I spent alone in the hallway trying to use it by myself.

I attempted the usual ritual to open a connection to the other side, and asked the opening question: is there anyone there?

Keeping still and breathing deeply I waited for a feeling of possession to overtake me. I imagined it would be a tingling in my fingertips, or like the high pitched hum of a TV on in another room with the volume turned all the way down. I thought maybe it wouldn't necessarily have a feeling, but the cursor, made of black plastic and assembled in a foreign land, would propel itself around the board and I would have to give into its demonic motions as I tested my transcription abilities.

I did the ritual once, twice, three times and waited. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply - the way I was taught in school to pray  - and then I felt it. I was suddenly aware of being completely and utterly alone. There was no ghost or devil or demon, just a little red haired mystic, staying behind at playtime to make a ghostly friend, only to have his first experience with the void.

Spooky Games

Horror and board games are perfect bedfellows. While video games offer a unique interactive, virtual experience, allowing for jumpscares and heart pounding struggles against nightmare creatures that might also be a living metaphor for male rage and murderous sexual guilt (ahem, Silent Hill 2), horror truly lives after the moment has passed. Horror is a genre of atmosphere and retrospect. In the moment of reading, viewing or playing, horror is thrilling and appalling, but when all's said and done and you’re alone in bed at night, that is when the true screaming starts.

Board games, thanks to their tactile nature, offer an extra push to the unsettling feeling you have when your home starts making those creaking sounds that might be someone - or something - unwelcome living just outside of your vision. Board games are physical objects. You interact with them and conduct a specific ritual, then put them on your shelf to sit there until next time. They aren’t framed the same way as narrative media, board games literally requiring our physical presence, movement and organic brain powered processing in order to function properly.

The most famous of the horror board games, like Ouija and the VHS tape Atmosfear series, rely on illusion to evoke the idea of a haunting. Ouija, according to heavily cited wiki-knowledge, hinges on a phenomenon called ideomotor reflex, while the VHS tape games might actually be haunted (who knows? I haven been able to fine one since 2004). 

Ouija is so famous for its mislabeling of a psychological phenomenon that many people actually believe the Parker Brothers’ mystifying oracle to be some kind of MSN Messenger from beyond the grave. The power held by the printed alphabet board, especially after a good creepy session of using it, is enough to make one hide under their covers until the sun comes up, too scared to sleep in fear of the inevitable nightmares.

The misdirection of haunted board games is effective and uncanny. Ouija is a cultural touchstone, having been adopted by the horror genre in much the same way as Lovecraft’s fictional book within a book, The Necronomicon. Ouija, a board game you can buy for ten dollars at a Toys"R"Us, is an icon of the occult. And yet, for all its cultural importance, Ouija is not the most horrific board game on my shelf (well, technically on my wall, since mine is prominently on display as a morbid conversation piece). While Ouija evokes a sense of sublime, almost campy Halloween-ishness, the game that makes me feel most small and human and absurd to a point of losing sleep is Arkham Horror.

A Game Against Nothing

We made the decision to play Arkham Horror, my partner Emma and I, under the pitch black sky of an impending summer thunderstorm. It was one of those eerie tempests, bringing night a full two hours before the sun should actually set, and never actually raining. I grew up knowing this as Tornado weather, but now I see it as the birth of a new age in my life: one in which I understand what it takes to fight against nothing.

Emma and I arrived home to my Toronto apartment under dry crashes of thunder and began to set up the game we’d just purchased on a whim. Six hours later, we gave up.

Arkham Horror is massive. Designed to be played with as many as eight players and as few as one, it is a cooperative (or solo) experience set in the sci-fi 1920s of H.P. Lovecraft inspired fiction. Players take on the role of investigators, each with their own special abilities, and attempt to prevent an ancient extraterrestrial god from awakening and bringing about one of many possible apocalypses. There are about 600 pieces involved and the average game is said to take between six to twelve hours of play.

That first night, under the angry sky, Emma and I were defeated personally, not by virtue of the game’s pure difficulty, but because its learning curve is steeper than a R’lyehan sidewalk (at once a steep incline and also reminiscent of bitter flavours as its patterns draw one down into an eternal spiral). We went to bed and slept the unblinking sleep of those defeated by a board game played by no one.

Now, years later, Emma and I can beat Arkham Horror in an average of four hours time. Thanks to our perseverance, we know it inside out, and even though we don’t always win, we can understand what we’re doing, and that is a victory in and of itself.

The extreme difficulty and Lovecraftian setting are, in their own ways, horrific. There is a certain nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach every time I see the final piece added to the game board before playing. But the true terror of Arkham Horror lies in its mechanical nature.

As a cooperative game, Arkham Horror relies heavily on several decks of cards to automate the eldritch force that the players combat. As a player enters a new area in Arkham, or one of the game’s many extra-dimensional worlds, she draws a card. The card details a narrative event and describes how this affects the player. At the conclusion of a round of play, the board gets a turn: another card is drawn and the instructions printed on it are followed to the letter. In all of these cases it is very rare that anything good will happen to any of the human participants. The game’s obscure rules serve as a barrier to entry, but the real deterrent to playing Arkham Horror is its sadistic difficulty.

The thing is, though, Arkham Horror isn’t really sadistic as much as it is masochistic. The board feels like my enemy every time I roll the dice and try to burn a demonic goat with my character’s molotov cocktail, but I am the one reading the cards; it’s me that’s removing heart counters in accordance with their weird instructions. When the game is lost, as it often is, the temptation is to blame the rules or luck, but really it’s me. I chose to do what it said, following the unholy instructions as if under the influence of that strange ideomotor response that let my cousins talk to the devil when I was eleven, but failed me in private.

The terror of an imagination is that it conjures what it wants, and as you can see with Ouija, that’s not something we are always able to control. Arkham Horror is the epitome of this other inside of us, summoning a being out of nothing against which we play a game.

The Room

I learned to play Arkham Horror like many people do, by watching an eleven part YouTube series of a man explaining the rules in a motel room. Having set everything up on the room’s furniture, the faceless uploader walks his audience through the motions of a byzantine ritual, revealing the occulted information that enabled me and countless others to bring their board games to life.

The videos themselves are amazingly appropriate for such an occulted pastime. The actual footage offers no explanation as to why the teacher is alone in the room, or why he chose to bring a massive board game with him, and it evokes the strange obsession that brought you to his channel in the first place. Arkham Horror makes you thirsty for its secrets.

While the videos are incredibly useful in learning to use the contents of the infernal box, they also serve as an example of the game’s semi-sentience. The reason a lonely man in a hotel room can teach strangers to play Arkham Horror is because it can be played alone, like an evil twelve hour game of solitaire.

Alone in a room, by following the secret rituals taught to you by a faceless man in a motel, you can summon a malevolent presence to devour your time. You can go through the motions, rolling dice and reading text, moving pieces in obscure patterns on a map of a non existent city. You count and do abstract math. You spend your hours alone, in the presence of a self-made monster, turning nothing into something tangible. You give in to your deeply human need to never be alone and without purpose, even if it means creating something truly awful.

Is this Real? The 4th Wall and Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem

In the early 2000s, horror video games had predominantly settled into their big franchises.  Silent Hill 2, a masterpiece of the genre, ensured that plenty more sequels would follow that particular icon.  Resident Evil had just been re-released for the first time on Gamecube.  Other, lesser franchises followed:  Fear Effect, Fatal Frame, etc.  Many of these games made great use of the latest technology and had unique gameplay elements.  Many were very well-received.  It seemed like horror had settled into a fine pattern of regular releases alongside other industry heavyweights of the time.

And yet...if I'm being totally honest, the vast majority of games of the early 2000s I find are lacking completely in soul.

I'm sure I'm not alone in my impressions.  That the industry resorted to reinvigorations of long-dead franchises (such as Doom 3 in 2004, a decade after Doom 2) suggests they were relying more on nostalgia to drive sales than on any real innovation or creativity.  Quite frankly, when I look at games like Silent Hill 3 or Fatal Frame or The Suffering, they all share one damning quality:  they aren't very scary (if they're scary at all).

I'm not sure exactly what's to blame for this phenomenon, but it's something that occurred in movies of the same time period as well.  The slide into clichéd, formulaic plots with over-the-top gore and jump scares is hard to trace, but it's evident with reactionary films like Joss Whedon's Cabin in the Woods that something had gone wrong.  We weren't scared any more.  We were laughing.

To be sure, there were exceptions to this rule.  In film, we had fantastic work like 2002's The Ring.  And in video games, coincidentally in the same year, we had Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem.

But First, the Gamecube

Ahh, the Gamecube.  Nintendo's sixth-generation console had the misfortune of competing with the leviathan, Playstation 2, and Microsoft's entry into the market, the Xbox.  Yet again, Sony easily dominated this era of the console wars, thanks yet again to huge third-party support, a massive games library, and rugged hardware that saw releases well into the seventh-generation era.  The Xbox, meanwhile, dominated the North American market, due in no small part to BEING the North American console. 

Poor Gamecube was left in third place, sales-wise.  The exclusives for this game are a bit of a depressing read; more Mario, more Zelda, more Starfox...the old Nintendo group trotted out and dolled up for their latest attempt to appease the gaming public.  This is in no way meant to slam the quality of these titles (e.g. Wind Waker, I mean that game is fantastic), but to illustrate a point:  Nintendo, in this round, was not able to attract people outside of its already established audience.  In fact, the Gamecube sold so poorly it underperformed its predecessor, the N64.

It's a terrible shame, because there were some hidden gems on the Gamecube well worth exploring.  Games like Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem.

OK, Now for the Game

Eternal Darkness is one of those games that I feel modern audiences will either wholeheartedly enjoy or find massively overrated.  Where you fall on that spectrum will largely depend on the type of games you enjoy.  Which is really my polite way of saying that if you're the type of dudebro who plays twitch-shooters and screams obscenities into his headset, this game is not for you.  If you're a hipster faux-auteur who likes to push his opinions on others through passive-aggressive blog posts, you'll love it.  Because you're me, and you like story and pacing and character.

The story to Eternal Darkness starts off very simply:  you are Alexandra (Alex) Roivas, called to Rhode Island by the police who inform you of your grandfather's brutal and mysterious murder.  Determined to find out what happened to him, you delve into his mansion's dark secrets.  It sounds like a very stock plot, but then it quickly spirals into a centuries-spanning tale of horror, ancient evil, and eldritch magic.

This tale unfolds in the pages of the titular Tome of Eternal Darkness, whose pages tell of individuals who had the misfortune of encountering the evil forces that seek to control and/or destroy our realm of existence.  As Alex reads the book, you take on the role of the person she reads about.

Is this a subtle nod to another Horror Video Game?  I like to think so.

The journey of these Chapters takes place across a huge variety of time periods and locations.  From present day (2000AD), you are transported back to ancient Rome (26BC), Colonial Times (1760AD), and Angkor Wat under the Khmer Empire  (1150 AD), just to name a few eras.  How these events are connected and what they portend is what drives Alex's investigations in the present.

The gameplay is presented in a third-person perspective, and has RPG, adventure, and action elements.  Combat in the game is very unique and smooth.  One of the best ideas this game had was the ability to target specific body parts on a targeted creature in close combat, something which I can't recall ever seeing anywhere else.  Lopping off limbs and heads with your sword has the added effect of changing a creature's behaviour.  Headless zombies, for instance flail about and will occasionally damage other monsters around them.  And any game that allows to me to make a pun about literally disarming an opponent is a game worth playing.

There are also ranged weapons, and unlike, for instance, Devil May Cry, here firearms are a precious commodity that deal a fair amount of damage, and ammo is a limited resource.  It is especially enjoyable to see the various gunpowder weapons throughout the eras, starting with one-shot flintlock pistols and evolving to fully automatic rifles.

OK, but is it Scary?

The thing that really sets Eternal Darkness apart from the usual fare of horror games is its unique take on the "sanity meter" mechanic (interestingly, Nintendo holds a patent for this system, though I have no idea how or why.  I could swear I've seen sanity meters prior to this game - such as in Clock Tower - and I've definitely seen many subsequent titles.  At any rate, I hope Nintendo hasn't been dickish enough to exercise this patent right to screw over the indie crowd).

In combat, your sanity is drained as you battle the monsters you encounter.  If it drops to completely empty, your health is affected.  And then everything goes straight to hell.

First, you start to hear things:  voices, pounding on the walls, weird shrieks and moans.  The camera goes all wobbly.  The walls start to bleed, as though the mansion just saw The Shining and wants to be the best damned haunted house it can be.

All of that probably sounds like standard fare these days.  Ah, but then...but then...

The game starts to screw with the fourth wall.

The screen goes dark, as if the power got cut.  It fakes errors, including a blue screen of death and deleted save games.  It even, at one point, pretends that you have reached the end of the game, and you will have to await the sequel in order to see the rest of the plot.

This could all be taken as epic-level trolling of the player, but I think it actually works quite well.  The standard in-game sanity effects are unsettling enough on their own.  But its this unexpected meta-aspect that really takes Eternal Darkness to the next level.  The cleverness of these "glitches" is that they are things that long-time gamers have come to expect.  When the game suddenly fades to black and talks about a sequel with a graphic more reminiscent of a JRPG than of the artwork on the box, it's poking fun at the genre's endless parade of sequels, but it's also wigging the player out.  I wouldn't be surprised at all if people had played this game, hit one of the fake error screens, and stood up to reset their console, grumbling and muttering about hardware.  Only to find the screen blinking back to life as the on-screen character shrieks "This...isn't...REAL!!!"

Eternal Darkness is a fantastic game.  It understands the tropes of the genre and exploits them both in a meaningful, storytelling capacity, and in a way that is playful and taunting.  The characters are varied and colorful, and there is some great replayability in the form of three different Ancient Evils to challenge.

During a time where horror video games were content to settle into a rather dull, repetitive pattern, Eternal Darkness stood up, pulled the plug on your reality, and shook it up to see what came out.

Stuck in the Middle With You: Parasite Eve

I think it's fair to say that the Playstation, in the 5th Generation Console Matchup, was the undisputed conqueror of the marketplace.

In the mid-late 90s, console gaming had resorted to the basest of name-calling:  who has the most bits?  With the 16-bit era coming to a close, consoles raced to see who would have the best processor, and this became such a major marketing point that it was included in the console names.  The Nintendo 64 and the Sega 32X both included their processing speed in their names.  Yet despite this, the Playstation, Sony's upstart console, outsold both.

There's a lot of reasons for this.  For starters, the third party support for the system was tremendous.  Industry heavyweights like Squaresoft, Konami and Capcom recognized the higher production costs of cartridges, as well as the storage capabilities offered by the new Compact Disc format.  With well-known franchise hits like Final Fantasy VII, Castlevania's Symphony of the Night (a VASTLY superior game to Castlevania 64), and Dragon Quest VII,  brought massive established fanbases with them.

What really gave Playstation its edge over the competition, though, was its flexibility in terms of genre.  Oh, to be sure, you could find platformers, RPGs, racing games, shooters, and puzzle games on the N64 and the Sega 32X as well.  But you know what was missing?  Horror.

Citizen Malevolence

Maybe it's a bit of an exaggeration to attribute much of the success of the Playstation to the horror games that were made for it.  That said though, the influence and sheer sales statistics of Resident Evil are impossible to ignore.  It redefined a genre, and expanded the audience a thousandfold.  It was innovative and exciting.  It was, if you'll pardon the cliché, a game-changer.

And yet, if I'm being terribly honest, I hate this game.  The voice acting is universally recognized as some of the worst in gaming history.  The plot is stupid and nonsensical.  The inventory management is horrendous.  The fixed camera angles are disruptive to the point of controller-hurling frustration.  But most damning of all for me...it just isn't scary.

Now, Silent Hill?  The other, just-as-famous-if-not-more-famous horror franchise to emerge from the Playstation?  SCARY.  AS.  FUCK.

I mention these two titans of the genre not, as I have so often said in my posts, to appear as a hipster as I turn instead to review a third game.  I mention them, and my dislike of Resident Evil, to illustrate a point:  different things scare different people.  Personally, I think the jump-scares and monster spawns of Resident Evil are merely startling.  I contrast them with the true sense of dread that Silent Hill evokes through mood, setting, and atmosphere.

Uncomfortably sandwiched and generally forgotten between these two types of horror and these two franchises, is the game I want to talk about today:  Squaresoft's Parasite Eve.

And Now, the Game

When I say that Parasite Eve was "sandwiched" between Silent Hill and Resident Evil, I in no way mean to imply that it was the ONLY other horror franchise on the Playstation.  Clock Tower, for example, was continuing on the Playstation after its Super Famicom origins.  What I mean is that Parasite Eve has the interesting distinction of being released in 1998, between Resident Evil (1996), and Silent Hill (1999), and can metaphorically be viewed as a neat balance between the two.

The plot to Parasite Eve takes place over a six-day span in New York City, beginning Christmas Eve 1997.  You take the role of Aya Brea, an officer in the NYPD with - you guessed it - a mysterious past.  Aya begins the game on the worst date of her life with a doofie schmuck who happens to have a rich dad.  The schmuck takes her to an opera, where the lead actress launches into an aria that causes most of the audience, cast, and stage crew to burst into flames.  And the schmuck never even called her back.

You soon find out that the actress' body has been taken over by a malicious microorganism (or organisms) called Eve, and Eve will be the antagonist for the remainder of the game.  I will confess right now that the plot is only marginally better than that of Resident Evil.  It still has a lot of brutally stilted dialogue,  and some frankly nonsensical pseudoscience BS that even the most fakey episode of Doctor Who would find absurd.  Suffice it to say that Aya's shady past naturally leads her to discover a connection between herself and Eve, and it involves mitochondria mutating animals into monsters through rapid evolution.  They mention mitochondria a LOT.

Really though, it's no more-or-less silly on paper than Resident Evil's T Virus, but what I enjoy about Parasite Eve is the manner in which the consequences of the virus are portrayed, and the decisions they made in how they were going to be "a horror game."

There's very few attempts to startle or outright scare the player here.  Part of this is down to the game's mechanics.  Unlike Resident Evil or Silent Hill, Parasite Eve does away with real-time combat, instead using a RPG-like system of player statistics, leveling, and a combat system more similar to that of Grandia II with an active time gauge and limited player maneuvering.

**at this point, I should acknowledge/apologize for the quality of the screenshots I have for this review.  Sadly, I couldn't get an emulator to work, so I resorted to the good ol' fashioned "take a picture of your TV" method.  Sorry!**

With this type of mechanic, battles are never a surprise, and never scary.  The monsters you face are pretty twisted and creepy, but you'll never be going "oh shit!" when you have battle stats, range indicators, and other info bites popping up on screen to remind you that THIS IS A VIDEO GAME in big capital letters.  As such, with maybe one or two exceptions, monsters are never thrown at you through windows, or hidden behind doors, etc.  They are simply not there one moment, than after a very obvious "battle cue," there the next.

Indeed, many of the environments are brightly lit, and often with a wide, top-down view more reminiscent of Squaresoft's other RPG titles.  There's very little for monsters to hide behind when you have a full field of view.  Yes, there is one section where you become trapped in a hospital basement with no lights, and this is legitimately terrifying, but the situation is quickly rectified by trusty fuses and a few key cards.

Wait.  Tilty camera angles and blue lighting?  Is this actually a weird director's cut of Battlefield Earth???  AAAAHHHH, I take it back!  This IS a nightmare!!!  AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!

Okay, but is it Scary?

Certainly not in the traditional sense, and this is where I come back to my point about it being sandwiched between Silent Hill and Resident Evil.  As I mentioned before, Silent Hill and Resident Evil broadly typify two types of fear:  the immediate, andrenaline-filled terror of being startled, and the quieter, dread-filled unease of being in an unfriendly environment.  Parasite Eve does neither.  It isn't trying to scare you.  It is trying to disturb you.

Less Lee Moore talked last week about body horror in her review of Society:  "there is no blood in the climactic scenes. It has been replaced with viscous, flesh-colored ooze, which in many ways is more disgusting than blood."  Body horror aims to unsettle by corruption.  It takes something familiar, pleasurable even (as in our sex lives), and twists it into unrecognizable goo.  In Parasite Eve, there's even one scene where an audience is literally transformed into a single, viscous mass.  The mass then becomes a recurring foe, all individuality of the people that make up its bulk lost to the will of the whole.

Parasite Eve has several moments, captured in FMV glory, of gut-wrenching, bone-snapping, sinew-twisting transformation.  The mitochondria or whatever such nonsense that drive Eve infect the animals of New York City, transforming them into nightmare horrors straight our of The Thing.

I would say this generates tension, but in a way it almost becomes absurd.  When you go to the Central Park Zoo, you know damn well there's going to be some goddamn blood monkeys and death parrots.  When one of the characters' kids befriends a lovely police dog, you know that it won't belong before the plot goes full Old Yeller meets Videodrome.

But every time it happens, it's no less disgusting, and no less unsettling.

Yet as Less aptly observed in her review of Society, we can't help but find it all disgustingly fascinating.  We can't look away.  There's something incredibly perverse about body horror's unsettling truth that we find such unnatural modification and transformation fascinating on a subliminal level.  It's almost like the old carnival freak shows, long fallen out of fashion for their inhumanity.  We would never dare admit there's something captivating about freaks, but the impulse is there.

This may well be why Parasite Eve is the ugly meat in the horror sandwich of the Playstation milieu.  It's one thing to be afraid of the dark, or the boogeyman.  It's quite another to be entranced with him.  Isn't it?

Time to Choose: Multiple Endings in CLOCK TOWER

It seems very appropriate that one of the most famous games to feature the concept of multiple, player choice dictated endings, is a game about time travel.  Chrono Trigger, from 1995, is widely regarded as one of the greatest video games of all time.  Aside from the relatively new innovation of having over a dozen different endings, it had a fantastic soundtrack, a great story, bright, glorious, 16-bit graphics, and terrific gameplay.  It is a pinnacle of the JRPG genre, certainly one of the glowing gems from the days of Super Nintendo.

In the same year, the horror genre was quietly keeping pace.

In 1995, horror, in terms of gaming consoles, had largely been framed in the form of action platformers.  Games like Castlevania or Sega Genesis' Splatterhouse series featured horror movie tropes or characters and plenty of violence and gore, but weren't exactly scary.  It's not altogether surprising; the hardware limitations of consoles weren't very friendly to the adventure genre.  You can see this in the ports of Macventure games, like Uninvited.  Point-and-click with a d-pad isn't the greatest (see also:  the absolute horrendous console ports of RTS games like Command and Conquer and Starcraft).

That said, when Clock Tower hit the scene, it definitely found a way to make its mark.

And now, the Game

Clock Tower was not especially well-known outside of Japan at the time of its release.  This is in large part due to the fact that was not released in English.  In fact, the Clock Tower that North America got was on Playstation in 1996, and was the direct sequel to the 1995 game of the same name.  Final Fantasy fans will know all too well the pain of domestic and international releases, i.e. the confusing chronology of FF1-3 vs. FF1-6.

As luck would have it though, there now exist several fan translations of the game based on the Super Famicom version, and finding a rom port of Clock Tower is easy as pie.

The plot of the game is, apparently, inspired largely by the movie Phenomena.  This is especially apparent when you look at the protagonist, Jennifer, alongside Phenomena's star, Jennifer Connelly (who also plays a character named Jennifer.  That's triple Jennifer!).

At any rate, the story of Clock Tower begins with four orphaned teenage girls - Jennifer, Laura, Ann and Lotte - arriving at their new home with their orphanage's matron, Mary.  The girls have just been adopted en masse by the mysterious Mr. Burrows, owner of a large, remote country estate.  Shortly after their arrival, Mary leaves the girls in the manor's foyer, and goes to bring back Mr. Burrows.  She doesn't come back.  And of course the girls select you, Jennifer, to go find her.  You don't get far, though, as a scream from the foyer stops you in your tracks.

From here, you'll traipse through the manor, and very quickly encounter a scene where one of your friends is suddenly and brutally murdered before your eyes by a mutated child wielding a pair of giant shears.  I am so not even kidding.

This jolly little fellow, known as Scissorman in the series' lore, is Bobby Barrows, and he will be stalking you throughout the majority of the game.  This is where the game simultaneously becomes awesome and completely infuriating.  Awesome, because it is a very unique spin on the survival horror genre to have basically one enemy for the majority of the game, much like a slasher flick.  Awesome again, because the game has a cool "sanity" feature that seems to be a staple of most modern horror games, indicated by your character portrait in the bottom left (ranging from cool blue to panicky red).  Infuriating, because your character moves at a horrendous snail's pace.

I'm not sure if this feature was intentional or not.  It definitely makes it more suspenseful when you're fleeing Scissorman, and Jennifer slowly approaches a door, goes through the complicated animation of opening it, steps through carefully, checks her watch, gets a coffee, etc.  It makes it more annoying when you're pretty confident Scissorman isn't nearby (usually indicated by music cues) and you just want Jennifer to pick up the pace and move through the mansion.

At any rate, you will eventually discover just who these freaks are, how they relate to you, and why you were brought to this mansion.  IF you follow the right path, that is.

As I hinted at in my intro, Clock Tower is a game with multiple endings, 8 of them to be exact.  This is where the game really shines.  You're given a fairly wide-open area to explore, and every choice you make affects the direction of the plot.  In fact, within ten minutes of beginning the game, you can find one of the endings.  If you head down one hallway to the very end, you'll find a garage, and a car.  A quick search of a nearby box yields the car keys.  So, naturally, you try the car...and Jennifer, after a moment's consideration, says no, she won't leave her friends behind.  But what if you try it again?  And a third time?

Ditching your friends to their fate and fleeing without uncovering any of the manor's dark secrets ends about as well as it should, but the fact that the game gives you this option at all is amazing.  There's also several different variations on the ending sequence, and in the absolute best version you can, in fact, rescue one of your fellow orphans.  It all depends on how willing you are to try to find that best option.

OK, but is it Scary?

Maybe not after multiple playthroughs trying to find all those aforementioned endings, but the first time, absolutely.  The game has an effective, simple soundtrack that really enhances the gameplay, some nifty sound effects for the era (the snapping of Scissorman's shears is an especially nice touch), and some real ohshitohshitohshit moments where you're forced into a "panic mode."  In "panic mode" Jennifer has been cornered by someone or something, and her last recourse is to fight for her life - or rather, to mash the panic button.

Honestly, the only downside I have to this game is the sluggish movement, and I chalk that up to a gameplay decision.  This game kicks ass.

I rate the multiple endings feature highly, both for being innovative and for giving the player a real sense of choice.  As Peter highlighted in his look back at Give Yourself Goosebumps, choice is a vitally important way of immersing a player in a gameplay narrative.  Clock Tower was one of the first games to offer a quantifiable result from making different choices.  Coincidence that it came out the same year as Chrono Trigger, bears the same initials, and also has a "time" word in the title?  YOU DECIDE.

They're Alive! They're Alive! - Full Motion Video and The 7th Guest

Nostalgia and Other Trips Through Time

Arcade (noun)

1.  Architecture.

1. a series of arches supported on piers or columns.
2. an arched, roofed-in gallery.

2.

an arched or covered passageway, usually with shops on each side.

3.

an establishment, public area, etc., containing games of a mechanical and electronic type, as pinball and video games, that can be played by a customer for a fee.

4.

an ornamental carving, as on a piece of furniture, in the form of a rowof arches.

(from Dictionary.com)

I remember with great fondness the arcades that once proliferated not only as independent establishments, but also in theatres, at amusement parks, even in lounges and bars.  There are still some arcades, but their time in the spotlight has definitely come to an end.  But I'll always cherish the times I could go into a place like Laserquest to find games like Arm Champs II, Sunset Riders, or, perhaps most thrillingly, Time Traveller.

For those who don't fall into the age range of roughly 25-45, or didn't have the fortune to this holographic wonder, that screenshot is, in fact, a video game.  You'd better believe this blew our tiny minds when we saw it in the arcade.  Sure, graphics had already gone into 3D by the time Time Traveller rolled around, and we even had Full Motion Video arcade games like Dragon's Lair for years.  But with games like Time Traveller, the ante had been upped.  Now, you were controlling real, live, PEOPLE.

Video games are all about the power rush, and I can think of no greater power rush than placing "live" humans in the hands of maniacal children.

And boy, did the 90s try to capitalize on this gimmick.  With CD-roms becoming the new standard method for shipping home video games, both on consoles and on computers, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to load up on live action video.  This quickly got of hand, to the point where you would see games shipping on massive booklets of two, then four, then six, then - I swear I am not making this up because it actually happened with Black Dahlia - EIGHT CDs.

Thankfully, the game I'll be talking about today was not quite this ambitious, as it was, in fact, one of the very first titles to ship solely on CD-ROM.

And Now, the Game

The 7th Guest is a horror/puzzle game from Trilobyte, a studio basically known for nothing else.  This is not necessarily an indictment of the abilities of the people who worked for it, but rather an indicator of the impact of The 7th Guest.  This game sold BIG, and, depending on how you view the subsequent torrent/plague of FMV titles, deserves credit/blame for the proliferation of CD-ROM drives and software.

The plot to The 7th Guest is established through an opening cutscene framed as a storybook narration.  It tells of a wicked drifter, Henry Stauf, murdering a women in the town of Harley-in-the-Hudson for her purse.  After fleeing with the stolen goods, Stauf curls up for a nap, as drifters do, and has a vision of a magnificent toy doll.  Stauf carves the doll exactly as he sees it in his vision, and successfully trades it for room and board.  Shortly after, he has more visions of other toys, and becomes a famous toymaker.  All the people of Harley-in-the-Hudson want his creations, as "A Stauf toy is a toy for life."

You know, until the children who own them all start dying of a mysterious illness.

Of course, nothing ties Stauf back to this illness, and he moves on to build a huge mansion on the edge of town, again, based on a vision in his dreams.  For a while, nobody hears a peep from the mysterious toymaker.  And then one day, abruptly, he decides to host a party, to which he invites six guests (Interestingly, their names are only mentioned briefly (if at all), so I had to rely on Wikipedia to find them out):

"Martine Burden, a former singer; Edward and Elinor Knox, a dissatisfied middle-aged couple; Julia Heine, a bank worker who reminisces of her youth; Brian Dutton, a fellow shop owner; and Hamilton Temple, a stage magician." via wikipedia

So you might think that you, naturally, take on the role of the titular 7th guest, and, eventually, you do...but actually from the get-go you are given basically no info and no motivation to go on.  You explore the house, and as you go, you witness the events of the party and the interactions of the six guests, but it is all in visions.  What's more, the events are told non-linear, so you are essentially piecing together what exactly transpired that fateful evening.

This is, unfortunately, a major flaw in the game's storytelling department, and it also affects the game's scare factor considerably.  I'll come to the latter point in a moment.  With storytelling, the problem is that you don't really know why you're doing what you're doing, and that means that even in gameplay terms knowing where to go next is a constant struggle.  Even identifying that a puzzle is right in front of you can be something of a challenge.  Usually you'll end up sweeping your mouse over the screen to see the icon transform into the skull that means a puzzle is present.

The puzzles themselves are quite engaging and are frequently adaptations of classic brain teasers.  There are plenty of mazes, some word puzzles, a couple of slider puzzles, a take on the "x"-pointed star puzzle...the list goes on.  A lot of them are chess-based, requiring you to move pieces in a certain fashion, or assemble a board in a certain way.  In fact, I'd go as far as saying too many of them are chess-based, to the point that it becomes tiresome to go into a room only to see a tell-tale check pattern on the floor.

The real problem, though, is that most of the puzzles are are utterly lacking in context.  Supposedly these puzzles you're solving are some sort of booby traps or clues to finding a "prize" promised by Stauf to the guests of the party.  The thing is, there's no penalty for failure.  You just try and try and try again until you get it right.  And when you get it right, it usually triggers a FMV scene, instead of opening a room or giving you an item, which is the traditional adventure-game formula.  Well, that's not entirely true.  Solving a puzzle DOES allow access to another puzzle, but there's no cue, auditory or visually, to let you know that anything has happened.  You just get a scene, unrelated to where you're supposed to go next, and based on that you then aimlessly drift through the house to another puzzle.

Indeed, most rooms are inexplicably inaccessible, and you'll return to them after solving puzzles to find they are now just as inexplicably accessible.  It's without rhyme or reason.  And don't tell me that it's because Stauf is insane, because fuck you.  An insane antagonist is no excuse for bad storytelling.  It's why there are good Batman comics with the Joker, and bad Batman comic books with the Joker.

OK, But Is It Scary?

WEEEEELLLLL...No.  Not really.  There are some decent atmospheric effects, and though the acting is ATROCIOUS, it's understandable.  Early blue-screen effects (yes, blue, not green) gave everything this weird afterglow, and the film quality was understandably shite due to the data compression of fitting the game on two CDs.  The game designers wisely decided to incorporate this into the story by making the FMV sequences into "visions," and this part of the story DOES work.  The acting itself had to be hammy, because subtle wouldn't cut it.  You could hardly make out the facial expressions of the actors in most scenes, barring a few closeups, so broad gestures and booming voices were the standard M.O.  And yes, the lack of context for your puzzle-solving and removal of imminent threats on you, the player, make this game significantly less scary than it could have been.  It's a shame, really, because the story does turn INCREDIBLY dark towards the end.

It turns out that Stauf's success and fame are due to a deal he made with some kind of demon, and the price for his riches are the souls of the town's children.  You eventually find a room full of dolls inhabited by the little tykes, and they scream pitifully at you as you pass through.  It's pretty effed up.  But if that's not enough, you also get this goddamn nightmare fuel:

Yes, that is a vision of one such doll literally coming to life to smother an INFANT.  You get to watch as the helpless baby's face turns blue and it stops moving entirely.  I mean, JESUS.  Child-murder is a pretty taboo subject at the best of times, and you can bet that modern censors would have something to say about this now.

So, The 7th Guest is...OK.  It's not scary so much as disturbing, but I forgive it a lot because it was trying new things and being inventive about how it incorporated new technology.  The trend of home FMV titles resulted in a LOT of dreck, but it did also lead to some genuinely great games, including the absolutely effed up Phantasmagoria.  Ultimately though, the lesson here is that simply putting live people in your video games does not necessarily mean it will be scarier. 

It does mean, however, that people like me will wistfully remember the days of our youth, when we got to control various community theatre actors as they murdered other community theatre actors.  Ahhh...good times.

Paranoia and the birth of Survival Horror in "Alone in the Dark"

Birth of a Subgenre

In the modern lexicon of video gaming, the words "survival" and "horror" have become nigh inseparable.  While action-oriented series like Dead Space or Dead Rising or Dead Island (lotta Dead going around these days) slap the "survival" label on the front end of their genre-specific entries, they have definitely lost touch with the "horror" part of the equation.  Oh, there are lots of oogie-boogies creeping their way into your monitor, and you can definitely splatter them apart with your heavy ordinance (or at minimum a nice length of pipe), but the complete lack of suspense, pacing, and atmosphere in these modern titles suggests that they have forgotten their roots.

Regular viewers will have noted a steady progression in my entries from the birth of video gaming towards modern times.  This is not accidental.  Rest assured, I am not purely a retro gamer, and recent titles are soon to come, but I have good reason to examine the place the oogie-boogies originally creeped out from.

Most critics point to Resident Evil as the birth of "Survival Horror" as a genre, and for good reason:  it was a term literally invented by the makers of the game.  Or rather, the Marketing Team at Capcom.  Of course, once the term took off in the video gaming vernacular, it has been retroactively applied to the titles which inspired Resident Evil.  One title, in particular, stands out, and if you are a fan of gaming at all you likely have guessed what it is.

In the early 90s, 3D environments were just kicking off.  I've talked a fair amount about the birth of first-person shooters and wireframe graphics in my post about Pathways Into Darkness, so I won't talk much more about the history here, but suffice it to say that while the first-person perspective was shaping up into something actually in-depth, so too was the third-person perspective.  One man in particular recognized the potential for this new dimension for a horror setting:  Frédérick Raynal, a designer and programmer working for Infogrames.  Raynal had worked on Infogrames' 3D platformer Alpha Waves, and was a great admirer of the horror genre, particularly the Cthulu mythos.  It just made sense to blend the two together.

During the development process, Raynal  (long with his design team that included Artistic Director Didier Chanfray, Programmer Franck de Girolami and Designer Yaël Barroz, his future wife) put into place many of the concepts that would become staples of the Survival Horror genre.  Some were done because of limitations of the time, some were done deliberately, but the result is inarguably one of the best and scariest games of all time.

And Now, the Game

The plot of Alone In the Dark starts out very simply and quickly spirals into a complex history of magic, mythos, and madness.  You take on the role of either Emily Hartwood or Edward Carnby (at the time, the choice of a female protagonist was a fairly unique innovation, and was done to appeal to a larger audience).  Your abilities are unaffected by your choice, and the storyline only changes in the introductory sequence.  As Emily Hartwood, you are investigating the sudden suicide of your uncle, Jeremy Hartwood, an eccentric artist and owner of the lush Louisiana estate Derceto.  Derceto, a large mansion with a long history, is reputed to be the home to evil spirits, because of course it is.  As Edward Carnby, you are hired by a strange client to seek out a piano of great value within the mansion's attic, to be pawned off for a large profit.

I will confess the plot is a little bit confused, especially if you don't read the right books and pieces of parchment in the right order.  Essentially, it boils down to this:  an evil, immortal ghost pirate has been possessing the bodies of the Derseto estate owners for centuries, and sought to make Jeremy Hartwood his latest victim.  When Hartwood committed suicide instead, the ghost pirate, named Ezechiel Prezgt, reached out his influence to try to possess the player character instead.  There's a lot of mythology mixing that occurs here, mostly from the Cthulu mythos and Greek legend.

At any rate, as your character enters the mansion, everything seems quiet enough...

...and they ascend to the attic, the site of Jeremy's suicide (and the location of the piano) without any trouble.  This choice was intentional on the part of the designers; they felt that it would be a good way to show the layout of the house on the way in, so players would know what they would be up against on the way out.

You gain control of your character once they have arrived in the attic.  It's worth mentioning said controls here.  Your character moves quite ponderously, and with each stride their footsteps creak on the floorboards and echo eerily throughout the house.  You have a choice of actions you take with the spacebar:  Fight, Open/Search, Shut, Push, and, in certain areas, Jump.  Performing an action can take a few beats, depending on how close your character is to the item you are trying to perform the action on, and on the animation the action requires.  The manual recommends holding the spacebar down until your action completes, and this can definitely be counterintuitive to a modern gaming audience used to "Press 'Y' to Win Game."

So, you begin exploring the attic.  Checking the piano from the right angle yields a secret compartment containing Jeremy Hartwood's suicide note, and expands upon the plot of the game.  There are also a few items around to snag, and if you're an adventure junky like me you'll rapidly fill your pockets to bursting with garbage.  This is a mistake, as Alone in the Dark implements a size-based inventory limit.  Too many large/heavy objects, and you won't be able to carry anything else, and this is especially vital later.

Of course, your exploration and kleptomania can quickly be interrupted in the attic by the arrival of the monster outside the window.

Yes, the first fight in this game is a timed event, with a second one spaced out soon after, and simply by hanging around in the first area of the game you will be forced into combat.  This is incredibly effective in jolting the player out of their comfort zone from the get-go.  You're expecting at least a few moments to get oriented and familiar with the game, and here the game is saying "NOPE.  FIGHT OR DIE."  Recent entries have attempted similar, adrenaline pumping sequences to get their game going, but they haven't been as effective.  A good example is Dead Island, which features an early sequence where you must run from the Infected or be rapidly overrun.  The difference is that with Dead Island, you have a voice literally telling you what to do, as well as on-screen instructions, and provided you simply do what they say there is no real danger.

OK, but is it Scary?

With Alone in the Dark, you are, as promised, alone (though not always in the dark).  When these monsters attack you in the beginning, unless you paid close attention to the manual, you will die.  What's more, you haven't actually done anything to TRIGGER these monsters.  It's not a normal "jump-scare" where you open a door, or pick up an item, or enter a new area, and a oogie-boogie leaps out to give you a kiss.  This just...happens.

That pattern of thinking extends to several moments in the game.  Picking up the wrong item, stepping in the wrong place, and even just brushing against a piece of scenery can all result in a grisly, untimely death.

If all of that seems spectacularly unfair, in a way it's meant to be.  Still, you have the ability to save at literally any moment in this game, so you have no one to blame but yourself if you find yourself having to start over from a much earlier point.  The point, however, is to make you distrustful of everything and anything.  And it works BEAUTIFULLY.

It's not just this heightened sense of awareness that makes Alone in the Dark function so well, though.  As I mentioned, the sound of your own footsteps adds a layer of eeriness to the experience, as does the rest of the sound design.  From time to time, you'll hear strange creaks and groans from the house, as if the whole thing were alive.  Howls from outside suggest further monsters bursting in the windows as in the attic sequence (and the fact that they only SOMETIMES burst in will keep you guessing).

Then there's the music.  The soundtrack to Alone in the Dark, especially on  modern machines, is gorgeous.  The battle music alone is memorable and pulse-racing, and blends back into the tracks for puzzle-solving and wandering the house.

Graphically, the game naturally is dated, but the polygonal enemies actually have a certain creepy charm to them that holds up today.  There's something offputting about the way they move, far more rapidly than you do, with jerking, twisting limbs and lopsided cartoon faces.

Ultimately, Alone in the Dark is a classic and well-deserving of the title of one of the greatest video games of all time.  To date, this is the game I have had the most fun replaying for my reviews.  This is the game that epitomizes "Everything Is Scary" because literally everything cannot be trusted.  You can't even rely on the weapons you are given.  Some break, some run out of ammo, some fail to function when they get wet.  What's worse, certain monsters can only be killed by certain weapons, and if you've failed to acquire that item or wasted it on a lesser beast, then you are just screwed.

Subsequent entries in the series would sadly place too much focus on the combat portions of the game (ironically, the major gripe I have with many self-styled "survival horror" entries today).  Alone in the Dark 2 only has loose connections to horror and magic, and feels much more like a noir/gangster game.  Alone in the Dark 3, with its Western aesthetic, also had ghosts and spirits that felt too tangible.  Very likely these failures are the direct result of Raynal and the original design team departing Infogrames prior to the sequels. 

Only the first game captured the perfect balance of otherworldly isolation and distrust that is communicated so perfectly by its title.  Everything really is scary when you're Alone in the Dark.

The unsettling question of the afterlife in "Pathways Into Darkness"

Something I think people tend to forget about so-called "genre" fiction is that the same general rules of fiction - that is, the rules of SUCCESSFUL fiction - still apply.  People like protagonists they can relate to, environments that feel fully developed and inhabitable, plotlines that have progress.  It's easy to forget this when we talk about fantastical elements, as in the horror genre.  How can we say that we're trying to create familiar characters and "realistic" environments when we're talking about things that don't exist (as far as we know...)?  We have to break that kind of thinking.  Boil it down to basics.  If you believe in the world, if your characters relate to that world and inhabit it with emotions and feelings that we ourselves experience in our real world, the rest falls into place.  Draw your audience in, and make them part of the universe.  That's what makes it so scary.  When the unbelievable, the unknowable...becomes immediate.

This is where video games occupy a special place in horror media.  In no other format are you actually placed in control of the action, dictating the next move in the story.  You are forced to make those choices that you normally shout at the movie screen:  "don't go in there!"  Ah, but in this game?  To move on?  You must.  You MUST go in there.  And nowhere is this immersive experience better exemplified then when games moved into the first person perspective, and things got a whole lot shootier.

In the early 90s, computers were simultaneously becoming cheaper and more powerful.  3D graphics of the time were created through perspective line drawings that formed "wire frames" of the objects they were supposed to represent.  Usually these were simple mazes, or geometric features like mountains, trees, etc.  In terms of colouring, the earliest predecessors of what would become the the 3D shooter used one-tone walls, ceilings and floors.  The hardware just couldn't support much more than that.  Fortunately, microprocessors were marching along, and in 1993 we got the Intel Pentium chip.  And we got Doom.

Doom is widely credited with causing the explosive popularity (pun most definitely intended) of the modern first-person shooter.  Though not the first, and not even id Software's first (most people credit both achievements to their previous title. Wolfenstein 3D), Doom showed an incredible leap forward in graphics and gameplay.  With texture mapped environments and sprites, this was the point where things.  Got.  Real.

In which I swear I am not a Hipster

But now I'm going to take a turn down my indie corridor, and not talk about Doom.  I should probably mention at this point that I am not intentionally being a hipster.  I didn't talk about Uninvited over Shadowgate because I think Shadowgate is a bad game, I did it because Shadowgate is not, strictly speaking, horror.  Neither is Doom.

Oh yes, the game literally takes place in Hell, but the element of "horror" that I find lacking in Doom can be found in another title released that very same year:  Pathways Into Darkness.  Never heard of it?  Hmm...well maybe you'll have heard of the company that made it, at least.

Just like Doom, Pathways Into Darkness was one of the first games to make use of real-time texture mapping.  Just like Doom, Pathways was inspired by the success and awesomeness of Wolfenstein 3D.  And completely unlike Doom, Pathways featured RPG elements including the ability to talk to dead soldiers.

OK, maybe I should back up a bit.
 

And now, the Game

The story of Pathways Into Darkness is this:  an alien ambassador arrives on Earth in 1994 without warning (do they ever GIVE warning?) and abruptly informs the US government that a sleeping elder god (whose name, according to the manual, "no human throat will ever learn to pronounce") is about to awaken beneath an ancient temple (again, according the manual, "neither Aztec nor Mayan").  The mere act of this god awakening will destroy the Earth.  Hm.

Luckily, the alien ambassador, a member of a mighty race known as the Jjaro, has a suggestion:  send an elite strike team into the temple - which is populated by monsters spawned from the sleeping god's nightmares - have them descend to the lowest point, and...set off a nuclear bomb.  Which will not KILL the god, but merely stun it and bury it under more rock.  Thus delaying the god's eventual awakening.  Victory!(?)

Naturally,  right from the get-go things go sideways.  Your parachute fails to deploy properly, and you crash into the jungle surrounding the temple.  This has the consequence of knocking you unconscious, as well as costing you all your nice equipment.  Your M-16 is bent out of shape, your Colt .45 is empty, and your bag of ammo?  HAHAHA.  Who knows!  But, you remain determined to succeed, and race to catch up to the other members of your team, armed only with your trusty Survival Knife.

As you can tell, this plot is heavily Lovecraftian in its style, and that goes for the monster designs as well.  Aside from skeletons, ghouls, and other undead horrors, you'll also run into long-tongued orange mostly-mouth beasts called "Headless" and strange floating fish-like creatures that spew lightning called "Nightmares."  And that's just for starters.

If you're wondering how you're supposed to compete with these creatures armed only with an absolute crap knife (seriously, this thing looks about 4 inches long), well as it so happens you and your commando team were not the only people to visit this temple.  This is where the game gets totally awesome.

Yes, the Nazis were here (and later, a group of Spanish treasure hunters).  Furthering the crazy rumours of Nazis pursuing occult madness in South America during the last years of WWII, Pathways Into Darkness gives you blessed ammunition through the magic of Walther P4 pistols and MP-41 submachine guns.  And then you find the Yellow Crystal.

You'll discover the Yellow Crystal quite early on, and it's use is not immediately obvious.  If you try the hotkey for it, you'll get a "poof" sound effect and a message telling you that it "discharged, but nothing happened!"  Then you read the description for it:

You can have conversations with all of the dead soldiers you find, and this is where Pathways really shines.  In conversation, you're given a text box to enter any word into, in the hopes that you'll get a response.  The manual advises you that two things you can always try on the soldiers to get the ball rolling are "name" and "death."

That's right, the two things you can always rely on remembering in the next life are...your name, and THE HORRIBLE WAY YOU DIED.

OK, but is it Scary?

Quite aside from the fact that most of these soldiers all-too-vividly remember their gruesome deaths at the hands of the temple monsters, it becomes clear that they are, in some way, conscious of the goings-on around them, even without the yellow crystal.  Several of the nazi soldiers mention "seeing the Spanish-speaking soldiers go by"...FORTY YEARS AFTER THE NAZIS WERE ALREADY DEAD.  That means that for those long years, the Nazis were still in their dead bodies, still processing, still thinking, still aware...only they couldn't do anything.  They couldn't talk, couldn't move, couldn't breathe.  They were just...there.  Some of them even remember the monsters coming back to chew their bones clean.

It's never made explicitly clear if this is an effect of the temple, the sleeping god, or just...this is it.  And I find that utterly terrifying.

Some of the soldiers have gone completely mad in their solitary purgatory.  Some jibber inanely and won't respond, even to the standard "name" and "death" queries.  Some have constructed elaborate fantasies, believing they are holy figures, or still living, or still fighting the war.  Most are just...alone.

Nobody knows what happens when we die.  Nobody.  But it is a universally accepted truth that we WILL die, at some point.  It is hard to think of a more terrifying prospect than the idea of being trapped forever in one's own mind, not only unable to interact with the world around us, but forced to stand by as the world proceeds to accept our body as just that, a body.  And what will they do with that body...?

So, is Pathways Into Darkness scary?  HELLS YES.  Moreso than Doom, to be sure.  With Doom, you can take comfort knowing that you can shoot evil in the face, even the evil of Hell itself.  You can prove yourself "too tough for Hell to contain."  With Pathways?  Not only are you on a quest to fight a mere delaying action, you're confronted with the horrible truth of your own mortality.

Pathways Into Darkness is not well-known.  It came out as a Mac exclusive at a time when PC was the norm, and it was utterly overshadowed by Doom.  But it propelled Bungie into making more games, notably the Marathon series, the spiritual predecessor to one of the best-selling games of all time, Halo.  If nothing else, it deserves credit for that.

But for me, what Pathways represents is the beginning of a journey to find the ultimate immersive experience in horror.  It places you in the first person seat.  And then it leads you down the path to an inevitable conclusion.

*shudder*

A Great Leap Sideways: The Complicated History of "Uninvited"

Lisa Was Dead, To Begin With

In my previous post on The Lurking Horror, I gave a fair amount of history behind the formation of the horror genre in video gaming and how it related to that particular game.  I feel a similar approach is merited when talking about ICOM Simulations' Uninvited.  I hope you will indulge me this seemingly meandering route to my destination, and follow as best you can.  If it helps, I can illustrate why this is necessary with a single, critical point:  I played Uninvited on the NES...but it had been around for five years already by the time it arrived on that system.

When I talked about The Lurking Horror (1987), I made sure to drive home that imagination was replacing graphics during the height of Interactive Fiction.  Well, as it happens, graphic adventures had been around for years.  They just hadn't been especially popular.  This was attributable to the ongoing battle between IBM's PC and Apple's various...things.  In the early 80's, the PC was far and away the machine to beat.  It was the industry standard of computing, and consequently, so was MS-DOS, the operating system that ran it.  MS-DOS, for those who are unaware, was a text-based interface.  Graphic User Interfaces (GUIs) had not yet been introduced...until Apple decided to bite the bullet and go for it.

blakespot via Compfight cc

Steve Jobs and the Apple team's first attempt was the Lisa, the very first personal computer to feature a GUI.  It failed.  Catastrophically.  Why?  Well, to start with the ticket price was $9995 at the time of its launch in 1983.  Adjusted for inflation, that works out to almost $24,000 Canadian today.  Also crucially...businesses just didn't know what to do with it, and that goes for both consumers AND for software developers.  Developers didn't want to go through the very complicated process of "porting" their software from a text-based OS to a GUI, and consumers couldn't yet see the practical application of the fancy-shmancy features.  So the Lisa flopped.

Soft Revolution?

Apple was down, but not out.  Following the Lisa fiasco, Steve Jobs - who had been reassigned during the development - came out with the Macintosh one year later, in 1984.  The retail price was comparatively much cheaper than the Lisa, at $2,495.  You might remember the launch of the Macintosh, and the coincidental year, because of this:

Compared to the Lisa, the Macintosh (later rebranded the Macintosh 128 following subsequent releases) fared quite well, but it was still not enough to dent PC's cornered market.  Still, a successful consumer computer that was actually being used and programmed for meant that Apple saw the birth of what would become an entirely new frontier of gaming:  a point-and-click interface.

Into this strange new world strolled ICOM Simulations, and the "MacVenture" series.  These pioneers saw the potential of the GUI that Apple had struggled to develop.  They took it, and with some impressively creative innovations in the usage of the Macintosh's interface, they first rolled out their noir detective story Déja Vu, and then their foray into horror:  Uninvited.

So by now you might, if you've been playing very close attention, be wondering:  how could I go on at length about the merits of The Lurking Horror eschewing graphics at a time when graphic adventures were clearly a possibility?  After all, The Lurking Horror  came out in 1987, while Uninvited hit the market in 1986.  Well, you may have also observed that Uninvited was only available at the time on a rather expensive machine that not many people were shelling out for around the home.  My family may have been early Apple adopters with our IIc, but we weren't exactly going to shell out for something that we didn't really know how to use.

A DOS port of Uninvited arrived in 1987, but for me I'd have to wait until 1991, when MacVenture was blossoming on the Nintendo Entertainment System.

And now, the Game

Let's get something out of the way right away.  The only reason most anyone has likely even heard of ICOM or MacVenture is because of one of their NES ports.  Not Uninvited.  No.  THIS:

 

Ah, Shadowgate.  So beloved amongst the gaming community that it garnered a re-release just last year, buoyed by a Kickstarter campaign that raised a not-insignificant $137k.

Uninvited, sadly, is less well-known.  And not necessarily for unfair reasons.  I'll explain.

To begin with, let's talk about the plot to Uninvited (specifically speaking to the NES version).  You are driving along a back country road with your big sister, when a strange apparition in the road causes you to swerve into a tree.  You lose consciousness, and when you awaken your sister is missing, and the car is on fire.  Assuming you don't linger in the car for the inevitable explosion, you find yourself outside a creepy mansion.  Seeking help - and your missing sibling - you enter the mansion...and of course the door slams shut, trapping you inside.  Surprise!  Haunted!

From there, the plot revolves around piecing together the patchy history of the mansion, which involves a cult of  magicians whose star pupil became obsessed with dark forces, and quickly corrupted the group from within.  The powerful magic and demonic forces still hold sway over the mansion, and you must overcome the obstacles they throw at you to find a way out.  Simple, right?

WRONG.

Though as first dates go, you have had worse.

If there's one thing that Uninvited and the rest of the MacVenture line are known for, it's the numerous and rather easy ways to die.  When I first played this game, I could not for the life of me figure out to get past the "Southern Belle" that tears you apart.  You run into her quite early on, and only by choosing a very specific path, finding a very specific item, opening that item, and then using it on her could you finally overcome this obstacle.  Any other movement around the Belle leads to this death scene.

You can also be eaten by zombies, ripped apart by dogs, possessed by ghosts, dissolved in acid, drowned in a trap room...the list goes on.

It is this difficulty that stretches out much of the game, coupled with some puzzles which are frankly downright obtuse if you didn't stumble upon a clue in your travels.  As the game is non-linear, it is very easy to miss those clues, and for that matter to miss critical items that are used at a much later point.  Just to complicate matters, the game even has loads of items which are utterly useless.  Your first time through, of course, you'll have no way of knowing what you need and don't need in order to solve a puzzle.  If you grew up on the Adventure Game motto of "if it's not nailed down, take it (if it is nailed down, find something to pry out the nails and take it anyway)," you are in for a rough ride.  Conversely, if you know exactly what you're doing, beating Uninvited can be accomplished in as little as 25 minutes.  I know.  I did it for this review.

So, the puzzles aren't the best part of the game, to be sure.  No, where the game comes alive is in the nifty environments, the awesome music, and colourful monsters you face.  Many of the beasts don't fall into any normal mythology and are quite out there, such as...

This guy.

OK, but is it Scary?

But here, also, is where I have to come back to why I explained so much of Uninvited's history, and mentioned that it may not be as fondly remembered as Shadowgate.

The NES version is completely, utterly neutered.

When Uninvited made it's way to the home consumer, less powerful 8-bit console, it had to be chopped down.  The descriptions in the original Macintosh version are much more vivid and fully realized.  It's immediately obvious in a side-by-side comparison of one of the first rooms you see.  First we have the NES version:

And now for the Macintosh version...

In fact, I'd say this proves my point about The Lurking Horror, namely that fantastic descriptions in text form can enhance a gaming environment.

Unfortunately, not only did the NES version pare down text based on the capabilities of the system, it pared it down to satisfy the NES family-friendly image.  Take a look at this difference in appearance of one of the spectres you encounter:

The NES version:

And now, the Mac version:

With Shadowgate, the NES' charming 8-bit, full colour graphics worked well, complimenting the game's sadistic sense of humour.  With Uninvited...well...to answer the question:  is it scary?  No.  Not on the NES.  When I was a little kid, absolutely.  The Belle in particular was terrifying.  Now, not so much.

But the Mac Version?  STILL SCARY.

...and I have some great news.  It so happens that the original makers of Uninvited, in cooperation with Humble Bundle, have created ports of the Mac versions of all of the MacVenture games, and they run natively on modern computers with no tricky finagling.  They're incredibly cheap at $2 a pop,  or you can grab all four and save yourself a buck.

I highly recommend the Mac Version of Uninvited.  It's creepier, more fully realized, and it features an added challenge in the form of a time limit; as the mansion's evil presence gradually overwhelms you, you'll be interrupted by a leering skull periodically until you are fully possessed and lost forever.

Uninvited stands as a cornerstone in gaming history alongside its MacVenture siblings, and a vital piece of the horror genre, though at the time we didn't know it.  Though few played it on the MacIntosh in 1984, enough - like myself - found out about it retroactively to keep it alive.  In a way, it's both comforting, and terrifying, to think that progress marches on whether we're aware of it or not.  It's up to each of us whether we accept the invite to join in.

Who Needs Graphics: A Review of "The Lurking Horror"

A History of Imagination

Horror and video games have been intertwined for almost the entirety of the latter's history.  If you can believe it, the first horror video game (insofar as you identify “horror” by standard tropes of ghosts, ghouls, etc.) was on the Magnavox Odyssey, the first widely available commercial gaming system. The game in question, Haunted House (1972), relied on an “overlay” – translucent sheets that were placed overtop of your television screen to serve as environments, backgrounds, game boards and more – that put players in, as you might have guessed...a Haunted House. One player, the “detective,” would navigate through the house, trying to obtain items, while the second player, the “ghost,” would use a button on his controller to become invisible, then try to startle the detective while hiding the items.

I did not own a Magnavox Odyssey, and thus did not play Haunted House. I mention it because I think it illustrates an important point about horror in video games, and by extension horror in general. Limitations of technology in the early days of video games meant we needed to use our imagination. And the greatest fear of all lies in our imagination.

None of this is to say that Haunted House was actually scary, or for that matter that other, early “horror” games like, say, Atari's 1982 Haunted House (which was also an item collection game with monsters to avoid... go figure) were actually scary. No, in my opinion, it wasn't until the advent of storylines in video games that horror became actually scary.

Enter Infocom.

Infocom, at the height of its popularity, was a software company that was critically and commercially acclaimed through its long list of “interactive fiction” titles. Interactive fiction was exactly what it sounds like: fictional stories you interacted with...entirely through text. If that sounds boring, it actually wasn't. Infocom had the idea to include detailed story background in the manuals they shipped with their games, and they also included “feelies;” little bits and bobs from the actual game universe that made it feel that much more real for the player. For instance, with their adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,  Infocom included: 1) a pair of peril-sensitive glasses (actually a glasses-shaped piece of black card) 2) a “microscopic space fleet” (an empty plastic bag), 3) a “Don't Panic” button 4) pocket fluff (yep) and 5) a pair of demolition notices, one for your house, and one for your planet. They had some truly fantastic writers working for them, and they came onto the scene with a tremendous hit: Zork.

Zork, if you have never heard of it, is a series of adventure games that take place in the Great Underground Empire, and were known for their wry sense of humour, their in-depth and fully realized shared universe, and – at the time – their highly sophisticated text parser. The parser understand commands from the player that contained more advanced prepositions than the usual run of text-based adventure games (like “punch orphan”). For me, though, the most famous part of Zork has to be the Grue. What is the Grue? Well...

A company that popularized a monster that lives in literally every dark space seemed destined to create a horror game at some point. And, in 1987, in their twilight years following their acquisition by Activision, they did: The Lurking Horror.

Becoming Acquainted with The Lurking Horror

I have never owned The Lurking Horror. This probably raises a couple of questions right away. Firstly, how can I have played it if I never owned it? Well, the easy answer is that it's now free, online, and you should definitely play it if you like old video games. Secondly, how could I have owned it? As someone born in 1986...I would have been all of 1 year old when this game came out.

You see, I'm the youngest in my family, and growing up, I played the games that my father and brother bought. We had an Apple IIc that one of my uncles bought for us, and we spent many happy hours on that thing playing classics like Spy Hunter, Bubble Bobble, and Lode Runner. We also had a large collection of Infocom games, including Planetfall, Stationfall, A Mind Forever Voyaging, and, yes indeed, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. We did not, sadly, have The Lurking Horror. No, it was only in the last few years that I found out that Infocom had even made a horror game...but once I did, I had to play it.

The plot for The Lurking Horror starts off straightforward, and quickly descends into Lovecraftian madness. You are a student at G.U.E. Tech (a not-so-subtle nod to Zork's Great Underground Empire), and you have gone to campus late at night to complete a term paper. You travel to the school's computer lab through a brutal snowstorm, and commit to an all-nighter with only a lone hacker to keep you company. Creepy events soon diverge you from your original task, and you must delve into the dark secrets of the university to stop a terrible evil from emerging far beneath the earth.

I was also keen to find out what “feelies” the original game had come with. Luckily, this was actually easily done. Thanks to a couple of dedicated fans, there is a website that showcases all of the Infocom library, with detailed information and pictures of the feelies that came with the games. You can find that site here. I highly recommend it for all fans of Infocom's work. You'll also notice that it was last updated in 2004, and at the time Activision actually exercised their right to block uploaded copies of the games, removing them from the web. Thankfully, it's ten years later, and most of the rights have reverted or expired (such as Hitchhiker's Guide, which went back to Adams and in turn to the BBC, and is free to play on their site).

Getting back to The Lurking Horror, here's what came in the box:

• A student I.D. Card

• A freshmen's guide to the university

• Maps of the campus (these proved immensely useful for the gameplay, as navigating the university is key to success)

• This guy:

GWAHAHAHA.

The best part about the Centipede was that it wasn't mentioned on the box art or description, which meant finding it could result in a nasty scare from the get-go.

And were there further scares to be found once I began to play The Lurking Horror? Well...

OK, but is it Scary?

If you find horror novels scary, you will find The Lurking Horror Scary.  As I mentioned earlier, since The Lurking Horror is a text-based adventure game, you're naturally forced to use your imagination to construct the scenario and environment based on the descriptions you're given.  Those descriptions are where this game shines.  Very close to the beginning of the game, when you first try to get to work on your paper by turning on a PC (which also serves as the game's rudimentary copy protection; thankfully if you play it online the person who ported it thought to give that information right on the web page), the screen rapidly devolves into a nightmare vision that becomes all too real.  Next thing you know you're being sacrificed on an otherworldly altar to a beast from beyond our dimension.

From there, you're forced to navigate the school's subterranean network of tunnels, access hatches, and elevators, all of which are dimly lit at best. This leads to a fantastic encounter with a plague of rats, further run-ins with other netherbeasts, and a maniacal professor who attempts to bargain your soul for power. My personal favourite moment, though, has to be when you uncover the terrible fate of the urchins that prowl the school grounds. You'll run into one such urchin quite often, and he serves as a cryptic and distrustful source of information. He mentions, among other things, that a number of his pals have gone missing (as have many students), and he freaks right out when you mention the University's mysterious department of Alchemy. Below ground, though, is where things become downright terrifying.

It's fun to think of these urchin-creatures as progenitors of some of the monsters of the Silent Hill franchise. I have no idea if those designers ever played The Lurking Horror. But if not, they should.

Heavily Lovecraft inspired (the writer is even mentioned explicitly by name several times), atmospheric, The Lurking Horror gave me a chance to live out the nostalgia of my family's Infocom collection while experiencing an all new adventure. Like any book, the lack of graphics or illustration require you to use your imagination, but with a proper story you quickly realize you don't need anything else. The story bends and twists and, like many Infocom titles, can be a bit difficult, but is quite rewarding. And, in spite of the at-times grim and frightening scenes you encounter, they never forget to give you moments of their trademark sense of humour.