Tag: Single post review
Moirai: A Singularity of Bad Metafiction
The game is free on Steam and takes about five minutes to play, so do so if you care about spoiler since I’m going to recap the whole thing under the cut.
Stasis
I generally interact with horror games through the medium of youtube. Sometimes I make ill-advised forays into actually loading a live game on my computer, but that generally ends with me retreating back to someone else playing – I like horror settings but don’t like being startled, and I really don’t like trying to detach myself from it enough to not be startled.
Stasis followed the opposite track. I started to watch someone play and became so engaged with the game that watching someone else play was intolerably frustrating. This is a point and click game with gorgeously bleak atmosphere and even more gorgeously bleak prose popping up whenever you mouse over things. The opening is absolutely perfect, so much that, as soon as I’d seen a few minutes of the game, I knew I’d recommend people play it just for that alone even if the rest didn’t live up to it.
…which, it turns out, is good, because the rest did not. I’d still strongly recommend checking it out, and if you’re good at just kind of coasting on lovely horrific atmosphere without getting caught up in putting things together the whole game might be fun, but if you hit a point it feels like it’s gotten bad, just quit, it’s not going to get better and you don’t really want the answers. You can also check out the demo instead – it doesn’t have quite the polish of the finished game, but it’s of the best section of the game. Definitely do one of those two things before continuing, because most of my complaints are the most spoilery parts of the game. (more…)
End Roll
Milk for the Ugly, annie96 is typing, & Format in Horror Stories
Milk for the Ugly is a weird little thing, listed as a “motion book”. annie96 is typing plays out as a real-time chat. Both use the format to enhance the horror, but one has nothing else going for it. (more…)
Authority
The second book of the Southern Reach trilogy! Go read the first one.
This one is much less traditionally horror. (Though the moments it has are quite effective. I particularly hope someone makes a short movie out of the first expedition snippets.) When I began reading it, I was wondering if it’d actually make more sense to read this one first, since there’s a lot about the character trying to figure out what happened in the previous book so you already know and it’s harder to be anxious about. As things went on, though, that dramatic irony expanded to include that precious horror staple, the slow disaster that the main character is unaware of.
Also, after Dresden, it’s just so nice to have a main character who is a nice, pleasant person.
Oxenfree
Oxenfree is a neat little indie horror adventure game that I’ve bought on a sale for, like, two bucks. I’m not entirely sure it’s worth the full price, but as it is, it was enjoyable.
Nachtigal
This was haunting, but not in a good way. I got an anti-rec for this on the basis that it involves two very white vampires menacing a dark-skinned girl while saying her skin color probably means she doesn’t even taste good and implying that there is normally no one in Europe who isn’t snow-colored, and the race issues turned out to be the least horrible part.
This is a free game, so…I guess check it out if you want to play what amounts to Wither: The Visual Novel.
Annihilation
I stumbled upon this book by chance. My father mentioned it was mysterious horror very in line with my interests, then the cat woke me up with her mouse murders and I decided to read the first page, and then I ended up committed to reading the whole thing because there was no hope of falling asleep after that. I would highly recommend it.
Dresden Files AAAA Wizardry
I want in on the DF trainwreck, and this short story was published in the DF RPG Vol.2, so I feel entitled to snatch it from Farla. There are miscellaneous minor spoilers for future books, including one regarding Harry’s new position in the Council. So, all the three of you who care about it, you’ve been warned.
Without farther ado, let’s begin.
VA-11 Hall-A: A Cybercozy Story
Time to get drunk and rant at you!
Middens, or What If Chara Were a Gun
Middens is a freeware RPGMaker game that can be found here. If you like Yume Nikki and collage art, you’ll probably like it, so go get it now. I’ll wait.
Pony Island
Well, the game was a mess and not in a way it wanted to be.
Science Girls
Farla has made a tradition of giving me weird, cheap indie PC games for Christmas. This year’s offering was Science Girls, an RPG about six high school students in a science club who have to fight off an alien invasion. The game is very enthusiastic and well-intentioned, but it botched the execution so very, very badly.
Fate/Extra: Extra Clothes Are Not Included
Fate/Extra is an RPG taking place in a world alternative to the canon Nasuverse where mana has disappeared from Earth somewhere in 70s. As a result, magecraft has died out and former magi families reinvented themselves as spiritual hackers, people capable of using their magic circuits to “digitize their souls” and enter virtual worlds wholly rather than interacting with them through an interface. It’s kinda unclear what they normally do with that ability aside from playing virtual LARP games as the game takes place in a very special setting that probably doesn’t have an analog on Earth.
Specifically, we find ourselves on the Moon. There is an ancient computer beneath the surface built by unknown hands. From the dawn of humanity it recorded all information about Earth from the movement of tectonic plates to lives of ameba to thoughts and ideal of every single person. Its purpose is unknown, but what is known is that it hosts a modified version of the Holy Grail War to which all spiritual hackers who can find their way in are invited. Hundreds of magi would fight in an elimination tournament, and the last one standing would get their wish, any wish granted.
You are one of these magi. Prepare to get flashed.