Betrayal at The House on The Hill – Build-A-Bear but Less Terrifying:

Posted on by in Gaming, tabletop

When you finish secondary school, one of the main fears you have is that you won’t be able to cope with the drastic changes it forces upon you. In the UK, you are required by law to remain in some form of education or training until the age of 18. After that, you are deemed an adult by society and mostly left to your own devices, except when bill payments and the tax man come around. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a young person, especially considering you’ve been asking them to make decisions that could impact the rest of their lives, with little to no life experience to back up those choices.

The other big fear is that you will lose all the friends that you made. For many, they were what kept you going in tough times, provided a shoulder to lean on and a place of safety when everyone else seemed out to get you. They want you to succeed and you want only the best for them. Which often means, you must let them chase their dreams, even if you don’t get to see them for a long time. In the case of my friends from school, I only really see them about twice a year. So, the little time I do spend with them, is very important to us all. How do we spend that time? Simple. We spend an afternoon at a board game café, messing around, catching up and claiming to be the princess when in fact we are an evil cat (it makes sense in context, I swear).

Board game cafes are my life blood when it comes to socialising.

It was at our usual place that I came across what is one of my favourite board games now, Betrayal at The House on The Hill. To start, the players choose a character from the selection – such as a demonic little girl, a headstrong jock or a mad scientist. As a team, you explore the house – building it from a pile of tiles and discovering the secrets that lie within. From sinister whispers to a literal madman, each room you uncover leads you closer and closer to the main event. Some tiles have an omen symbol on them. Whenever an omen is triggered, you must roll to see if the “Haunt” begins.

Up until the Haunt, you are all on the same side. Exploring the house, helping one another, discovering the truth as chaos unfolds around you. However, when the Haunt begins, there’s no real way to tell what is going to happen next. With 50 scenarios in the standard game and dozens more in the expansions, no one playthrough of the game is the same. The type of Haunt you experience depends on what room you are in and what omen last occurred, so there are a ridiculous number of combinations to choose from.

Because who doesn’t want to play as a girl that would be better suited to a horror movie?

The Haunt is where the “betrayal” part of the game’s title comes into play. Depending on the scenario, one of you has turned to the dark side. That player must take the traitor’s tome and read the scenario’s instructions, in private, such that the remaining players are kept in the dark. The rest of the group reads their copy of the scenario, which explains what they need to do in order to survive and escape the house alive. This ranges from performing a séance to put a spirit’s weary soul to rest, to taking down a seemingly immortal axe murderer that is trying to axe them a few too many questions.

It’s a fascinating dynamic, as the game actively encourages you to work together. So, when the traitor reveals themselves and the ghouls of the house start to wreak havoc, it’s jarring and unnerving. I’ve known my group of friends from secondary school for nearly a decade now, so to say we know one another quite well is a bit of an understatement. Yet, when we play Betrayal, we often see a darker side of our normally kind-hearted friends.

It is great fun to just pick up the traitor tome and walk away, leaving your friends to wonder what you’re going to do in order to win.

I’ll give you an example. In one round, we played in teams of two, pairing the experienced players with the newcomers. As there were only three new players and five experienced ones, it meant that my close friend and I ended up on the same team – such that the two gamers weren’t given any advantages! However, when the Haunt was triggered, we became the traitor. Our character had discovered an ancient sarcophagus in the house and had to reunite him with his loved one – reincarnated in the body of a little girl we had rescued from another room in the house. When reunited with one another, they’d become so powerful that the leaders of the world would bow before them instantly. The world would burn and be remade in their image. The others wanted to stop it.

However, the problem with one of your own team turning on you, is that you are intimately aware of one another’s strengths and weaknesses. There’s a sense of familiarity and trust that is shattered when the players who protected you earlier in the game, are now the one’s holding the knife at the end of an unlit hallway. One of the other pairs had the most intelligent character and had the highest chance of thwarting our plan. So, we chased them down and killed them. It was a ruthless act, but it ended up winning us the game (that and the fact the others kept failing the elevator roll and taking damage from it).

No-one is safe. Not in this house.

More than anything, I think the reason that betrayal appeals to me so strongly, is that it hints at the darkness in humanity. Sure, zombies and vampires can be terrifying but, in our minds, we know that they aren’t real. The true horror of psychopaths and traitors is that they could be us. For all we know, they could have been stood where we are standing only a few months ago. Human psychology is as fascinating as it is terrifying. We often surprise ourselves with what we are truly capable of, and not always in a good way. So many crime dramas have the least suspicious person turn out to be the killer.

As a core principle, I believe that everyone is inherently good. I do not see the point in anger or cruelty or hate. To me, it feels like needless aggression that takes a toll on all involved parties – be they active participants or merely observers. The sad thing is that these good people can be swayed, manipulated and led astray – to believe in twisted causes and harmful world views, to betray those they care about. Which is why games that have you think from the villain’s mindset, are always intriguing.

Anyways, that’s my two cents on a very fun board game. There are expansion packs and a D&D inspired version of the game so if you’re interested, go find it! I highly recommend it, especially as a late-night bonding experience for a small group.

Till next week,

CaitlinRC (Happy new year 😊)

Baba Is You – Thankfully Less Stressful Than Coding:

Posted on by in Gaming

For those who follow my Twitter (@CaitlinRC), you’ll know that I am in my final year of university and am studying Computer Science. So programming, logic and technology are a major part of my life – academically and recreationally. Despite all the programming languages that my studies have taught me, at its core – logic statements are what will make or break a program. You can have the most sophisticated interface on the planet but that does nothing if the assumptions you’ve based it all on are incorrect.

When I spotted Baba Is You on the Nintendo Switch Shop, I was intrigued. Normally, gaming doesn’t always have the most accurate grasp on the pillars of computing as an industry – focusing more on the science fiction fantasies. These are great and all, some of which forming stellar gameplay ideas and storylines but to really understand programming, you need to understand logical thinking. My university got us to do a series of logic puzzles and problems, like those you’d find in a Professor Layton game, as tutorial work for our first module. So, a game based around logical statements, gradually growing more complex and adding new variables as you progress? Right up my alley.

Can confirm this is what my speech devolves into after too long programming.

Before I get into the meat of Baba Is You, I want to talk a bit about logical thinking and its influence on our lives. Growing up, I was always told that people tend to either be logical or creative, and that the two rarely crossed over. Those who were more creative, would go on to study drama, art and humanities whilst the logical kids would be the scientists of the future. Nowadays, we all know that’s a bunch of horse shit but as a kid it really stuck with me. I was clearly logical, excelling more at maths and science than at drawing a picture of a bunch of bananas or taking on the role of Reno in a production of Anything Goes. Art, writing and drama seemed out of reach for me.

However, logic and creativity are so strongly interlinked that one cannot feasibly exist without the other. Some of the greatest accomplishments in human history have come from the combination of logical thinking and creative ideas – such as Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machine sketches, drawn over four hundred years before the Wright brothers had their first successful flight. Any problem can be broke down and overcome with a little imagination and logic. It’s an incredible feat of humanity, that has persisted across our evolution.

2nd best duo in AC, just behind Evie and Jacob (fight me world i love them)

For me, logic rules my thinking most of the time. I am an incredibly logical person, to the point where there’s a running joke that I’m secretly an android infiltrating humanity. I can neither confirm nor deny it! When it comes to emotions, relationships and social interaction, I struggle to apply this logic to other people. I’ll examine body language, tone of voice and any other cues I can find, in order to draw a conclusion from a situation. This does lead to some apparently “insightful” and “wise” observations on my part (according to my friends anyways), but it also leads to a lot of stress on my mental state.

For logic to be successful, you need all the details. You must understand every facet of the situation in order to build your set of rules. Much like an android, I strive to analyse and understand everything and everyone around me, like a ridiculously elaborate game of spot the difference. Building the rulesets is hard. You’re terrified of being wrong but the anxiety that comes from not having those rules in place to help navigate the situation can be even worse. It’s part of the reason I love programming so much. It’s the joy of finding a solution that works, solving a complex problem and knowing that the rules are set in stone for you to follow.

YOU. SHALL NOT. PASS

Baba Is You is a cute little puzzle game, that applies logical thinking and the basics of programming to create a unique world with challenges that you genuinely wish to solve. It uses “blocks” of writing to establish three different parameters that you must play with – Actions, Objects/States and Connectives. Your aim is to win each level, by touching whatever object has been defined as “win”. Each connected series of “Object -> Connective -> Action” establishes a rule that must be adhered to as long as the rule is active. However, you can change the rules! Switching out one object for another, “deactivating” the rule as a whole or finding a sneaky loophole that allows you to skip over a seemingly unbeatable section of the level, is what Baba Is You is about.

With over 200 levels, a ridiculous amount of adorable characters and creative solutions, I think it’s a game that I will come back to a lot. If you like logic puzzles and cute little characters, I’d highly recommend trying it out.

Slightly concerned that the ocean seems to end in a light blue abyss.

2019 has been a great year for Mind Games. We launched in April and have been growing from week to week, with each amazing supporter of the site being a huge inspiration for me to keep working as hard as I can. In 2020, I am planning on upgrading the site a bit, so it looks a bit more professional and you can read some of my older posts without having to scroll through nearly a years-worth of content!

Thank you all once more and I hope you had a good festive period! Keep an eye out on the site’s Twitter for announcements, updates and ideas for new content – @OurMindGames.

Till next year,

CaitlinRC.

Christmas Shopper Simulator – The True Memeing of Christmas:

Posted on by in Gaming

When people think of the festive scene, the image that tends to come to mind is more of a wholesome, peaceful and family-oriented time, with the exchange of gifts and well-wishes being at the forefront. However, retail employee’s probably compare the shopping rush of Christmas with the stampede scene in the Lion King. Hopefully if you’re reading this when I publish it on Christmas Eve 2019, you aren’t still out hunting for presents for relatives that you forgot existed until the very last minute. If you are, then I send my deepest sympathies.

As someone who stresses excessively over upcoming deadlines, I tend to do my shopping early on. The concept of running around an extremely crowded shopping centre, struggling to find what I am looking for, is my definition of a nightmare. Social situations are hard enough but the anxiety of Black Friday and the big Christmas rush, is probably what my version of hell will look like when I finally end up there. All that carnage looks very much like the gameplay of the Christmas Shopper Simulator games released as a joke by the British gaming retailer – Game (Imaginative, I know).

Nothing strange going on here.

Personally, I’m not sure what was going through the developer’s minds when they were making these games, but I’m very glad they followed through. In a similar vein to the Goat Simulator games, it is an insane, buggy sandbox experience that frequently defies the laws of physics. Honestly, if it had been released for April Fools, nobody would’ve blinked an eye. Ridiculous, hilarious and just plain odd, it’s an experience to say the least. It’s just the right dose of insanity that we as gamers look for, despite it being a free marketing ploy from a retailer.

After all, who wouldn’t want a character selection screen where one of the stats you have is “Years Left to Live”. Plus, every good video game needs a bouncy castle in the starting area, that acts like a shuttle rocket into space than a children’s birthday party activity. You can buy items, try to steal them, get tackled by security or angry grandmothers and punch Santa in his bowl full of jelly, much to the horror of the local children. From kicking, to taking selfies, to attaching balloons to unsuspecting civilians and changing the elevator’s speed, it’s essentially a poltergeist’s definition of a great time.

Star Wars eat your heart out.

There is a set of missions and objectives to follow in order to “complete” the game but personally I just ignore them. This kind of game is very much what you make of it and if you aren’t willing to try and fling yourself across the ice rink like your one true love is on the other side, then this probably isn’t the game for you. Experimentation is the order of the day. You unlock new abilities and activities if you complete the main plot, but that’s the only real incentive it gives you. The games are something you play for a laugh for an hour or so, then never again. But that’s ok, that’s the point!

The game is filled with niche references to British culture and the insanity of the Christmas shopping rush, especially the chaos that people call “Black Friday”. So, if you aren’t British, you might miss out on some of the laughs generated by goofy shop names. Yet, I think the slapstick nature of the game is worth a try, even if it’s just for a quick laugh before you switch it off and boot up whatever goodies you found under the Christmas Tree.

When in doubt, throw foam at people.

Before I sign off though, I’d like to wish you all a wonderful holiday season. Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, the Solstice or nothing at all, I hope you all have a wonderful time. Your support, feedback and suggestions have made this site what it is. I started the site as an idea, a concept that I felt hadn’t been covered in gaming journalism thus far. I didn’t expect it to do as well as it has.

Mental health is such an important issue. It touches every part of our lives, from the friendships we form, to the clothes we choose to wear. MindGames has touched lives, including mine and that alone is worth all the effort I put into it. So, thank you. For more than I can ever put into words.

See you next year,

CaitlinRC.

Kindergarten – Mean Girls Has Nothing on These Kids:

Posted on by in Gaming

People often reminisce about their school days, speaking fondly of teachers, playground games and the friendships they made. I only graduated from school a few years back, but I do the same, especially in the occasional meetups that I have with my old friends – in between the carnage that is university. As a military brat, I went to several different primary schools, but I can confirm that none of them were quite like the experiences of the New Kid in 2017’s indie puzzle game, Kindergarten and its recent sequel – Kindergarten 2.

It’s your first day at your new school and something is… not quite right. Whether it’s the ongoing missing child case, the murderous janitor and his beloved mop or the class teacher’s strange fondness of killing off her students, it doesn’t take a detective to realise that something is amiss at this school. If you want to make it through your first day, you’ll have to face the bully, befriend your fellow classmates, kill those who cause you problems and avoid several different forms of poisoning. You know, normal kid stuff.

Bit creepy there Nugget.

Kindergarten, like many indie games, was a big hit on YouTube. I’ve lost count of how many lets-plays there are of it but despite the content saturation, I think Kindergarten is one of those franchises that deserves every second of screen time it gets and more. At its core, the Kindergarten series are puzzle games. Each mission has a different set of requirements, but they are simple in nature. There are no ridiculously complicated codes to break or extremely vague clues that cause more confusion than assistance.

I think this simplicity mixed with darker themes and side-splitting hilarity is what has allowed it to retain its popularity, with the sequel being met with pure excitement than with mild trepidation, which happens with a lot of indie games. With a cast of goofy, multi-dimensional characters, there’s a lot more depth to Kindergarten than you’d expect to see from it. From Bugg’s dad having left him, to the twisted relationship between Ted and Felix, it can really make you think – as you watch your character get obliterated by the robot girl with a death laser.

Your friendly neighbourhood murderer, I mean Janitor.

Part of the appeal of puzzle games like Kindergarten is the sense of achievement it provides you. Whether it’s dying in a hilarious way, completing a mission or just trying something unexpected, the game actively rewards you for doing so – often the rarer Monstermon cards are unlocked this way. I don’t know whether it was intentional on the game designer’s part or not but this idea of experimenting, learning and trying new things is like what we try to teach kids from a young age (Just without the murder). It perfectly mimics that sense of childish glee that you see on a toddler’s face when they discover Playdough for the first time.

Being able to enjoy things just because they’re funny or ridiculous, is something that you often miss out on if you struggle with mental health issues – especially for depression sufferers. You lose interest in your hobbies; you struggle to smile at something that used to reduce you to fits of laughter and it just all seems… dark. You don’t see the point in laughing or smiling or going out of your way to try and escape the negative spiral you’ve been caught in – you feel you deserve that sadness, that emptiness. It’s a toxic cycle that is extremely hard to break out of. I speak from experience in that department.

WHY THE SPIDERS FELIX.

So, having a game series based around being childlike, messing around and completing the whackiest list of tasks on the planet – like pouring spiders on a child trapped in a hole, is more than just an excuse to laugh. It’s like being handed a get out of jail free card from that negative hole that you’ve been trapped in. Instead of having spiders thrown on you, someone throws you a rope and helps you climb out, even if it’s just for a little while. That time in the light, in the sense of happiness and genuine joy, makes surviving the next bout of darkness that much easier.

Plus, I think we can all relate to a few of the character’s in the game. Although exaggerated, the missions they set you are a lot deeper than you think. Let me talk about a few, from my point of view:

  1. Cindy’s Flower – Throughout this mission, Cindy has you do her bidding. From traumatising poor Lily by pouring a bucket of blood on her head, to potentially beating you to death for not giving her money whilst playing a game of “house”, it’s clear that this is a toxic relationship. Considering that Cindy is extremely young, it makes you wonder – why is this her idea of a good relationship? Why does she have a breathalyser?
  • Nugget’s Nuggets – Simultaneously the most beloved character and the whackiest, Nugget is certainly an odd case. For him to trust you, he asks you to complete various tasks to gain five nuggets of friendship, before he will truly talk to you. Apart from the poisoning you bit and killing off the school bully, he seems desperate for a friend that he can trust – especially now that Billy is missing. He’s lonely. And in this deadly school, that’s a dangerous thing.
  • Cain’s Not Able – In the second game, you meet the brothers Felix and Teddy. Where Felix is bossy, confident and conceited, Teddy is shy, underconfident and eager to please. Their family’s business is wealthy and powerful, so Felix wants the full inheritance rather than having to share with his brother. So, he enlists you to help kill him. Depending on what path you take in the mission, you can help betray Teddy and kill him – ignoring his pleas for his brother to love him, or let Teddy know of the plot and help him seek his revenge. It’s an incredibly dark mission, not so subtly influenced by the bible story of Cain and Able.

The examples I’ve given are just a drop in the ocean of the potential talking points surrounding Kindergarten. So, give it a shot if you haven’t, it’s well worth the time! Plus, Nugget is best boy.

Till next time,

CaitlinRC.

Horror Games – Eternal Screaming

Posted on by in Gaming, Real Life

I’ve never been good with horror. My brain has a habit of taking a titbit of information about blowing it way out of proportion in a cinematic-style nightmare that Alfred Hitchcock would be proud of. So, I haven’t played many horror games. Often, I start a game and painstakingly make my way through the first few levels or areas, with my heart being in my mouth and my hands clenching so much that I’m surprised that there are dents in my controllers from where my fingers were. Then, I experience a horrifying jumpscare or an unavoidable fight with a monstrosity that urges me to turn off my console faster than a power cut.

For example, I’m trying to finish PREY, as I have a good idea for an article on it and I am enjoying the storyline immensely. I’m just having to recover between sessions, as my body needs time to rest after crawling along the corridors, praying that the Phantom’s don’t see me because my lungs can’t last much longer without oxygen. I’ll get there eventually. In like a decade. Or six.

GET THEE BACK PHANTOM DEMON

Curiously, I enjoy watching playthroughs of horror games. My housemates have grown used to me being sat in the living room, occasionally jumping at a jumpscare that they can’t see. Then again, I’ve walked into a housemate lying face down on the sofa, making an odd high-pitched noise, so I guess we’re all a bit weird here. Quite a few of my friends are naturally anxious, paranoid and easily scared, yet are obsessed with the genre that should be their worst nightmare.

In human psychology, our fight-or-flight response is triggered during dangerous events or moments of extreme fear. Yet, we keep playing the games. We keep going back to the jumpscares and the dark corridors with unfathomable horrors hiding in every corner of it. So, why does the horror genre have such success when it seemingly goes against human nature?

Still remarkably terrifying to this day.

This idea of actively seeking danger can be seen in many aspects of our lives – such as the existence of rollercoasters, bungee jumping and extreme sports. As a species, we seem to seek out dangerous situations rather than avoiding them as our instincts and ancestors scream for us to do. It’s an interesting conundrum to be sure, as well as a popular research topic in psychological studies. Fear is one of the most fundamental parts of what makes us human, so we strive to understand and harness it in any way possible. The gaming industry agrees with this practise and actively builds upon it.

We’ve talked before about horror games and the sense of isolation, anxiety and fear they can put upon their players – in our Alien Isolation piece. However, I wanted to talk a bit more generally about the genre as sometimes being able to step back allows us to gain a greater understanding of a situation. The big picture, so to speak. The big, horrible, terrifying, grotesque picture. Seriously, are the art departments at gaming companies ok? Some of the monsters in games nowadays are regular stars in my nightmares, so naturally I’m worried about the designers who thought up the unimaginable horrors.

Although I love watching others play Outlast, I will NEVER play it myself.

When it comes down to it, I think the horror genre has such success because it provides us with a sense of control that we often lose in the real world. In a scary situation you can’t just hit the pause button until you regain your composure. You must grit your teeth and fight on through, even though every part of you just wants to curl up somewhere quiet and escape it for a while. With horror games you can try to overcome those fears with no real fear of failure. Sure, sometimes you’ll struggle to complete a game but there’s no shame in giving up on it, after all – it’s only a video game.

This idea of control can also be tied to our sense of achievement. When it comes to things like mental health conditions, phobias and other disabilities, there never really is an end point to the battle. No credits roll, no emotional cutscene plays and no satisfying conclusion tries to tie all the loose ends together for you. You’ve merely managed to leap over one hurdle on a racetrack filled with more and more challenges for you to face. Sometimes you fall but instead of respawning at a save point, that pain stays with you – you learn to live with it, to take what lessons you can from it and to avoid it in future.

I don’t think I’ll ever recover from finding the baby in the bathroom. THIS IS NOT A HYGEINIC SLEEPING PLACE BABY.

Yet in video games, when those credits roll or that achievement pops – you feel you’ve accomplished something. The relief and sense of pride that floods your emotions after finishing a terrifying horror game is such a unique experience that it’s hard to really put into words. Whether you made it one level or collected every collectible in the game, you completed something that every rational part of human psychology would want you to run away from. That’s something to be proud of.

To all you horror gamers out there, I salute your bravery. However, I’m going to go back to hiding under my fluffy blanket and hurling my controller across the room at the slightest spook.

Till next time,

CaitlinRC.