Tag: horror

PREY – This Article Is A Mimic:

Posted on by in Gaming

In the eternal time-vortex that is the COVID-19 lockdown and pandemic, I realised that I had never finished my playthrough of the game PREY. Considering I’d had a tonne of ideas for articles about the spooky space adventure, I decided it was time to remedy that. However, when loading up my save, I realised that I had left my Morgan Yu in a corridor with a Nightmare and no real way out. So, like any normal person, I decided to watch an in-depth lets-play and scream quietly into my pillow at every jumpscare. I’ll go back and officially finish the game myself one day, maybe as a Halloween stream if that is something that you’d be interested in.

One of the main features of PREY is the enemy type called the Mimic. As its name suggests, it mimics objects in its surroundings and blends in, until you get too close, at which point it tries to eat your face. Personally, my coffee cup becoming sentient and trying to consume the flesh from my bones is on my list of “Things I Never Want to Happen to Me Ever on The Face of The Planet”. Then again, that list isn’t particularly long (yet). Mimic’s can take on the form of nearly any object, forcing you to constantly scan your surroundings for anything that is out of place. That additional coffee cup? Mimic. That oddly angled chair? Mimic. That person trying to kill you? Not a mimic, just a jerk.

…I love my coffee but am not a fan of getting my face consumed.

You are Morgan Yu, a tester of devices known as “Neuromods”, which allow the user to gain new abilities and skills instantly, though it does involve inserting a needle into your eye which is scarier than most of the game’s monsters.  These abilities fall under two categories – Human, such as improved medicine, attack power and hacking ability, or Alien – which gives you access to the Typhon’s abilities like telekinesis, morphing and telepathy. This wide skillset allows the player to choose how they wish to approach each scenario they face, be it with stealth or an overpowered shotgun. My default approach is to try and be as stealthy as possible, then get discovered and panic until the enemies are all dead or I am dead.

Despite the outer-space surroundings and endless swarm of jerks, mimics, and phantoms, it is the atmosphere that makes PREY such a fascinating game. From the moment you start it up, you are consistently shown not to believe your eyes. Your apartment is a simulated environment, that you have been living in for three years, following the same daily routine (a la Groundhog Day). Three years of your memories have been wiped out from the use of Neuromods, and the entirety of Talos One has been overrun with the Typhoon menace. Every shadow seems to contain another monstrosity and you can’t trust what you see or hear.

You’ve heard of tall, dark and handsome. Welcome to massive, horrifying and demonic.

This look into what it’s like to not trust your own senses, gives us all a slightly glimpse into what people with Psychosis deal with every single day. Every individual’s experience with the mental illness is different but there are three main symptoms associated with a psychotic episode:

  1. Hallucinations
  2. Delusions
  3. Confused and Disturbed Thoughts

The mimic’s ability to imitate the world around you, forces you to distrust everyone and everything in sight. Your senses are heightened, every shadow is an enemy lying in wait and every unexplored corridor seems too dangerous to risk exploring. You are surrounded by death and chaos, followed by long stretches of eerie silence where every clang of metal or hiss of air causes you to jump ten feet in the air out of panic. It’s a remarkable combination of panic, distrust, and paranoia, lumped in with a healthy dose of genuine fear.

Nope, nope, nope, nope nope, nope nope NOPE

When the Nightmare shows up for the first time after entering the Arboretum, you catch a glimpse of your greatest threat yet. Sure, the mimics and phantoms all want to kill you, but their existence doesn’t revolve around it. The Nightmare, however, only has one sole purpose in life – to hunt you down and tear you limb from limb. It really should get a better hobby, I’m just saying. Try fishing or something.

These things are fast, strong, and capable of swiping your head off with one hit. No matter how powered up you are, these things are more than able to take you out. Those Neuromods I mentioned earlier? Yeah, the more of the “Alien” ones that you use, the more the Nightmare will show up. It’s not worth fighting these guys. It’s a waste of ammo for a one-time reward, with a high mortality rate.

GET BACK SATAN

Encountering your first nightmare, you’d probably assume that it’s just a set-piece and that the abomination will probably turn up as a boss fight near the end of the game. A logical assumption but an incorrect one. These things will stalk you across Talos One, destroying everything and everyone that is in their way. To quote the in-game description – “If all else fails, run.”

Another aspect of PREY that I absolutely MUST mention, is it’s ending. The grand finale of the game has you facing down an enormous Typhon called an Apex, which is threatening to consume the entirety of Talos One. You have the choice of trying to escape, neutralising the Typhon, or setting off the station’s self-destruct sequence and sacrificing yourself. Your actions earlier on in the game, will dictate whether you survive your stay on Talos One.

…Please don’t eat me

Throughout the game, when you encounter other humans, you don’t have to kill them. You are provided with plenty of non-lethal options to deal with your non-supernatural foes. After all, everyone on Talos One is also fighting back against the Typhons. They just don’t want their coffee cup to eat them, is that too much to ask? Each person you spare or kill, whether you choose to free or rescue those in danger, as well as the ending you choose – will be laid out in front of you in a post-credit scene.

The whole game was an experiment. Morgan Yu, your player character, is a captured Typhon entity with Morgan’s memories implanted into it. Every part of the storyline that you played through, was a memory and a test to see whether Typhon’s were capable of developing empathy and human emotions. Dependent on your choices throughout the game, the experiment is either deemed a success or a failure. If you fail, then you die.

Is anyone else getting a James Bond villain from Alex?

However, if you succeed, then Alex (Morgan’s brother) reveals something to you. The Typhons have already invaded Earth. The efforts you went through to contain the Typhon threat, were for nothing. However, by showing that you as a Typhon can develop empathy and emotions, proves that peace could be brokered between the remaining members of humanity and the invading Typhons. It is up to you to choose whether you want to be that bridge between the groups as a hybrid of the two.

We all know that I love games that have consequences for your actions. It forces you to care a bit more about the world you are exploring and the character’s you interact with. That fear and paranoia that you experience throughout the game becomes tenfold when you realise that your anxious trigger finger could be the end of a genuinely good person’s life.

Anyways, apologies that this article took so bloody long! I made it a bit longer to make up for the delay, so hopefully it was all that you were hoping for. If you have other games that you’d like to see my take on (eventually), leave them in the comments or message me on Twitter (@OurMindGames).

CaitlinRC.

Ten Candles – We Fear The Dark For A Reason:

Posted on by in Gaming, Other TTRPG's, Real Life, tabletop

As my final term at university passes by, I often sit back and reflect on how far I’ve come. From admitting I had mental health issues, to starting medication, to starting Mind Games and preparing to go out into the world as a fully-fledged adult – it’s been a hell of a journey. A big part of that process has been the time I have spent with my friends. Since I don’t really drink and the university clubbing scene is the definition of a panic attack for me, I tend to stick to sober events. Watching films, playing video games, chatting with friends and sucking at minigolf, I’ve done it all. My favourite thing to do though, is play board games with those friends. Especially ones that stay with you.

I’ve spoken before about Dungeons and Dragons on the site and anyone who follows my Twitter will know that I’m currently running a campaign for some friends. However, the world of tabletop gaming is not just D&D, much to the shock of many. Thanks in part to the afternoons I’ve spent in board game cafes with my friends from school, and to communities like Dicebreaker – I’ve gotten to explore the genre that I love, a bit more deeply. From Dead of Winter and Betrayal at The House on The Hill, to Call of Cthulhu and Band of Blades, there’s a massive range of games out there for you and more are being developed every single day.

If you read my Betrayal article, you’ll know what these are for.

One tabletop game that has really hit close to home for me recently is the horror RPG, Ten Candles. There aren’t many games that can stun my friends into silence for more than a few seconds, yet Ten Candles manages it. Every decision that my players made were given an extensive level of thought, detail and care, before committing to it. Considering these are the same players that tend to throw fireballs first and ask questions later, it’s an astounding difference to witness. So, what is Ten Candles? Why am I committing an entire article to it? Why should you play it? Let me tell you.

Humans have always feared the dark. Though when you delve further into it, it’s more a fear of the unknown. We can cope with what we can see, what we know is there. It’s a quantifiable problem that we can take steps to combat. In the pitch black, you don’t know what’s there, what it’s doing or whether that prickling on the back of your neck is it creeping ever closer. Ten Candles is played mostly in the dark. Once you finish creating the characters you will tell the story with, you turn off any lights in the room. Your only illumination is by the ten candles sat in the centre of the table.

And we are alive.

The sky has gone dark. No sun, no satellites, no phones or GPS. Power grids have failed across the continents and the world you know has been plunged into darkness. Creatures known only as “They”, stalk the shadows, cutting down the last remnants of humanity as you struggle to survive in this post-apocalyptic world. “They” will claim your life in the end. That much is certain. Ten Candles isn’t about survival or “winning”. It’s a game about loss and hope, about finding light in the darkness and making your last moments of living worthwhile.

This is how to grab an audience’s attention.

There aren’t any overly complex rules or time-consuming preparations to make in order to enjoy Ten Candles. All you really need are candles, paper, pens, some regular dice (6-sided) and something to dispose of/burn the paper slips in. Time is marked by the extinguishing of candles. For each failed conflict (dictated by dice rolls), a candle is darkened. If you don’t fail any conflicts, a candle will go out eventually. The end comes for us all, eventually. When you have one final candle left, the Last Stand begins. This is the final scene of the game in which every character will die. It’s inevitable.

Once every character has perished, the final candle is blown out. You sit, in complete darkness and listen to a recording your players recorded as their characters at the start of the game. Their voices, speaking words of hope and sorrow, are haunting, especially with their death scene ringing in their ears. When the recording ends, you all sit there in the darkness – lost in your own thoughts and reflecting on the dark journey they will have taken over the past few hours.

Before the lights go out and the game begins, you must create your characters. Characters are made up of five characteristics – Virtues (positive trait), Vices (negative trait), Concepts (who are you), Moments and Brinks. Your Virtue, Vices and Brinks are made by the players either side of you – allowing totally unique characters to be made in every session. Your Concept and your Moment are entirely your choice. A Moment is a scenario in which your character can find hope. Be that reuniting with a lost family member, taking down one of “Them” or finding somewhere safe to stay the night, these Moments provide you with another dice in the Last Stand – increasing your chances of achieving something significant in your final moments.

As much as I didn’t discuss the Establishing Truths phase, these three lines are what stays with you.

Brinks are a bit different. A brink is what your character is like when pushed to the edge. What do they do when faced with loss or grief? Do they fly into a rage? Were they a murderer before this all began? The possibilities are endless. As the players decide the Brink for the person on their left, this means that the GM is also involved. The GM plays as “Them”, and they have seen one of the players at their breaking point. This means the players Brink is kept secret. Meanwhile the player to the right of the GM gets to decide what form “They” take in the session. Do they worship the moon? Do they shapeshift? Do they mimic voices? What powers do they have?

This story is not a happy one. It is a joint tale of hope, desperation, fear and co-operation in the darkness. Although the GM is there to lead the story, they are not in control of everything that happens. Sometimes, it is up to the players to narrate what happens. Everyone at the table works together to weave a story they deem worthy of telling. Their interactions, their moments of hope and loss, their eventual deaths – they all must have meaning and weight behind them. At the end of the world, you are what will be the difference between the light and the darkness.

We may be destined to die but it is up to you how it happens.

If you can, I’d suggest playing this yourself. You can get a PDF of the rulebook or a paper-copy from cavalrygames.com to support the creator Stephen Dewey – a very talented developer. It is an experience that I feel will stay with you for a long time and bring your friends closer together.

Till next week,

CaitlinRC.

Stories Untold – We All Must Face What We Have Done:

Posted on by in Gaming

As we have covered many times over the last year, I am not a fan of horror games. Any enjoyment that could be derived from being scared, is ruined by the paralysing anxiety that accompanies it. I tend to avoid any and all horror like the plague – better than safe than sorry. However, when it comes to psychological horror, I’m a bit more open minded. Psychology has always fascinated me. People often like to joke that those who like to study the inner workings of the human psyche, are either wanting to understand the “unstable” or are “unstable” themselves. Obviously, it’s a whole load of rubbish but there is a grain of truth in there.

Humanity, as a species, strives to understand what we often deem impossible to comprehend. We quantify and label, document and test everything and anything we can get our grubby little hands on. There’s so much we know about the world around us yet so little we understand about how our own minds work. With words alone, we can change a crowd into a mob, start a rebellion, incite cruelty and bring joy to those who seek it. I’ve never been good at understanding emotions, particularly my own. Anger, hatred and cruelty are all foreign concepts to me.

So, when a game claims to be a psychological horror, I am curious as to what hidden truths it will strive to extract from the gold mine that is the human mind.

Stories Untold, is one such game. Presented as a four-part episodic experience in the style of old school text adventure games, it weaves such an intricate web that when the finale arrives, it knocks you flat on your back and holds you there – controlling every rise and fall of your chest. Even when you know what is coming, repeat playthroughs allow you to notice every subtle link and minute detail that builds such a vivid picture in your mind, it’s as if you are standing there, watching it all unfold in front of your eyes but are powerless to do anything to stop it. I love it.

Now, if you haven’t played it and want to do so without any spoilers – stop reading now, go play it and then come back with the experience fresh in my mind. Do come back though, I’ll be lonely otherwise. For those of you who are still reading, lets talk spoilers. The first three chapters each seem to have their own standalone story, meanwhile the final chapter links all of them together. I’m going to talk about each chapter in turn. The four chapters are titled – The House Abandon, The Lab Conduct, The Station Process and The Last Session.

Don’t pick up the phone. You never know who is on the other end.

The first episode, The House Abandon, follows the more traditional style of text adventures. You, the player, drive up to your family’s holiday home. After starting up the generator and unlocking the front door, you’re given the chance to explore the building – reminiscing about your childhood and the fond memories that the old walls hold. Eventually, you find your way to your bedroom and find your old computer – that your father dug out of the attic, along with a copy of a very familiar game, the House Abandon. Upon booting up the game, the power goes out. When everything flickers back to life, it’s all changed. The welcoming house becomes filled with stains, broken windows, dead carcasses and ominous writing on the walls. Instead of a kind note from your father, the note in your hand spits cruel, terrifying and hateful messages – to the point where it seems to burn into the palm of your hand.

A phone rings, breaking the uneasy silence that you have fallen into. You hear breathing down the phone and soon you realise that you are not alone anymore. Creaking floorboards, flickering lights and blaring alarms all echo around you, as if the house you are sat in, playing the game, is the same one as in the game itself… You struggle to distinguish between the actions of your player exploring the house and those of the individual sat controlling those movements. Negative emotions and memories pour out of the protagonist like a tidal wave, culminating in the door behind you creaking open. The computer accuses you of an unknown crime, demanding that you admit that it was all your fault. It barrages you with insults, hurling abuse until you at last type the words “It was all my fault”. It’s response? “Finally.”

Not an ominous setup at all.

In The Lab Conduct, you play as Mr Aition – a volunteer who has agreed to take part in a series of experiments conducted by Dr Daniel Alexander. These experiments are performed upon an object called “artefact 23”, which was recovered from a crash site for further study. Locked in the isolated laboratory, you use various machines such as an X-Ray, sound wave generators and high-powered lasers on the object. At first glance, the artefact appears to be an animal heart of some kind, whose heartbeat we restart. However, upon exposure to extreme frequency sound waves, it explodes and reveals a metallic sphere.

As a child, you’re always told not to stare at the sun, or it’ll hurt your eyes. Well, in Stories Untold, don’t stare at the hovering metallic sphere or it’ll knock you over, draw some blood and “connect” you to its inner core. You know, just normal things. Once connected, you walk through the spheres memories – reliving the crash, reaching out to a silhouette for help and waking up in a hospital bed, covered in wires and recovering from a torture session. When you pull out the wires, an alarm goes off. You, Mr Aition, hear that alarm as well. Yet again, the events seem to be occurring at the same time. Once you instruct the creature to leave their room, Dr Alexander recognises that you are causing this and begs for you to stop. Yet, you do not stop. You release all the spheres. They converge on you and as the world fades from around you, the last words of Dr Alexander ring in your ears – “Someday Mr Aition, this will haunt you.”

Don’t go out in the snow alone. People don’t come back.

The Station Process is a chapter that leans into the love of puzzle-solving that echoes in the hearts of most gamers. Using a microfilm reader with a guide on it, you, only known as “James”, must decrypt a series of signals and submit the correct code in order to pass on the relevant messages. The puzzles involve decrypting Morse Code, observing patterns and adjusting frequencies. Nerd that I am, I adore them. After all, what’s the point of studying Computer Science if you can’t show off your understanding everything occasionally? As you complete the puzzles, your fellow communication tower operators talk about something coming, attacking supply teams and ripping entire cabins out of the earth.

One of the signals you intercept is a distress signal that details how the rest of the world has been collapsed by the creatures that now stalk the mountain range that your cabins are situated on. They beg you to lock your doors and stay inside, but fate has other plans for you. When the main transmitter is knocked out of place, it’s your job to go fix it. When you’ve done so, you hear the voice of Station 2, a kind female voice, seemingly going into shock – unable to feel her legs and just wanting to rest. You can’t help her; you can’t help anyone. When you finally get back to the cabin, it’s not the one you left. It’s the bedroom from The House Abandon.

One of these things is not like the other, one of these things does not belong.

Clearly, there’s an overarching plot between these episodes. These lingering threads are all pulled together in The Last Session. As the opening credits play, they pause and pull back to reveal that you’ve been watching a TV show. Your character, James Aition, is wheeled by Dr Alexander into an empty room with a cassette recorder and prompted to try and recover the memories of what happened before he arrived in hospital. It is revealed that you were involved in a nasty car accident and had been in a coma for two weeks prior to the events of the game. Your last three attempts at recalling the accident had ended in panic, with the truth being mixed in with fantasy such that you couldn’t tell which was which.

The game proceeds to take you through the previous chapters. You return to the communication tower and examine the microfilm – which now displays a police report about the traffic accident you were in. Your sister, Jennifer, was trapped and critically injured and the other driver was found dead, with an empty bottle of whisky in his hand and stinking of alcohol. However, upon solving a puzzle, you hear a testimony of a friend of said driver, claiming that the guy had never spoken about alcohol before and would never imbibe like that – especially considering he was a former police officer. He accuses James of foul play.

Never been a fan of hospitals. Don’t think I ever will be.

We burst into the emergency room, to James’s heart stopping on the gurney and a haemorrhage threatening to destroy any chances of resuscitating him. Upon the doctor’s orders, you restart your own heart and drill into your skull – saving your life. As the drill approaches, you startle awake in the computer desk from The House Abandon. It details a leaving party being hosted by your family, to celebrate James going travelling with his friends abroad for several months in the new year. After having a few drinks and being gifted a nice bottle of whisky from his dad, Jennifer asks James whether he can give her a lift home. Unfortunately, you can’t say no to this choice (trust me, I tried).

As you stagger to the car, forget to take the handbrake off the car and drive faster than is safe, even when sober – Jennifer slowly realises that James is drunk. She begs him to slow down, to pull over, to just stop, but he does not listen. He goes faster, eventually crashing directly into oncoming traffic. When he awakens, he drags himself out of the car – leaving his sister in the burning wreckage. Terrified of going to jail and wrecking his reputation, James decides to frame the other driver by pouring alcohol on him, removing his fingerprints from the bottle and planting it in the dead driver’s car. When the police arrive, James collapses from his injuries and wakes up in the hospital room with Dr Alexander. The doctor takes James back to the TV room, stating that he will report what James said to the police.

Sometimes telling the truth, is the hardest thing to do.

More than anything, Stories Untold is about consequences. You must live with the consequences of your actions. Your choices affect more than just your life. They ripple, like pebbles on a lake’s surface, spreading further and further out until they form tidal waves that threaten to consume the lives of so many. In this case, James’s actions caused the death of his sister, the grief of his family, as well as the death and attempted framing of an innocent man. His panic at reliving what he had done, his refusal to accept the horrifying reality of his memories – all these lead us on this journey through the shattered remains of a young man’s mind.

Anyways, I hope you’ll all think a little about the stories that you tell and whether they are stories that you’d want people to hear about or not. If not, make positive changes. I believe in you. Like, comment and follow the site – both here and on Twitter @OurMindGames for future articles.

Much love,

CaitlinRC

The Blackout Club – What Is It You Think You See:

Posted on by in Gaming

We have always feared the dark. Even now, as adults, we still flinch at the shadows. It’s not the fear of the darkness or the blackness, it’s what lurks within it. When we know what we are afraid of, when we can examine it from all sides and judge it accordingly, we can begin to combat that fear. We are afraid of the unknown. A lot of horror games focus on this concept, by having creatures lurk in the shadows or force you to fumble along a corridor towards a monster, that you can’t see until you’re pressed up against it. In our fear, we appreciate every second of light and visibility that we can get, clinging to the hope that our flashlight batteries will last just a few seconds longer. Not that our fervent praying impacts it, but we can believe that it does.

What a lot of horror games don’t do, is force you to cut off one of those senses. During a tense moment, we are on alert, our senses working overtime to take in every minute bit of information that they can, no matter how pointless or odd it may seem. So, when The Blackout Club instructed me to close my eyes, my first thought was “There is no way on this planet that I am going to do that.” Obviously, curiosity got the better of me and I did as I was told, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this article! The point of closing your eyes is so you can see “The Shape”. Invisible to the naked eye, it prowls its way around the levels, seeking out the player characters to force them to do it’s bidding.

The Blackout Club is a multiplayer horror game that follows a group of teenagers living in the town of Redacre, who have banded together to investigate the strange events occurring in their hometown. The kids have been experiencing blackouts, where they wake up in strange locations that they don’t remember going to (like students who drink too much). The various adults in the town have started to sleepwalk and during the game’s prologue, one of the club’s members, Bells, is kidnapped. This spurs the club to start collecting evidence and build an understanding of what on earth is happening beneath their feet.

The Maze is not for the fainthearted.

Ignoring the frustrating amount of grinding you need to do in order to level up, I honestly love this game. It can keep you on edge throughout the missions you complete, using the sins system. During a mission, a kid may break into a house or knock out an enemy. Although necessary, if discovered, these sins will be reported. If your group of teens is too sinful, then The Shape comes into play. It targets the most sinful player and is relentless in its pursuit. Every time you close your eyes to see where it is, it’s that much closer to you. If caught by the Shape, you lose control of your mind. Powerless to do anything, you are forced to watch as your character wanders around the map, hoping that one of your friends can manage to save you. If you get caught too many times, the Shape no longer wants you to be one of them. Instead of controlling you, you are slaughtered.

Taking a lead from the Outlast games, you don’t get a gun or the ability to kill your pursuers. Sure, you have a few non-lethal weapons that you can use to distract or temporarily take an enemy out of the equation, but you cannot kill. These people wandering around and trying to get you? They’re your neighbours, your community, even your parents or your best friends. These people, although not in control of their own minds, aren’t entirely innocent either. Beneath the town is a labyrinth of rooms and corridors, called “The Maze”. It seems endless, growing and adding new locations as you explore it. Entering this place is not something a player should do lightly as you are not alone in there. During the game’s prologue, you get a glimpse of the cult like activities happening beneath your town and how outnumbered your group of teens truly is.

One optional element of the game that really intrigues me is the addition of Stalkers. The Stalker is a former member of The Blackout Club, who has betrayed the cause and is now working for the Voices – the god like entities that whisper to the residents of the town during their blackouts. The Voices promised that the Stalker’s family would be safe if they assisted with reporting the Blackout Club’s sins to the Shape. As a regular player, you are not told whether there is a Stalker amongst you. Unless you directly encounter them or they record you committing sins, you may never know exactly where they are. Traitors in game’s storylines can be a bit… dramatic in their motivations but in this case, I get it. Sure, maybe reading this you question what kind of person would betray their friends to an entity that is clearly causing harm to their town? However, I ask you this – how far would you go to protect those you love? I know for a fact; I’d go damn far.

You can’t run forever.

There is something about the Blackout Club that I want to highlight from a mental health perspective. It’s called the Enhanced Horror system. If you’d like to experience this for yourself, then go try it out and then come back to read this bit, as I’m going to go into detail about it.

Everyone ready? Let’s chat.

The Enhanced Horror system is an opt-in feature within the game that allows the game to listen to and record the player’s voices as they play. If you are lucky, or unlucky depending on how you look at things, someone will be listening. The Voices will respond to you. A voice that is not your friends will respond to your questions, give cryptic statements and encourage you to do their bidding – anything from being selfless, to taunting enemies. These Voices may reward you with story information or gameplay items in return for your services, with the interaction being shared with the greater community – so you can all try to decipher exactly what is going on within the town of Redacre. Whether this voice is actually real or just a creation of your mind, who can tell? Those with psychosis can attest to this, it seems real. That’s the problem.

How you choose to engage with this is up to you, but I think the more curious amongst you will be keen to collect as much information as possible. After all, how often do you get to talk to a deity like creature and have it respond? Anyways, I think The Blackout Club is a game that people should check out, especially if you aren’t great with solo horror! Why not terrify your friends at the same time, so you can all suffer together!

Don’t look back. If we look back we are lost.

So, I am at EGX this week (Wednesday to Sunday) meeting with various lovely developers about their games, so there will be a lot of content coming out over the next few weeks. If you’d like to keep up to date with all I’m doing at EGX, then go follow my Twitter – https://twitter.com/OurMindGames . I’ll be posting updates and pictures from the show as much as I can! Remember to follow, like and comment on the site.

Also, I just wanted to say this on here as well. As of a few days ago, we hit over 1,000 views on the site. We also hit our six-month anniversary. I am beyond humbled and amazed at the kindness of all of you, my marvellous readers. Your comments, suggestions and feedback on everything I do is why I keep writing and exploring these sometimes-heavy topics with you. Here’s to even more milestones.

Thanks,

CaitlinRC.

Little Nightmares – If you wear a yellow raincoat, you’re probably evil:

Posted on by in Gaming

Following a recent announcement that a sequel to the popular horror game, Little Nightmares, is in production, I thought I’d look back at the original. Tarsier Studios, the developers of the game, is most well known for their work on the LittleBigPlanet games, so Little Nightmares was their first venture into the horror genre. Although a quite short game, it is a remarkable experience that focuses on telling a compelling story that will draw you in with intrigue and then terrify you a moment later. Although the actual gameplay is a bit clunky in places and can be a tad frustrating, the artistic storytelling and powerful imagery are well worth dealing with those little annoyances. If you’ve not had the chance to play the game and it’s DLC’s, I’d highly recommend doing so – preferably in a dark room with a friend to throw the controller at when you get too startled.

The game kicks off with the main character, Six, waking up in a dark room in her signature yellow raincoat. It quickly becomes obvious that she is on a ship of some kind, made clear by the floors rocking and the various cargo boxes sliding around. As you attempt to escape this strange location, you come across other children, who have clearly imprisoned in this place. They curl in their beds, terrified of what stalks the hallways and stare longingly at you through the bars, wishing they could be free like you. Soon, you meet their jailor – a long-armed creature called the Janitor, who captures the children and drags them away or traps them in cages.

Get away from me you long-armed freak or I’ll get my baseball bat.

Once you escape the Janitor (by crushing his arms in an elevator door), you come across the Chefs. This duo seems to be cooking up an elaborate feast, containing some… interesting ingredients. Any time you enter their line of sight, they try to kill you on the spot – chasing after you and adding you to their menu if you are too slow. From there, you come across a series of guests attending a feast. This feast is overseen by the Lady – the leader of this place you have found yourself trapped in. She seems to have some form of mystical powers, forcing you to use a mirror to reflect her abilities back at her, until she is weakened. However, once weakened, Six bites into the Lady’s neck and seemingly absorbs her powers – able to kill the guests at the feast as she walks past them, ominous black particles hovering around her.

One of the main themes of the game is hunger. From the crippling starvation that Six battles throughout the game, to the huge feast the guests are tucking into, the game really delves into the impact of greed and consumption on the world around us. The game was originally supposed to be called Greed before they settled on Little Nightmares. Throughout history, greed has been a blight on humanity. Both greed and gluttony are included in the nine circles of hell as outlined by Dante’s inferno, considered to be a great sin that we all must overcome in our lifetimes. The enemies that Six faces throughout her journey are embodiments of this concept, where the greed has consumed them and transformed them into monsters beyond our comprehension.

Remind me to never have this kind of relationship with my sibling.

Six, too, becomes a monster. We are forced to witness this throughout the course of the game. Her hunger forces her to desperate measures, such as scavenging for food from the kidnapped child and eating a live rat. However, it doesn’t end there. The temptation only grows, each step taking her closer and closer to the abyss. We all fall victim to this. We’ve all faced down the devil that is a temptation, sometimes managing to fight him off and other times being forced to give into it. You can’t always win. Mental health is the same. It’s a war, not a battle. Each time you step onto that battleground, you know that victory is not guaranteed. However, victory is not the objective we seek. It’s survival.

Alien Isolation and Little Nightmares share two common features – the feelings of claustrophobia and isolation. Against the monsters and the darkness, we are alone. The game designers portray this perfectly. Six is a small, terrified girl stuck in a horrific world and the world makes you feel that. From creaking pipes to haunting shadows and the distant screams of some distant horror, you constantly feel on edge but there’s nobody to turn to. The music, the ambiance and the design of each of the monsters you come across, are continually lingering at the back of your mind. You genuinely feel horrified, especially when you realize what Six is becoming.

The DLC’s of the game go into the story of the Lady a bit more, if you’re curious about her whole spooky deal.

Near the end of the game, Six staggers into a room and nearly collapses from starvation. A little Nome, one of the few creatures that aren’t trying to kill you in the world of Little Nightmares, offers you a sausage. Basically, every player will, at this moment, feel grateful and thankful to the cute little creature and walk towards it. However, Six doesn’t go for the sausage. She takes the Nome, that cute little creature we’ve all grown to love, and eats him. It’s a horrific event, that genuinely stuns you. I had to put the controller down for a moment and process what I had just witnessed. The thing is though, you understand why she did it. That desperation, hunger, greed, and isolation has been building up inside her all this time.

Little Nightmares is very much a game that you should experience by yourself in a dark room. So, I hope you’ll give it a go. After all, we’ve all had our own nightmares. Whether they were big or little, they stay with us all. Till next time,

CaitlinRC