I often think about what I have achieved in my travels through virtual worlds. Somewhere I built cities, somewhere I saved the world from evil, and somewhere I created my own reality. There are countless games and every time I look back at my achievements I see only a drop in the ocean. Such thoughts do not upset me at all, but on the contrary encourage me to more actively explore the virtual space. During my next search for a new game world, I came across the gloomy and depressing Blood Orange. To tell the truth, I didn’t expect that a simple pixel adventure would turn out to be so atmospheric and disturbing, and the ending of the story would make me look thoughtfully at the credits crawling across the screen for a long time.

Sometimes the past comes back. The heroine of this story, named Nora, took too long to achieve her goal. Boring college years, long oceanology courses, challenging physical training and raising money for a private expedition. Since childhood, she dreamed of being a diver and exploring majestic sunken temples. Photograph underwater inhabitants, admire destroyed frescoes and engage in scientific discoveries. For the sake of her dream, Nora left the measured city life, said goodbye to her relatives and severed all ties with numerous friends. She thought that by cutting off the connection with civilization, she would be given the long-awaited happiness, but this turned out to be just a deceptive adventure.

After six months of wandering around the Amazon river basin, Nora despaired, and her sanity began to slowly fade away. Just think, she ruined half her life for the sake of her dream trip, but in the end she never achieved anything. Once again, falling into a debt hole, mother's reproaches and the final contempt of the scientific community - after this, one could completely forget about the career of an oceanographer. But one day, luck smiled on our heroine. As a result of another dive, Nora came across a huge underwater temple with many frescoes and fragments of ceramics. The girl could not believe her luck and began to painstakingly collect materials for her scientific dissertation. She already imagined a bright future as a famous researcher, but this was not destined to come true. There are many treasures and remains of ancient civilizations buried under the water, but do not forget that there is always someone to look after them. What she saw in the dark depths changed Nora’s life forever and now the girl will never be the same.

Before us is a gloomy quest in an underwater setting. Our task is to study underwater ruins and photograph the inhabitants of the depths. We will have at our disposal a small ship with a red room for developing pictures and a satellite phone, which is both the engine of the plot and our save point. The controls in the game are simple and all that will be required of us is to look for new passages, collect quest items and solve simple puzzles in the form of tags or code combinations. Oxygen is limited, so we will have to occasionally rise to the surface at special points. Also, do not forget about the unfriendly inhabitants of the depths. We should behave quietly and look for ways to retreat, because no one will stand on ceremony with us.

The graphics in the game are minimalistic, but at the same time atmospheric. Images of underwater inhabitants really evoke a feeling of anxiety, and the psychedelic soundtrack evokes dark thoughts. The plot of the game is quite specific and is revealed closer to the end, but I remember the journey through the underwater catacombs. The bad ending, which I consider canonical, was especially powerful for me. The set of emotions that I received as a result of completing it was completely worth the time spent.

Blood Orange is a specific horror game and not everyone will like it, but as a lover of experimental projects, I liked this game. The running time here is only about 40 minutes, but during this time the plot manages to unfold fully. I won’t call the story here brilliant and I won’t try to compare it with other projects since these are completely different things. But I can say on my own that what I saw made an impression on me. I caught the distant vibes of SIGNALIS and again got excited about the idea of returning to the cold embrace of Elster, and this is worth a lot. Blood Orange is a short underwater horror where the monsters are not vile creatures, but instead we are faced with a sore mind and a broken heart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNvOaVldM3E