The first ever shot I took in my first ever game of any Counter Strike, which I fired completely haphazardly out of my hip, turned out to be a piercing double kill with a single AWP sniper bullet to end the round as the second to last guy standing.
One eastern-European sounding guy in the voice chat went nuts and the next round the entire squad followed me.
I should have just quit playing right then and there, while I was still riding that high, because they soon realised what a fucking noob I actually am and I remembered why I normaly, preemptively choose to mute my squad-fill in most online games I suck at.

Also, as an Austrian guy who loves to paint, I hate that there is an instantly recognisable, shitheaded implication in the gamer tag "Austrian Painter" which was next to the muscle flexing profil picture of a sly nazi, at least -sympathizer, idiot, who hard-carried me the entire next game.
Or maybe he meant Schiele or Kokoschka we'll never know. He might enjoy going to the museum after working out or headshotting some shitters like me.
Nah, we all know who he meant.
I just hate that we all know who he meant.

There lives an inherent, inescapable, existential nightmare inside an endless-runner, a disarming feeling, only heightened when it additionally masks itself as a rhythm-game. Violent hits of industrial noise bang on my ear drums in unpredictable time signatures, till I am overwhelmed by a metallic taste in my mouth, then they tag-team up with skyscraping, iridescent exoskeletons to lift the ground from below and crush me with it.

When I was still letting top-shelf Zaza disrupt my circadian rhythm to an ungodly amount, a friend of mine would always want to play Thumper whenever he came over and toked Viennese Woppy Goldberg Furrbuger Deluxe Skunk Baba Kush with me. Back then, I caught myself having to find an excuse to play another game instead of outright telling him that I silently hid my panic attacks the last few times we smoked and played this.
Thumper can be a hell lot of fun. Weed can also be a hell lot of fun, your head just needs to be in the right place and Thumper always seemed to push my head, who wasn't in the right place to begin with, through the gates and away from "fun" part of that saying.
This thing achieved its mission to be the the first ever Rhythm-Violence-Game. It made me feel like I was dying when I stared down its barrel and saw a cloud of smoke in front of it.

I am teaching that friend the guitar and had to explain his ass, I don't know how many times, that there are four beats in a mesure (in most of western hemisphere music at least). It is really hard for him to follow the pattern my bass and a drum sample split time into. (His atmospheric playing is dope tho)
Despite, maybe even because all of that he rips my ass at this game, as the rhythm's primary conduct appears visually. He is just better at that and more comfortable with getting lost in the underworld orchestrating it.
I just couldn't. I couldn't let myself surrender to the flow of play with this Video Game. I was kind of afraid of it for some reason. Afraid of letting myself go. Afraid to offer myself into grip of its claws.

Even after stopping with the Scooby-doo dick, Thumper is still hitting some parts of abstract primal fear inside of my brain. Just like Yume Nikki it reminds me of Nightmares I had as a kid and it might sound kinda fucked up, but now I can actually appreciate it for this.

One thing responsible for the auditory dissonance in Thumpers harmonies is the simple fact that the levels came before the instrumentation. The game is a seven+ year collaborative effort from a small indie team, a "Drool" dripping from the corner of Brian Gibson's and Marc Flury's mouths. Gibson also pours one half of it's sweat and blood into a tsunami of noise struck by a "Lightning Bolt". My love for this two-piece band and his unconventional Bass playing in it were the main reason Thumper peaked my interest. The dude plays with a fucking cello tuning, two low bass strings and guitar or banjo strings for the highs, to really stab through the wall of sound, drummed up by the powerhouse Brian Chippendale. Before that he worked for Guitar Hero's and Rockband's "Harmonix" as the lead artist for over a decade. That man is probably in the Top 3 of the coolest MFer's in the entire industry. Although I can't think of anyone sharing that podium tbh, but I wanna leave space due to my Ignorance.

I don't know if my needlessly word playing style of writing way too long sentences, frontacted by trauma dumps pretenting to actually be about Video Games appeals to anyone other than my need to call my therapist again. I kinda like to vent in flowery ways to random gamers I will never actually know, while maybe trying to reach a single person who might relate to any of it or some shit.

Don't smoke as an ecape from your problems, especially not the ones inside. And fucking share with someone when you experience panic attacks, or just when you feel like fucking shit. Even more so when there is a friend right in front of you.(by now I tell that friend all that shit and listen to his)
Hit me up if you ever feel like you need one.
And if you are a stoner who thought about quitting, this Mark Fisher K-Punk Blog Post helped me to genuinely want to change myself.

Anyhow, here is a certified hood-classic Lightning Bolt live performance that encapsulates my panic attacks and eventuall panic-attack-surfing while playing this game.
When I first played Thumper my brain was the security guards, now it's Chippendale.
And neither would have been possible without Gibson.
I hate that I love you so much, it is bad for me.

Thumper is a decent nightmare to haunt your dreams with. If you are up for that or just a kinda half-baked, audio-visually abstract 'rhythm-game' give it a go. But don't touch it if you are already on a tipping point while also dangerously high.

Fetch quests and "press x to jump up here" BUT as a cat.

The fact that they didn't realize how much potential they had to tell a story completely without words is honestly baffling. The whole story with the robots felt like somebody didn't want to give up on an old idea so they mashed it together with somewhat interesting cat mechanics and then they structured the whole game around that instead of the cats. I really wouldn't be surprised if this were once two different student projects.

Can't be bothered to finish all the fetch quests in midtown while searching for the right windowsill to jump on. Imma have to drop this one. Thanks tho ps extra

Playing Minecraft again for the first time since I was a kid with a bunch of friends who no-lifed this game for years, was, to say the least, a unique experience. I have never, from a purly gameplay perspective, been this overwhelmed and bored simultaneously.
It is borderline depressing to hear my old friends joyfully speaking in a to me foreign language and about something I can't seem to get anything out of other than the digital social interaction with them. And I don't want to have to commit a bunch of my time to learn and understand it, that just isn't the kind of gamer I am. I'd rather meet those same friends IRL, play something we are on equal footing or play shorter games alone that actually move something inside of me intentionally.

Being a reinstated noob in the current Meta and getting handheld by some well meaning bros through the Nether End-boss fight, while they were continuously arguing with each other about stuff I don't know shit about was just exhausting to me and I have never felt less while watching the credits of game roll down the screen.

A part of me wants to give Minecraft credit anyway for it's depth, (or whatever you wanna call it when something gets perpetuatually updated for over a decade, because it's the most profitable game on the market) but another side in me knows that the rightwing shithead who made this stole the base idea from Zachtronics and made a gazillion dollars as a result of dumbing it down, while Zach didn't get an ounce of credit, artisticly or monetary, other than in the first ever forum post Notch made about the development, in which he literally admitted to Minecraft being an Infineminer clone.
The funny thing is Zach himself said in an Interview about it that he cannot take credit for the idea of Minecraft, because he would have never come up with the mind numbing mechanic to just hold down the left mouse button to farm something. The words "mind numbing" in there are mine and are not in his quote, but judging by Zachtronics game design philosophy they were kind of implied.

And yea, turning my brain off and just building shit is the most pleasing thing to do in this game, but I don't like to play games to turn my brain off and to me this isn't an argument to learn about all the inordinate crafting intricacies either.

As a huge Brian Eno stan, the ambient OST by C418 is undoubtedly the pre-eminent reason Minecraft is deserving of it's attention as mainstream art to me, but as someone who listened to the album a bunch of times over the years without ever touching the game, I couldn't believe how many day-and-night circles pass before you'll ever hear one of those beautiful soundscapes. Despite it's sparse use, I would still argue that this gorgeous background music is, at minimum, subconsciously responsible for it's rise and staying power. I would waste some time anywhere those tunes grace my ears tbh.

With the exception of the infallible music and it's functionality as a social hub, this just isn't for me. Also, fuck Notch

As someone who got pretty heavy into street photography again this summer, I wanted to give this genre a second chance despite my lukewarm experience with Toem a couple months ago, but in my first impression of Umurangi Generation I just got reminded of some of the same design philosophy and issues as i had experienced back then. However I eventually found more intention here than in Toem.

The gameplay loop consists entirely of following a restriction of checklists with the photos you need to take for the game. Add to that, an incentivesed speedrun for a bonus if you complete all of the bounties in the current location below ten minutes, which seems utterly antithetical to the joy of photography.
Is the act of being a gamefied contract worker really the only possibility for these types of games? Does it really also need a ticking timer in the corner to stress me out on top of that?
And I can understand the feel for the existence of the former, but only because we are trained to expect some kind of tangible objective to follow as gamers and game designers. Umurangi Generation to my suprise actually found a way to elevate this game design obligation. (I get into that a bit further down) "If there are no conditions to be met how else could you call it a game, how else would the game know you did the thing!" could be argued. My problem with this notion is that every photography game I have played inevitably turns the inherent creativity of that artform into something different instead of searching for a way to fully embrace it.

For about fifteen minutes of trying to check off the ten-solar-panel-bounty from the list in the second level "Otumoe Tai" I was naively ignorant towards the little, extra symbol next to that objective, because I genuinely didn't even want to consider that the game asks for further, more specific restric.. I mean conditions to take my shots. I legit thought my game was bugged or some shit, but turns out I was truly a bit naive and that Umurangi Generation wants it's players to take most of their pictures with a very particular lense or distance to the sub- and objects for successful progression. In those twenty minutes my efforts at photography became really uninspired and after that realisation the recovery from this seemed pretty usless to me and the game.
The timer, which in my playthrough continued in red numbers upwards to infinity (it should just disappear after you failed or only be unlocked after your first completed run of a level) for no apparent reason other than to tease me with exactly how much time I have been wasting in this game, was not encouraging a different mindset.
There were two levels after which I gave up on trying to loose myself in "making art" and just tried to speedrun the act of pointing at the right thing with the right thing in the right way, but failed each time to get the bonus and dreaded to complete tasks in which I was asked to count a bunch of things again. If I had known this game was more about counting shit, finding specific stuff or the semi-puzzle of detecting an angle(often a single intended one, for the most egregious of the bounties to my delight illuminated by a neon green circle, which presumably also earns the player some extra cash to stand in and take their photo from but Idk) to combine multiple of the intended sub- or objects in one frame, all with, and I'll say it again, A TIMER STARING AND JUDGING YOUR EFFICIENCY, I probably wouldn't have bought it on a whim and engaged in a little more thinking feller behaviour before that. I should just stop going into games completly blind and adjust my expectations with a bit of research beyond looking at some screen shots or looking at a high number next a promising ramping curve on a Backlogged entry, smh.

Thoughtfull level design kind of alleviates some of those complaints a bit. Like when I was inside the Train a bounty asked to photograph twenty sticky notes. I knew the game wouldn't get my lazy ass to actually count all the things on my screen again, but low and behold I eyeballed it and the first snap I took of a wall in the kitchen had generously, exactly that amount of yellow squares rendered on it. Occasionally my illiterate ass got stumped by a single word in the objective (my dumbest moment, which I would like to share for the readers amusement, was seeing the words "two coffees" next to the word "downlight" in which the context of coffee made me unironically, on autopilot and by association deduct, while also not really questioning the lack of a space between the two, that "downlight" had to be an in-universe drink.. you know like bud light.. In retrospection I am fully selfaware that this was hilariously stupid, but Idc to admit this while simultaneously still blaming the game, because this was the first bounty with two entirely different genres of things, there is an overabundance of in-universe food items in this level and the term "ceiling light" exists. Lol. Hell, I should just play games, with the option available, in German. The word used in that version of the game translates literally into ceiling light and not "Einbauleuchte" as google translates my headcanon light beer,(I only looked this up after the fact tho) would have saved ten minutes of my time which I am now more than matching with this self-reporting paragraph about my own idiocy for your entertainment. Edit: I actually managed to find a streamer with an even dumber thought process than mine https://www.twitch.tv/superantonio64/v/861937373?sr=a&t=20s all love tho and the photo is pretty fire)

But man, thank god, most of these problems seem kind of more.. unimportant once world building does it's magic, the story fully lifts the curtains and the worth of the camera in your hand achieves it's, by the game intended, purpose. (I actually won't spoil that much of the story or themes in here)
Those very specific things you need to photograph lead the player to examine the Mise en scene,(unless of course they just unpluck their thinking box and only scan the enviourment for the crucial thing) so while the gameplay could feel like contract worker's fetch quest to me, the lists are admittedly kinda genius in getting the player to focus on each individual polygon, it's meaning and as a result in it's enviourmental story telling and exposition. A part of this trick Umurangi pulls, which shifted my initial annoyance about it into appreciation once I got what it was doing, were the at first glance decivingly simple descriptions which lead me to inspect every render in some of the comfortably small levels to rule each one of them out. When a prompt asks to photograph a specific word for instance, I would in tandem, even if just accidentally, read most of the sentences on a poster, graffity, the small print on a random box, the food item label, or beyond just the headline of a magazine a NPC might hold in their hands.
This got me to properly inspect the green fireflies while searching for a butterfly which lead to some cool isolated close ups of one, or aware if the large amount of cigarettes, knifes and medkits in the UN millitary camp while searching for those objectives(some of the first clues hinting that there is something more sinister going on than the rooftop photo-session like in the intro level before that), or to fully inspect the unravelling apocalypse outside a moving train while joining the flashing of a red light.
How the entire Walled City is looking for solace inside VR gaming headsets, while I was taking shots of a the word "gamers" a bunch of times. Crazy how a prompt like "photograph the word gamers 7 times" can lead to such a hard hitting declaration by the game I myself was currently escaping into. Seeing a fully armed and ready Military OP right next to a twitching dude with a VR headset tucked to his face is pretty jarring imagery. Or how your first sight in that level are a bunch of joyful folks dancing in the streets, I in an instant felt obligated to capture with my shutter, just to turn that camera lense and understand what the name "Walled City" truly encompasses.

Through this design Umurangi Generation engaged me in it's story, themes and humanity with a sharp but subliminal efficiency. All of the games I've played then forgotten in which the gorgous, painstakingly sculpted 3D models, digitally printed graphic designs, each intentfully placed static pixels on my screen transformed into backround noise after the obligatory respect for the effort, all of which are contrastingly focal in this world and even highlighted in their low-poly beauty through the gameplay of toying around with an array of lenses and settings gifted to the player.
A part of me believes that all of these observations I just attributed to the games design would have still taken place without it's reliance on checklists, but the existence of one itself gives context. Who am I taking these for? Who even pays me for it? The ominous implication of getting a fine for photographing the blue shells, which needs a bit of time to fully settle in, comes to mind. That this at first deceptively simple mechanic to get the player to be more careful with the framing and not just mindlessly waste a filmroll has genuine meaning in the story was brilliantly executed.


The music is also more than worth mentioning, but I have to admit I fell like condensing a plethora of tones and soundscapes into a few sentences, not wanting to adding another wall of text, always boils down to using genre descriptive buzzwords. In the context of this review a famous Elliot Erwitt quote on photography is fitting "The whole point of taking a picture is so that you don't have to explain things with words"
Maybe that's why I'd rather listen to, or play music than attempting to find the right ones for something that maybe can't be reduced to them and my RYM is as empty as my ball sack after listening to this OST. Anyways.
Bouncy, atmospheric synth- and drum-sample-heavy EDM, Breakbeat and Hip Hop transcends the atmosphere even further and goes hard from the moment you are greeted by the flapping vapor-waves of the penguin at the starting screen. There might be a few duds here and there, but the sheer volume and consistency in the catalogue for such a short game is impressive on it's own.
(Pretty irrelevant, but why did that MF choose the surename Adolf in his music?? Or did his parents do that to him? I couldn't find it out)

Gonna go even more off the rails here and talk about my love for street photography a bit, although truthfully the game feels more like you are a war correspondent, which I cannot speak on in the slightest and like I explained it even kinda convinced me of its game design philosophy on photography after some time and thoughts, but still.
Street photography in general seems impossible to replicate inside of a Video Game. You try to capture the slipt of a second in time, in an endless stream of movement. No looped animation circle could achieve that. Street photography specificially(hell, realistically war photography even more so, but probably for different more legitimate reasons) even if harmless can be an adrenaline rush. "Everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear" You'll need to be friendly, confident, subtle and bold in the same breath and not afraid of some verbal confrontation. It is kinda therapeutic to me and genuinely helps me with my, during covid developed, agrophobia and social anxiety. If they catch me while snapping it I just smile and tell them what I am doing, most of the time they don't even care. I only take pictures in touristy spots and mostly groups of old people and their dogs, but I still sometimes catch myself not wanting to disturb anyone and once I only take one picture in a span of twenty+ minutes that's when I am done for the day. I just do it for myself, to get better at it and photography.
It also lets you view the world through a different lense (bad pun intended). You start noticing and appreciating lines, shapes and people you were previously blind towards and develope an eye for when a real or interesting moment is about to unfold out of the nessecity to capture it. "All the the technique in the world doesn't compensate for the inability to notice"
There is no way a glorified screenshot in a Video Game could ever come close to that specific experience. That game would need to be a money-eating, ambitious risk and for a very niche audience. And probably the only, I hate say this next string of words, open-world-game I would get giddy for. Shit I'll just go outside and do my thing there.

Like I said I don't actually want write about or spoil the story, beyond a few observations up to the halfway point at least. Mostly because it's the one thing best experienced for yourself and someone smarter probably did a better synapsis or analyses about it. That reminds me, now I can finally, fully delve into that new Jacob Geller hood classic, this time without skipping the portion about this game. Also this review is way to long already. Holy.

I might bump the score eventually, because I am aware I sometimes like to judge games for what I wish they could have been, which is silly when a game achieves what it set out to do well enough. Despite having even more nitpicks like the finicky 3D platforming I didn't care for or that I wished the NPCs had at least some kind of reaction to shoving a camera up their faces or words to say about it and the world instead of just changing the poses of the player characters friends. The score will always be capped though, because the implementation of a timer is inexcusable to me. (I've said that like four or five times now lol, but I was just unable to ignore it in my playthrough)

The layers of presentation, the very unique branch of the low-poly (gonna throw reductive buzzwords out again) "neonpunk vapor-wave" aesthetic, the bopping OST and the detailed, environmental world building gives Umurangi Generation the worth to spend your time and money on, but I would recommend leaving the house if you go into this expecting it to scratch more than a very simple and gamefied itch for photography, although it found a way to give purpose to it's use in a slightly different context.
I actually would recommend the latter to eveyone here, in all of the ways you choose to interpretate it. Aight, imma grab my film rolls and head out.

Not a review. I just feel obligated to add to the meagre content warning for this shit because the Developer seemingly did not want to directly tell the people who might download this that there will be pop-up images of GORE that flash across the screen.
I mean legit live leak/rotten.com stuff.
My guess is that the Dev did not want to "reveal their cards" by giving a heads up for this,
like they didn't want to soften the impact of god-dam UNCENSORED IMAGES OF CORPSES by warning that they will randomly appear.

How do you folks keep your creative drive up?
Everytime I create something I half ass it, because I tell myself I can't disappoint myself if I didn't actually try.
It doesn't even work and I still end up disappointed with myself.
I never really like the outcome that much, at least not enough find the drive to finish it, at most I'll post unfinished stuff somewhere in the attempt find motivation and then I don't create art inside that medium for another six months. The result of that lack of commitment or honing my craft to get better at it will come back to haunt me when I pick it up again just to half ass it again and demotivate myself again, because my efforts and results didn't make any progress since last time.
I got like two half finished game projects, a bunch of unfinished demo songs, two short film scripts and a portfolio full of drawings of which the quality has barely progressed since I was sixteen, not to mention all the half finished reviews with attempts at poetics in my notes app.
I am revealing this because folks knowing about it might make that unfinished art closer to getting finished.. might make the finished project more real. idk might make it more than just a thing in my room I can ignore the state of, because I am the only one who knows about it.
But rn I can just can never find the motivation to finish any of that stuff.
I'll rather start another thing just to drop it again it seems.
There is never a creative drive to fully commit.
I'll half ass it, cause its easier that way.
I can't find my mojo anymore.

Even this vent is half assed ngl.

Shit, I can can't even finish playing longer Games recently.

This game is the vent channel now btw.

Perfect Vermin is only like three cigarettes long and I puffed two of them just to spite the no-smoking sign at the start of each office.
When the ending and that last line hit,
I was like:
"Damn."
coughes up burning hot tar

I am filth.
Perfect Vermin was cleansing.
I wished smoking, whichever brand is the cheapest currently, wasn't sometimes as fun as smashing up a printer with a sledge hammer tho.
Okay, it isn't nearly as fun as that, I kinda hate doing it actually.
There is a normalised routine in my addiction (and in my country, we had the most % of smokers in our population worldwide for quite a while) which sometimes let's me forget how fucking damaging and stupid it actually is.

I think I just need to stop wanting to destroy myself fr fr
If not for me, than at least for the people around me who I love and involuntarily inhale these clouds of cancerous shit.

Fuck.

What is a healthy addiction to have?
I need a substitution.

Hold down the W-key with the entire, clenched fist.
Ram some Nails directly into the brain-juice leaking ear canal, after the Post-Void headache's single repeating riff shredded the scalp off the temporal skull. Maybe just nail the W including Keyboard to wooden desk board that gets scratched around on, to save time and that brittle table.
Not blinking till the eyes bleed out of the nessecity. To catch the first glance of the gun slinging amalgamation and the eyes their ichorous break in a blood bath.
Hydrate with gore. It's some little shit's stipulation inside this Post-Void.

Smoke unfiltered pervitin with the aim-trainer gods, as the carpet flooring starts pounding waves around us.
The chamber transmogrifies with each new hit to the face.
The Reload-Key gets spammed only to reload the run, never the gun. No need for that kind of tactic in the compulsion feeding demand by the Head-explode-simulator. Though, occasionally the pinky might spread it's leg to shift shape and gear.

Yea. This game is pretty good. I kinda suck at it lol. Only rushed past stage five once in my four-five hours of play, but I'll keep trying. Reaffirming my complete switch from controller to KBM with this game feels like an insanly chop headed idea, but also like an acceleration of that process. The first few runs I thought this game was impossible, but after staring directly into the LCD sun long enough, I realised that piece of shit plastic controller cursed me with blindness and now I finally see the light.
Still hurts to look at for too long tho.
I think I legit never had this much fun in a game with an average of fourty-five second long runs. (I really suck)
It's also absurdly simple in it's mechanical components, there is a slight risk of it getting stale for some, but for a quick half-hour+ of play it is highly nutritious in value.
The player can only carry one gun, can slide to go faster / dodge a bit and can choose an additional effect after each completed stage, but the game violently just screams "Aim for the head you fuck and never stop running for your life" at me and all I can do is blush and keep fingering my Reload-Key.

Play Post Void if you like breakneck shooters,
need a rougelite clicking-on-heads laboratory
or want to be visually overwhelmed in the best way possible a non-epileptic, Videogame enjoyer can get for only a couple bucks.

The soul living in this house, formed through the memories we gave it. Stormproof mementoes in it's decade old interior, attached with only the strength of our attachments.
Haunted by no one, only by a feeling, by inevitable change, you can only see clearly once it's to late. Things will transform or disappear, while you aren't looking at them and as you turn back you can only make out their silhouette in the distant fog.
Not the ghosts of past lives, the ghosts of our passing lives. We allow them to wipe the memories of their faces, of who you once were, of who I once was, of all the other's and of the people we wanted to be.
Creaking floor boards sound in your voice as I try to move on.
The Heavy rain keeping me trapped inside whispers our favourite song.
The hum of the waterboiler, cascading through pipework tuned the cadence.
I haven't just missed you, I have also missed seeing you become the person you are now.
Cardboard boxes full of my old stuff in the closet of the still warm guest room, closed shut because they barely reveal anything about anyone anymore.
A single essay you wrote in elementary tells me more about you then all childhood toys combined.
The flickering bulb in the kitchen still burning through it's life even though mom always told you to not leave on all the lights. Developed and unselected photographs left hanging on the line in your dark room, because the memory on them still shines bright enough to feel no need to take them along or maybe the best of them are somewhere else with you now. Maybe you never took them down for me, so can have an Image of your truest self, you want me to know is happy.

As a hopeless romantic, melanchoholic and gamer who doesn't believe the medium needs "real mechanics" to reap it's full potential of interactive story telling, the simple conveyance of that feeling, after living your own life for the first time and a soon, bitter-sweet realisation will hit that everyone else's has also moved on, isn't just more than most games are able to make me feel, it slit my heart into two pieces.
The feeling of sand slipping through the throat of my hourglass, makes swallowing hard like crying.
Or all the other themes cementing this and spaming my cry button.
First love. A deadline on it. Fighting against life's intention to send you down different, distant directions. The undeserved struggles of queerness. Sisterhood. Siblinghood. A family slowly drifting apart, willingly and unwillingly. Being replaced in your job or threatened to be if you don't try to fit in more.
All tied together so effortlessly in this house.

And as a forum-smart Punk, I adored the mixtape of references used to paint angsty teenage rebellion.
All the little nods to female punk bands, Riot Grrrl music and zines, Bratmobile and Heavens to Betsy on the cassettes or Portland local Deep cuts I would have never known, like The Youngins. Buttons with Band names like my beloved The Slits X-Ray Spex, Patti Smith. Nineties Nostalgia I would find while rummaging through my uncles old stuff to steal and repurpose it. Groove Magazin, Fucking magic eye pictures, even written out combos or cheat codes for Videogames, niche board games nobody ever knew how to play, that one very specific "I want to believe" poster with a green-lit UFO on it.
Or the image of the embarrassing, weirdo dad it paints.
Dedecating his life to JFK conspiracies, writing a trilogy of fan-fiction about it, listening to the Dave Brubeck Quartet and downing Whiskey, all while the attempt at getting into James Joyce collects dust in the cellar. I could go on for hours with these reference-listing reductive redundancies, but I'll just stop myself, the game deserves better than just rattling off all the cool Pop-Culture stuff, which I think are cool. Maybe I should've just left that out completely tbh, but I want some of you to check out these cool female/female-lead Punk bands at least.

I'll just end this write up with this quote, lifted from the Game and shortened a bit.
"The readers want to hear about the quality and value of the hardware, not ruminations.."
Piss off if you unironicly want to read reviews like that. Let that do IGN, A.I. or whatever.
Form your own opinions about the quality and value of the art you engage with and let the art form you.

Just play Gone Home.

If you don't want any spoilers, give Decimate Drive ten minutes of your time and then come back.
It is well worth it if you are poor and seek an asynchronous micro- thrill and joy which is best experienced blind.

The slow set-up also proved utterly genius in such a short game, to let that single trick it pulls on the player carry more weight, while setting the intended mood for that otherwise admittedly goofy Idea.
I witnessed a constant emotinal flux inside of me, rushing from short burst of terror to dopamine high giggling, all predicated on the tension of a restless motor engine wanting to hurt me.
While I was running for my Player Character's life I felt some genuine frights, not horror mind you, rather a contemporary but primal fear to not get crushed by tonnes of fast-moving steel.
This was only made possible by its short length, the almost innate uncertainty we have all experienced while trying to cross a street and can't make out if a car, heading directly at one will hit the breaks in time and the game's promise to twist this uncertainty into vehicular manslaughter.
I believe if it was any longer with more scenarios then the routinised gaminess revealing itself would turn that fear of getting bulldozered by a faceless machine too much into a fear of not touching a hitbox, which sets you back to the start of the level.

That game you play with the cars you flee from is just an asymmetrical live or death version of "catch".
It could be boiled down to a couple things.
First of, just listening for the automobile or a driving bassline shouting from its stereo.
Breaking the open parallel from the player to it with a street pole to stop that vehicle aiming straight at you dead in its tracks.
At least for as long as the A.I. takes to reverse back out of it again.
Or a Corrida de Toros like dance in which the player utilises timed strafing, sudden directional changes and maybe even outplays the car by looking directly at it, while calculating its trajectory or they deliberatly bait it into a corner to win more time.

Moving around the Player Character will run, or rather jog, automatically.
One silly jank I found as I was playing is that the walk/run toggle button won't function a second time after you switched to walking.
The very indie game dev solution for this problem was to hit the jump button.
There was no other real use for the existence of this jump button, so after finding this kinda funny bug I choose to deduct that the dev only left the jump button in this game, aside from that little extra feel of "better movement options", or immersion or some shit, to reset the Player Character to their default running speed.
Why there was even the option to walk could be questioned, but I would claim it also aids the deception the game pulls on the player with its slow and deliberate, atmospheric start.
I also liked that the first few minutes subconsciously train the player to understand that their only goal is the red glowing door,
like if that wasn't obvious to them already, but still there is zero tutorialisation, only mood setting and tension building and I enjoyed that holistic approach.

Yea, this little itch project was pretty fascinating, if I hadn't played Homebody a couple days ago and would still care to think about that kind of stuff I might've called this my favourite horror game of the year.
(This might just be a sly attempt to shout-out Homebody lol, a game, horror and puzzle fans should def check out, although I probably wont write about it, cause @BeauTartep already did the definitive dissertation, but spoiler warning)
I mean, I have been writing this now for longer than it took me to play the game. That is the equivalent of an automatic recommendation in my book.

One minor nitpick I have is that I think the death screen and sounds leading into it could have hit harder, in a literal sense.
Shit could have been an ounce more visceral.

Itch.io Horror games are weird and I am kind of obssesed with them lately. There is so much good stuff to find behind all the jank and between the overstaturation of backroom games. lol
What I learned from this game is that it can be possible to find thrills and tension inside a concept that might just seem completly silly on paper, at least if you pace it with intention and restraint and know how to set the proper atmosphere for it.
And that vehicular manslaughter is kinda not based. Miss me w that shit pls.

Currently going through this list by @Erato_Heti because I am interested in what the users on this website have created and to find motivation for my own efforts while also getting my little itch game fix.

Turns out the first game I chose to play was made by @gomit and a couple other folks who all went together to my old school in the Video Game design class. Earth is the size of a wallnut it seems.

"A favor" is a narrative-driven horror walking sim that is worth checking out for its well executed tension, atmosphere and good pacing helped by its short playtime.
I liked "A favor" but I think there are two troubles one could experience, the obvious student project aura and the obvious narrative.
I personally couldn't care less about the former, like when there exists some jank here and there, a bit of a lack in a unique visual identity, but it should be adressed, because it could bog down the experience for some. The trajectory not matching up with the crosshair, some not so hidden short cuts in presentation or even the fucking bin only catching the trash when you aim slighty above it, are all endearing to me and part of the honesty in workmanship why I keep coming back to free itch games instead of cleaning out my huge backlog of games I've paid for or the ones I started with subscriptions services.

As for the story and primarily the Twist. The "He actually was that Tyler Durden dude the whole time!!"-moment.
The chef's kiss student project Gütesiegel, which reminded me of my own old classmate's approach towards the idea of interesting narrative writing. That conclusion should already be obvious to the player on the first or second in-game day.
In my own experience with the (what feels like it got used here) borderline misguided storytelling technique,
which feels like coming up with a mindfuck-ending first and then a tasteful enough framework around it, this actually got me kinda impressed with its strength in narrative-flow and the suspense build-up through its horror elements. (I am not posturing that you can't come up with an ending first. I merely wanna point out that the intention for a plot-twist often seems to be the focal one in these kinds of stories)

I fully want to echo that other review on here and say that despite having a predictable plot built on a honestly trite narrative trope, it still kinda pulls it off anyway. Kinda.

Kinda, cause fucke me, mental illness as a narrative device seems like a thing we should have left behind last decade.
Not only for it's reduction of real, difficult issues into a contextual reasoning for scary and weird shit happening in a story, but maybe just because it is too expected.
Just let that sink in for a moment, mental illness and the discussion of and around it got used so many times as merely a mechanical crutch for lazy writing that I can feel confident in accusing its focal use in a story as such of being trite, of being tropey.
This apathetic perspective towards its thematisation is a direct result of the regular misuse of such a delicate topic.
Of its almost expected reduction into just a plot-twist device with maybe some obligatory hints towards a real message or statement on it.
I am not even aiming my criticism directly at "a favour", but at the broader ways of implementation in which mental illness gets handled in Pop-culture.
Hell, even my use of the word "implementation" for such a difficult topic feels apathetic, but that seems to be a more fitting description for the approach mainstream art festered around it.
Mental illness just isn't the thing most of these stories actually want to discuss, it's just the reveal of it's existence in them that wants to make you say "Damn" right as the credits start rolling.
It's like a slightly less trite, slightly more delicate and often actually well intended, version of the other student project classic, the theme of recreational drugs. I am more than guilty of exploiting that one as just a weird-shit-happening or plot-twist mechanic in my own student projects.
I can recall a teacher calling us students out on it's collective overuse, which is probably more difficult to do with a theme that has more weight and often actual sincerity to it.

"A favor" pulls it off in my opinion. Not the adequate discussion owed to this topic mind you, but the use of it as a plot-twist device. Simply the road towards that conclusion makes the fithteen minutes worthwhile, at least if you are able to shut off that ranting voice that made me type out that last paragraph in its timeframe.
Also, that the reveal got communicated through a simple, understandable phone unlock via face recognition was kinda neat.

The set-up already let my M. Night senses tingle, only communicating with the friend via the phone, finding pills and especially the Video Game book you can find on the first day accompanied by the inner monologue "I own the same book" on the player's screen was all I needed to know where this was going.


A interesting thing "a Favor" managed to achieve was to skirt around a niche indie genre I like to call "Wage Slave Horror", while also executing that style better than the ones I've played. Recently I made this list after binge playing a lot of itch games and recognising a fascinating pattern. Admittedly "a favor" only evades my very specific parameters because, even ignoring the twist for a sec, it's a favor the player does, not a real job.
But that said, having played a decent number of these, the design in this one around the medial tasks was excellent.
The position of the telephone in the corner with the player's back towards two hallways made me anxious each time I needed to answer the call machine, but was unable to check my backside.
Same with the position of the plants. The player can't keep an eye on the entrance to the room while watering them, they have to look towards the neighbouring building which also made me feel tense that something is gonna happen over there any moment or in my blind spots.
Same with the paper bin, the kitchen, the safe and the bathroom mirror.
There is always the possibility that something could creep up behind you without any notice.
Of courses after one playthrough this tension is gone, which now that I think about it seems maybe to be too contradictory towards the use of a re-contextualising ending.
"Fight club is better on the second viewing" because you can now see all the careful foreshadowing and attention to detail.
You watch a different film, or rather watch it differently.
Knowing the beats of a horror game and especially that loss of uncertainty towards it's potential but non-existent scares works directly against this built-in replay value.

I would love to see another project by this team if they choose to keep working together. They showed their potential here and they got all the game design basics more than down especially for the subtle emotional strain needed in a good horror game.
Damn. This write up got way longer than I intended it to be. I hope my criticism was constructive, even that rant I couldn't hold back on. I think when something gets someone to write that much it speaks for the amount of thoughts that art made one engage in, which to me is at least the biggest compliment.

How many empty shells of level stone melded with cast iron slabs were left somewhere, unused and completely purposeless, purposely ignored and forgotten.
Concrete giants who fell to their weak knees, whose chests caved in, while gasping in the dusty air for too long after decades of screaming the soul out of their body to no-one but the echo.
Whose shadows cast for none except on our undeserved, vehement insistence of something we dare to call human compassion.
The years of effort wasted, wastful destruction of nature for wasteful construction and unused potential housing, just to at best languish as an investment for some, only in stats and numbers thinking, asshole. Whose figure in the puddle next to the structures reflects back just as obsidian as the water it is made of, if you could even still call it that.

Idk, the story is pretty vauge and open to interpretation and that is how my Marxist ass chooses to interpretate its themes.
If I am trying to reduce the experience I would call 0_abyssalSomewhere an opressively ambient, fromsoft inspired, experimental art game.
Your minimal, mechanical toolkit consists of a single slash attack that will find it's use and the player some interaction inside the atmospheric third person walks, all topped off by intriguing visual experimentation and occasional inner monologue via text on the screen.
A few times the camera will switch to a fixed perspective, which I thought was neat. I genuinely loved my under an hour short time of staring into this abyss.

Play this game if you like the sinister vibes in fromsoft games without the punishing trademark soulslike experience, experimental art or just to broaden your horizon and join the waiting seats for the sequel.

This game is more movie than game in it's story telling. In a weird way though it is almost fitting that a pseudo mindbending video game about a horror novel author's manuscript was actually a film the entire time.

I am exaggerating, there are obviously the obligatory zombie-, but not actually a zombie, okay maybe they are just a zombie, but with an extra shield mechanic -shooter sections. There are also some decent, often optional "walking sim" parts with additional world building, lore or foreshadowing of the story. The game is serviceable just not for me, I am hating a bit, because I am honestly always disappointed when I choose to play a Video Game instead of watching a Film or a TV Show and then I feel like I would have gotten the same x10 out of rewatching a Lynch (or Nolan, he might unironically enjoy this) flick while playing a mindless zombie shooter on the side.
Like, my favourite part in the first chapter was some silly and short Twilight Zone -eseque video you can watch on a TV in the game. Why am I even playing a game at that that point I have to ask myself?

Starting off with the nod: "Stephen King once wrote that 'Nightmares exist outside of logic, and there's little fun to be had in explanations; they're antithetical to the poetry of fear." and after that immediately tutorialising how to break and defeat the first "Nightmare" you encounter, and thereby lessening the potential fear of the unknown a player could experience and contradictong that corny opening monologue is baffeling to me.
The animations, sound design and fx alone convey perfectly well that the lamp has an effect on the enemy, figuring that out by yourself would work perfectly fine in a nightmare mystery setting. Why are games this inconfindent in themselves and the player that tjey feel the need to take this small and kind of intriguing revelation away?

"For a moment the repressive feeling from the nightmare I had on the ferry returns" a near comical jumpscare flashes for half a second. The shortness, randomness and how on the nose the attempt at connecting Alan's narrated thoughts to the players emotions were, made this moment kinda silly to me. These Jumpscares keep coming throughout the game and keep getting longer, showing the player more information. And idk, to me that is honestly, at least in theory, an interesting concept to excuse the use of jumpscares, by the nature of the scare getting longer the jump would slowly cease to exist. But they don't really, there is still epileptic ass editing in those moments to compensate for the length I guess. So, to me at least, this minor recurring flash of imagery, which I'm wasting way too much time on in this review, is only an annoying, tension wasting horror gimmick that is halting the gameplay instead of the intriguing, itself slowly revealing narrative exposition it could have been.

Alan Wake gives me confidence to be a writer myself, a profession not even included in the top five artistic delusions I have, but this game bumped it up a bit. The writing in Alan's manuscripts is mediocre at best, there is no way this guy is such a legend that a small town has a life-sized cardboard cutout of him in a Bar.
Damn, is he supposed to be a mediocre cardboard cut out of an author and that is a blatan admission of that? But man self-awareness wouldn't make it any better.
In one of the manuscripts it says "..to describe the dark presence as intelligent would have implied human qualities on something decidedly inhuman" all this sentence is giving me is the implications that intelligence is a quality exclusive to humans. And thats just arrogant human exceptionalism in my book.

I dropped this game after like six+, kinda slogging hours and turned on Twin Peaks instead. If there is some plot-twist that nullifies my complaints about the story related stuff or the game somehow gets way more interesting, I honestly don't really care enough to sit through even a playthrough of it to find out and I did genuinely try that a couple days after, but then again choose to watch something else instead. [Played like a month ago, but I'll log it with todays date for visibility or some shit, idk if that is how it works]