the latter half of december is home to a number of traditional holidays. one of them, the ancient roman festival of saturnalia, drums up images of debauchery. dedicated to the god saturn, it was a week long festival of gift giving, gambling, good eating, and masters recognizing their servants for their work by waiting on them for once.

when you first look around the game's setting, a fictional sardinian village called gravoi, "debauchery" isn't what comes to mind.

cavernous yet claustrophobic, saturnalia is an autopsy of gravoi and it's nightmarish history in the throes of it's final night. you're introduced to four characters, all of them playable, each of them with deeply ingrained roots to the village.

over the course of the game, you rip those roots out.

it's not an easy task. the game makes use of it's serpentine map to confuse you: it's full of dead ends, bizarre loops, narrow pathways that are easy to miss or mistake for something else, and has the audacity to penalize you by procedurally regenerating everything if your entire party dies. you can't trust the villagers, and you can't trust the architecture. to cap it off, you're pursued by a bizarre monster that wants to sacrifice you; interestingly, it wasn't entirely uncommon for gladiator fights to happen across the week of saturnalia. rumors persist that fallen gladiators were offered up to the god saturn himself.

the visual design calls to mind both the dreamlike stages of expressionists and giallo films; vivid pinks, purples and blues color the village. a purple fog rolls in, bleeding primary blue and the world goes magenta while your character's breathing grows ragged from running, and the sound design is stupendous with a soundtrack that absolutely kills it, somehow blending 80's synth with the atmosphere of an old, forgotten sardinian village to triumphant measures. roberta valle's vocals in the opening theme are haunting, but none of these reasons are likely what will keep you going through the game. they may haunt you later, but in the moment, with the controller in your hands, it's the mystery hidden beneath the pathways of gravoi that keep you running.

it is, unfortunately, bogged down by the camera, and how sensitive the map and AI can be. it's easy for a character to get stuck even when the monster is in pursuit. the camera makes use of fixed angles occasionally, painting the game vintage. it really feels like a classic ps2 horror game when it tries to use the camera in that way. visually, it's appreciated, and it theoretically adds to the experience, but in practice, it's jittery and tends to be frustrating. the storyline and how it unfolds can be confusing, but if you're careful and take your time, what's laid out for you to turn over will make sense easily-- besides, piecing it together on your own is half the fun. with the mind map, it's made all the easier to figure out what's going on beneath the surface of quaint little gravoi.

modern day anxieties are propped up for discussion, the suppression of people's needs a constant thread through out the game. just beyond the festival's bloodletting: homophobia, racism, and even unions. saturnalia uses an ancient ritual to harken in the new world, sinking the old ways to make something of what remains. the bones of the game is the survival horror, but it's the storylines you close up over the game's run that shine.

replayed because rebirth made me question whether i actually would enjoy amnesia in this day and age. not only did i enjoy this, it made me remember being like, 15 and sleeping on the floor of the living room with all the lights i could find on, because i was too scared to sleep in my bedroom. lmao

the expected issues persist (gameplay and puzzles in particular can be frustrating or just plain boring) but the genuine terror i felt is still there. a remarkable feat for something so short-- this feels like what every steam horror game in early access with no hope is trying to be.

ballet as combat, sleek shmup minigames, and a blend of narrative and game design that other games still struggle to get right; what makes nier automata worth your time is the parts that come together and get tossed back out at you with all the pomp of someone spitting their blood and teeth into your face. theatre is the heart of the game, operating fully on the fringes of a b movie space opera. it is, in fact, that good, and the deconstruction of philosophical ideas is not even the core of it but rather a familiar means to discuss the ideas present at it's core.

as a port, it's a damn fine one: it plays exactly like a 2016 playstation title, looks about as well as it can on the switch and usually runs smoothly. that said, the switch can't really handle playing it for long periods of time - i experienced two notable crashes in game. once immediately following the grun battle in route A and again just before the emotional climax at the beginning of route C. additionally, the joycons just don't feel like the ideal controller for this game. everything is mapped to the very top of it, and unless you wanna fiddle with it for several minutes, you're pretty much stuck holding your controller awkwardly. finally, i don't think that handheld automata is the optimal way to experience it.

but it's worth your time in every way you can imagine and more, really.

you never forget the first corpse you embalm. for me, it was a 29 year old woman named jade. she had three deep scratches on her back, and i thought she was marked for demonic possession. while i was entering her information into the computer system, jade sat up to stare at me. i didn't really like that.

talking about the mortuary assistant in detail is hard. this is primarily because i think it is best experienced with as little information as possible; every step of this game was remarkably unique in how it was used as a game mechanic. procedurally generated hauntings and bodies don't always keep it feeling fresh, and with five endings to find, this is one of those games i think people will struggle to finish. it doesn't take away from the experience, though.

it's a crying shame this came out in august. there's no bad time to launch a horror game, i think, and it's not like the game's being overshadowed by something else, but with mechanics and a storyline like this? the mortuary assistant is the perfect halloween night stream game. here's hoping that it totters all the way there. i think there's something special here, and a potential for something like a minor P.T. moment. there's scares in this one that'll stick with me for ages.

it's fine. i played the base game years ago on PC and find that the attempt at technological scares is mostly diminished on switch. the atmosphere has shifted as such, and any tension from the previous "errors" is pretty much gone by the time the text scrolls again.

the new content is side stories and new 'lore', presented as new files on the virtual machine DDLC runs on in your console. the side stories are of surprisingly good quality, allowing for each of the girls' personalities to shine enough that you realize what their strengths and weaknesses are. the new lore is confusing at best and pointless at worse; chunks of it are already things people knew or suspected, but i guess it's nice to have it be canonical within the DDLC timeline.

my primary issue with DDLC is it's use of suicide and mental illness as shock value. i can't say it doesn't take the topics seriously, though, so perhaps it's best described as clumsy commentary on the stigma that continues to affect mentally ill people in society. i did find the depictions of anxiety and depression to be extremely fair in the side stories, although pretty twee at times, and the base game focuses on a character's psychotic breakdown. the latter of these things i always actually found far more relatable than media that goes out of it's way to depict it. on some level, it's hard to critique this aspect of the game without mentioning that the demonization and shock value the characters go through is intentional, and something you're likely supposed to feel bad and weird about. it doesn't entirely feel like intentional or deserved commentary, however, even if i do appreciate the attempt at it. at no point did it feel like a bad faith take, merely one that was hot potato'd.

despite what i said here, though, i do love this little romp, and monika is one of my favorite characters of all time. i can only really recommend DDLCPlus to people like me, who still enjoy DDLC after all this time. if you're new, i don't think that the switch version is for you. the psychological horror of a game crashing your PC just doesn't come across on the switch.

ultimately, i'd say this is mostly a collector's item for people like me, who already love the game and were just excited to see it in physical form finally.

the first half of this game conducts it's atmosphere with a deft hand, managing to hit a shockingly good crescendo at it's climax. it's hardly a surprise when it fumbles it, losing steam and turning the game into a tedious sort of "hot spot hunt", where standing in places will trigger a new scare for you to jump at. it certainly over stays it's welcome, and i found the scares near the end more than a little cheap, but it's a fun indie romp and probably a blast to play with your friend who gets a little more scared than you do.

played this originally on pc and recently got it on switch to play through it again. it's a fun, solid demo that promises a lot in the future, but it feels very much like a monster of the week formula. deltarune reminds me of a magical girl anime from the 90s thus far, but that's not a complaint in the slightest. i grew up on sailor moon and cardcaptor sakura.

that said, the biggest frustration i had with revisiting it on switch is that it lags, stutters and overall has some performance issues. i'm not sure what causes them, because my nintendo switch isn't hurting for space, and both the dynamic and simple backgrounds have this issue. so far, it hasn't been a problem for battles, so perhaps there's a lot of assets loading in the overworld as you play? i really couldn't tell you. i would recommend playing this on pc over switch, just to safe. if this is fixed any time soon, i'll surely mention it.

pros
- lancer is shaped like a friend
- susie is a surprisingly compelling character with shockingly good development for a 5 to 10 hour chapter
- overall, the character writing is just fun
- the battle system is a marked improvement and the party system allows for more of the aforementioned fun character writing, which means i look forward to the bullet hell stuff more than i did in undertale
- the lore's easy to digest and theorize about which is fun
- it has a lot of heart in it and even when i wasn't particularly enjoying how the game felt, i was able to find something i enjoyed because of that feeling

cons
- it lags and stutters on switch
- upset i can't squish lancer
- ralsei is Cute On Purpose. i actually love ralsei so you'd think this is a pro but it's a con because i hate being told what to do and how to feel about a character but i guess that's kind of the point, also, or whatever
- i can SMELL the homestuck on this one. it REEKS of homestuck

excellent
- i like how if you flush the toilet over and over toriel gets mad at kris and says that if they put a bath bomb in the toilet again theyre in trouble. im going to go put a bath bomb in the toilet rn

with an art style reminiscent of 90's nickelodeon cartoons and a storyline on the cusp of bleeding edge, sally face seemed poised to be the new Hot Topic It Girl. it slotted nicely in with invader zim, next to nightmare before christmas. it had nostalgia for people older than me, people the same age as me, and the appeal of the metal and grunge subculture of yesteryear for the current generation of alt tweens and teens. the 90's are in, and sally face was ahead of the curve.

so what happened? why don't you see sal fisher next to zim and jack skellington and kuromi and my chemical romance's the black parade? it's not like they didn't try on some level, you can find tiny little smatterings of sally face on the website. like with many things, it's not a very climatic story.

sally face has an opening more gauche than ghoulish but it sets the tone well for a game that indulges in graphic gore with the same kind of zest as a child using finger paints. this isn't a bad thing, to be clear, i don't think teenagers are the target demographic for sally face but i do think it accrued a younger audience than initially intended. there's references to 80's cult horror movies through the game, understandably so with the time period. ash herself is simply a long, long set up for an evil dead reference that doesn't pay off until the last portion of the game.

there's not much here, really, that's new for the genre. it's a supernatural murder mystery with the twist of demonic possession. it doesn't set new standards but it does consistently meet them, with shocking twists and turns where it seems like everything that could go wrong does. it's part tragedy, really, watching sal and his friends try to save the world.

as far as a point and click adventure goes, it works well and accomplishes what it wants to do. it implements rhythm games eventually, if a bit wonkily but the attempt to shake up gameplay is appreciated. where the game really shines is the unique, colorful cast of characters in sal's apartment complex that steve gabry takes extra care in introducing you to. it's easy to get attached to a fair few of them. gabry's character writing is charming, and he brings a sort of refreshing and dark quirkiness to his characters that i don't think anyone would be able to copy. it's very distinct.

what actually stunk about sally face is that the gauche opening was more of a preview than an introduction. the ending of the game is dissatisfactory, raising more questions than answers. one problem is dealt with but the rest are ignored or implied to continue in a later installment. that installment never came, and if it does, i'll be surprised. steve seems more occupied right now with launching what looks like a board game adaption of the game than continuing it.

a number of things and characters are written up and implied to have more to do or say just to... not. maybe that's indicative of what gabry's actually writing about: the inevitableness of death, the way that those who have left us for the other side are always going to have unfinished business. that life itself is an ongoing story with no end in sight, until it simply does. death is a cornerstone in sal's life, something that defines him as much as he denies it. it's what makes sal a compelling protagonist, to be someone who fights despite his circumstances. seeing him grow into the person he does is part of the journey, if not the whole journey.

it's not really just that potential was wasted here. it was tossed aside, forgotten and ignored for a number of references that no one really wanted. sally face, just before the finish line, forgot what was fun about itself. it traded the fun of ghost hunting and mystery solving for straight cult horror and action, neither of which were pulled off well, in truth, and i knew this from the first scene. the mystery was always fun, but when it was solved with a blaze of glory, it lost all the charm.

maybe the reason you don't see sally face merchandise in hot topic is less because people lost interest in it. maybe it's more likely that the game is actually more similar to the mall store giant; it started out with a macabre niche that it filled nicely only to collapse under the weight of the things it kept trying to carry and sloughing them off, one by one, to make room just for the pop culture references it was desperate to make.

just watch the evil dead.

this feels like a departure from chilla's art's game catalogue.

it's impressive for that alone, but i can't say anything about it scares-wise stuck out to me. i think that if you like the slow build of dread that seems perfected in j-horror, you'll like this one especially. it's a little tongue-in-cheek: you play as a young person investigating the sudden death of their brother, who hosted a radio show where he read ghost stories. the location works and gives the impression of an abandoned town in the mountains, removed from anyone who could help you. chilla's art is a devteam staffed by two brothers, who focus on making horror games. i get the sense they wanted to have a little ghoulish fun with this one. it worked, for the most part: i had fun with it, too.

the most obvious departure from previous games by this dev is that getting around features driving from point A to point B, then back and again. it feels awful by my own standards, but it's not time wasted. they use it for two effective jumpscares.

the less obvious departure is the more abstract progression. when i play a chilla's art game, even though there are multiple endings, it feels very streamlined and natural. my playthroughs never give the impression of sudden, pointless endings or superficial differences. they feel precisely like the ending that playthrough worked toward. in this one, that feeling doesn't quite settle in. i knew immediately that there were other endings. maybe this was intentional, but it was a disappointment for me. this is largely done through how abstract progression is: i got the impression that i was jumping from point A to point D at times, getting ahead of myself and the story. while this openness might be appreciated by others, it mostly left me wondering what in the world i was supposed to be doing.

i did like the ghost stories that masaki told on the tapes. i found that genuinely enjoyable and i wanted to hear more of them; it was marginally disappointing when the #CursedLetter stuff began happening and i was expected to piece together a code. the attempt was nice, but it could maybe be handled in a way that doesn't detract from the experience.

overall, it's fine. in fact, the ambiance, the plotline, and ghoulish tone all worked for me. the issues i had just simply stuck out like a sore thumb. it's not a new favorite and i won't be returning to it if i'm in the mood for a chilla's art game, but i like that they're trying new things on and hope the trend continues.

exactly fifty years ago, in 1972, the magnavox odyssey was released one September morning. the hardware was capable of displaying three blinking structures of polygons, and no more than that. to make use of the console, it came with two controllers, a stack of game cards, and a handful of overlays that you placed over your television screen, each of them correlating to a specific genre of game that was playable on the magnavox odyssey. as the very first video game console, it is an interesting point of history and something i consider necessary to know if you like games. unsurprising to anyone reading this: one of the plastic overlays was a "haunted house". in other words, magnavox odyssey's haunted house overlay was, arguably, the very first horror video game. a playthrough of it can be seen here, if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ltYIXh4BQI

there is a number of "benchmarks" in horror gaming history. the haunted house overlay for the magnavox odyssey is one, but there's a heavy sprinkling of scares through out the history of gaming. once we hit the 80's, an explosion of horror booms across home consoles. immediately, castlevania, released for the famicom in 1986 comes to mind. then, there's sweet home released in 1989 for the NES, notable because the brain behind it was tokuro fujiwara, who did ghosts n goblins before it and would do resident evil after it. but before RE was alone in the dark which dropped in 1992 and is in the DNA of every single psychological horror game whether they know it or not. clock tower came out in 1995 and then we see silent hill, fatal frame, parasite eve, and even later we would see amnesia: the dark descent. after amnesia is outlast and then we have the absolute titan that is p.t. (silent hills)...

it is 2022. the gaming landscape has changed. it has been held up by steam, and youtube, with the let's play being an absolute necessary part of modern video game culture. video games are more accessible than ever, with nearly everyone having at least one console of their own, or at least a PC, or a phone. it's easier to make a huge splash, but i struggle to think horror games that left an actual mark on gaming. layers of fear would probably be it, which speaks to the quality of what we're getting these days. we have highs, often marked by things like Happy's Humble Burger Farm, or lows, marked by Poppy Playtime.

where is MADiSON on this spectrum? what does it take from or give us? it's inspirations seem less like modern video games and more aligned with modern horror movies. insidious is a clear inspiration, but so is the babadook. this isn't a bad thing; there's a late game enemy that is clearly inspired by both of these things that i genuinely really like. i enjoyed the execution and found it spooky enough, but more so than anything, it felt different from what other games have been trying to do. the camera mechanic felt like a lifeline, and while i don't know if i'd call it scary, i don't need a horror game to really scare me these days. i like the tropes, the media, the style, and i think MADiSON does a good job of understanding what makes a big modern day horror summer blockbuster.

the problem i have with the game is that it's story is largely puzzled out haphazardly. it reminds me of throwing spaghetti at a wall until something sticks. the opening is strong, and the first segment that deals only with the house Luca is stuck in is beautifully atmospheric and well pulled off. i have some problems with some of the sound, but it isn't things other people have been mentioning. i'm tired of spooky noises for the sake of them, and i found volume levels to be a little weird, but it's not like these are things that break a game's immersion for me. i really liked the puzzle work at this point, i liked how the camera felt like a mechanic and not a gimmick. i thought i would hate the basement segment, but the way the camera is used to trigger progression there actually kept me from feeling like this was another attempt at P.T. that undermined what it did.

P.T. is probably the biggest inspiration for the game, a sequence in MADiSON's dna that is simple to see. for better or worse, there are attempts to understand why P.T. hit like it did. i don't think the game is entirely inspired by silent hill alone but i don't think it misses the mark on why silent hill mechanically works. it's the story that flops as hard it does, and it's because the story is an unfinished quilt. you're introduced to Luca, the player character, when he's drenched in blood and being kicked out of the house by his father. from there, you find yourself rummaging through the remains of Luca's grandfather's home while he tries to find a way out. he believes his father is going to harm him but something is in his late grandfather's home, hunting him and wearing him down, picking at his brain and slowly attaching itself to him like a parasite. this, alone, is all i needed. the game decides to have a bigger scope, but the foundation that it has isn't made for bigger buildings, and when all you need is an apartment, a mansion seems egregious.

MADiSON is a warped ghost story, stretched to fill the pants of a horror that spans across time and space. it doesn't need to do this, but eventually the game involves not just ghosts, but demons, and nazis, and the manifestation of a childhood fear. even the puzzles at the midpoint where all this starts to show is weak: i don't like mazes in games, and throwing a puzzle in plus an aggressive chasing enemy is less fun or even frustrating and more of a headscratcher. i was just confused. the whole segment feels like a wholly different game and not one i would personally seek out. there are attempts to connect them but they don't really land. they just kind of hover and never finish.

the nazi plotline is not really explained in particular. there's no real connection to the story, and the use of a real life historical figure is a sour decision that honestly makes me wonder what the point was. we know nazis were scary, but when you implement them shakily, it feels like a clumsy attempt to capitalize on the horrors real families went through and still struggle with the after-effects of today. nazi scary, ooga booga. are you frightened?

the game is beautiful and it handles itself with as much grace as it can, all things considered. the adventure game mechanic of inventory management was not always my favorite, but it made me feel a little more calculated about my playthrough, i'll give it that. i wish we had more time with Luca and Madison herself. i pieced together what was going on but only once i finished the game. it wasn't because it was trying to be artsy or vague, but because the game just doesn't seem to give a damn about it's own story in parts.

i guess they're looking to do a sequel of some kind, but i honestly just wish this had been half the length and half the price. it would have been worth that twice over. the shifting setting was unnecessary, and the art direction was never quite as good as silent hill's or layer of fear's. i've got issues with the latter but it set a stage and it knew how to do it.

so what is MADiSON, exactly? a haunting of some kind, on a metatextual level, i suppose. it an exercise for an up and coming developer who won't feel the need to do anything bigger and better than what they set out for in the future, i hope. it's a video game that starts out strong and chokes at the end.

it's mediocre.