Any piece of media to actually scare the shit out of me deserves credit where credit is due. It is wearing its Lynch sleeve very loud and proud (lol at the explicit Blue Velvet callout, when you hide in a closet) and it is doing it pretty well. I can't say I was ever imagining a horror game using the Mario 64 title screen mechanics to ever exist, but it is endlessly creepy. Seeing Will's face take up half the screen for basically your entire runtime pretty much always put me in a state of uneasiness, not helped by how easily you can morph his face into something grotesque. I feel as though its pho pixelated aesthetic really makes its more abstract horrors really pop out into some of the most horrifying things I've seen in a game like this. The game is taking inspiration from most of Lynch's body of work, and especially The Return, but a lot of the morphing of digitized faces really reminded me of the most chilling parts of Inland Empire. Who's Lila is is an absolute champion of art direction.
The game is pretty great, and short, so going super in depth would likely be a disservice, but I will say the game left me, very greedily, wanting a bit more from the endings. There is fifteen of them, which is a respectable amount, and I appreciate that the game leaves enough of itself open to interpretation and the ARG elements add enough texture to the worldbuilding or context to have it all make sense, but I feel like even just one more really unique scenario really could've set this game into a truly legendary space. Feel as though some of the endings you can get are just repetitive enough to feel kind of a chore to get them all, but thats me nitpicking a bit. What we got here really is great, if you're itching for something to geniunely unnerve you, this is a must. Gonna look out for this developer team's future work, they've got a keen eye for excellent scares. Thank you Jacob Geller for being one of the only big gaming Youtubers to point in the right direction for micro indies like this.
The game is pretty great, and short, so going super in depth would likely be a disservice, but I will say the game left me, very greedily, wanting a bit more from the endings. There is fifteen of them, which is a respectable amount, and I appreciate that the game leaves enough of itself open to interpretation and the ARG elements add enough texture to the worldbuilding or context to have it all make sense, but I feel like even just one more really unique scenario really could've set this game into a truly legendary space. Feel as though some of the endings you can get are just repetitive enough to feel kind of a chore to get them all, but thats me nitpicking a bit. What we got here really is great, if you're itching for something to geniunely unnerve you, this is a must. Gonna look out for this developer team's future work, they've got a keen eye for excellent scares. Thank you Jacob Geller for being one of the only big gaming Youtubers to point in the right direction for micro indies like this.