#halloweengames — Public Fediverse posts

Haunted Owlbear's Halloween Games, 2022/10/06 - If On a Winter's Night Four Travelers (Dead Idle Games, 2021)

This isometric point-and-click portmanteau horror game is the reason we're still running a day late on these reviews, because I was compelled to finish the entire thing. This was an excellent decision on my part. You'll get a couple of hours' gameplay out of it, if you set about things in a leisurely fashion.

Set in the late 1920s, If On a Winter's Night, Four Travelers is one of the most elegant works of horror fiction I've encountered in the medium, touching on both the existential and the personal. If you enjoy questioning the relationship between reality and perception, you'll have fun thinking this this one through after completion.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a game that's titled after a postmodernist novel (If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino) there's a literary feel here, but this is no book masquerading as a game.

You might be forgiven for assuming that after the first, very short, act, The Silent Room, in which we see the tragic unwinding of an illicit love affair between two men, as this part of the game is rather puzzle-light.

However, Act 2, The Slow Vanishing of Lady Winterborne, sees some inventive puzzle design kick in. There's no serious moon logic, but you'll have to follow the internal consistency of a person experiencing grief and drug/withdrawal induced delusions - patterns and sequenced order are important to her. This serious subject matter that is handled well here as we follow Lady Winterbourne as she struggles with memory, loss and an unquiet mind in the wake of tragedy.

Act 3, The Nameless Ritual, is a my personal highlight of this outstanding game, concerning a doctor who seeks solace in occult ritual. With strong themes of self-annihilation, redemption and once again that fuzzy middle ground between what reality might be and what we understand it has, this one really speaks to me. The puzzles in this act also fit the sense of ritual.

The fourth act presents a resolution to the anthology's wrapping device. It's short and ends in a sufficiently satisfying manner, although it leans into somewhat conventional mythology after the third act's esotericism.

We don't often see the portmanteau structure used in the games - I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream and, in a more serialised manner, Lamplight City, are the only adventuring gaming examples that immediately spring to mind, although I'm sure there are others. It's something I'd like to see more of, as the self-contained tales here never overstayed their welcome and provide the means to explore a range of engaging themes and puzzles.

The native Linux version of the game worked well on Pop!_OS 22.04. If you're playing on a higher resolution display, there are a couple of points where small objects can be hard to find amid the pixel art - hardly a surprise given the AGS engine's 320x200 resolution. These are rare, but I nonetheless wonder if I should have played this one on the Steam Deck. The game will run in ScummVM's AGS interpreter, which allows you to resize the window, if you'd prefer your pixel art a little more petite.

The art is, incidentally, excquisite, with particularly notable use of colour to reflect the characters' emotional landscapes.

I've seen some forum complaints about this, so will also note that AGS games are by nature pretty old-school in certain conventions - there are no auto-saves: invoke the menu and hit save before you quit.

If On a Winter's Night, Four Travelers carries content warnings for "thematic elements such as racism, homophobia, mental illness, murder and suicide." Its art book adds warnings about "pixel-graphic depictions of corpses, horror themes and war." See my next toot for an extra CW about a couple of extra personal triggers that I encountered, which constitute light spoilers.

There are no jumpscares, but there is some pixelart gore and a general tone of sombre tragedy.

If On a Winter's Night is a fascinating jewel of a game, and well worth your time.

Get it on itchio (pay what you want, $1 or more for OST and art book): https://laurahunt.itch.io/if-on-a-winters-night-four-travelers

Get it on Steam (free): https://store.steampowered.com/app/1603980/If_On_A_Winters_Night_Four_Travelers/

Steam supporter pack DLC with OST and art book 3,29€ : https://store.steampowered.com/app/1628970/If_On_A_Winters_Night_Four_Travelers__Supporter_Pack/

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #October #IndieGames #LinuxGaming #NativeLinux #HorrorGames #PointAndClick #AdventureGames #Horror #CosmicHorror #ExistentialHorror #GameJamGames

Haunted Owlbear's Halloween Games, 2022/10/03 - Darkest Fear trilogy (Rovio, 2005-2006)

Before the rise and fall of Angry Birds, Rovio produced a number of Java phone games, of which the shining jewel (or most tenebrous void?) was undoubtedly the Darkest Fear series.

Hybrid survival horror puzzle adventure games with a genuinely haunting atmosphere, the Darkest Fear games all use a top-down isometric perspective as you navigate the map and static or lightly animated photobashed cutscenes.

The primary puzzle mechanic ties in with narrative themes of (literal) darkness and light as you use illumination puzzles to safely traverse each area, save other inhabitants from a mysterious virus, and confront what nightmarish monstrosities may lie waiting in the dark.

There's also a bit of light sokobanning as you punt crates and rocks around to clear paths, and a handful of action sequences. Although some of these involve more dodging than you might necessarily like, they're rare and the games' difficulty curve is generally pretty casual.

The first game begins at a hospital that has been plunged into an eerie darkness. Thomas Warden is summoned to Grim Oak hospital by his wife, a doctor there. He finds the place shadow-haunted, deserted by its staff and, soon, haunted by hideous monsters. At a couple of key points, your choices and the equipment you carry make a difference to how the plot unfolds and who you can save.

Set five years after the first game, Darkest Fear 2: Grim Oak gives you more monsters to evade and more light sources to take advantage of. There's greater emphasis on object puzzles, giving a light adventure game vibe to the proceedings. You finally get to leave the hospital and explore the town of Grim Oak. Graphics are more varied and the world is relatively open, giving you some choice in the order that you explore in.

The final instalment, Darkest Fear: Nightmare, introduces a second playable character who must cling to the darkness for safety as fervently Warden must keep to the light. You can switch between them to tackle puzzles suited to their unique skill-sets, and, as the overarching series narrative concludes, a total of 15 different endings can be achieved. This third entry in the series uses some particularly nice lighting effects and has generally more polished graphics.

Although the first installment was available on iOS for a while, the J2ME editions can safely be regarded as definitive. You can and should treat these as successive chapters of the same game.

Although they deal with horrific themes and bear a Mature rating, the stylised graphics leave most of the unpleasantness to your imagination.

The entire series combines a sometimes janky, yet atmospheric, plot with gratifying puzzles, solid level design, and excellent use of their target devices' limited graphical capabilities. They play nicely on modern Android devices thanks to J2ME Loader.

You can still watch the 2006 trailer for Darkest Fear 3 on the official Angry Birds channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_9G2Z86XtM

Download Darkest Fear - https://phoneky.com/games/?id=j4j48955

Download Darkest Fear 2: Grim Oak - https://phoneky.com/games/?id=j4j50535

Download Darkest Fear 3: Nightmare - https://phoneky.com/games/?id=j4j38391

Play on Android/derivatives with J2ME Loader via F-Droid (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/ru.playsoftware.j2meloader/) or Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.playsoftware.j2meloader&gl=US).

#Spooktober #HalloweenGames #Halloween #October #Horror #DarkestFear #Rovio #J2ME #JavaMobileGames #SurivivalHorror #puzzle #RetroGaming #isometricart