chrstphfr - Tumblr blog

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Camcorder selfie

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Absolutely love this creepy shot from a movie I did nearly 20 years ago. God, I miss shooting with my old y2k camcorder.

When I see this pic, I want to go out and make low budget horror movies again.

Here is another one.

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House of masks...

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From zero to mayhem in half a second...

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ItchSummerSale

Hey you all!

ItchSummerSale is still going and all my games are 50% off!! And they're even cheaper in a bundle!

You can get them here: https://itch.io/s/96782/itchio-summer-sale

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I had to do it.

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wip low poly motorbike

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christoph frey games be like 'heres a faceless human shape walking towards you' and thats all you need babe

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SUPER 8 shader

Started working on a SUPER 8 shader.

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A short text about Letters To A Friend: Farewell

I’ve decided to write a short text about what happens in this game.

Letters To A Friend: Farewell is a short game about abusive love, the individual horrors of grief and that sometimes this is hardly relatable and even scary to witness.

SPOILER ALERT!

Markus’ father loved him, he loved him so much that he suffocated him from becoming a person on his own, trapped in a time zone that isn't his. Even more, when his father couldn't walk anymore, when Markus’ dedication to care for his ill father consumed him. This is not explicitly brought up, but there are elements of that everywhere, a wheelchair, crutches, a seat in the bathtub, handles at the toilet.

After his father dies, suddenly he is discovering things that he never noticed, he starts to experience the world anew on his own, disoriented, while being in his horrible rite of passage. He is realizing, how child-like he is, living in a time zone that isn't his, while growing up so suddenly.

He can't let go. He can't let go of his father's need for care. He can't let go of his suffocating responsibility to give back his love. And he can't let go of his childhood. His father stays with him, even after death, becoming a restless entity, that is watching him. This is why he has to check the attic constantly. He has to watch over his father, he has to check if he still hasn't moved, if he still hasn't begun to see. He has to watch the restless ghost that is living inside himself.

Markus, in his disorienting struggle, tries to open up to the first person available, the notary assistant. He shares with him this newly discovered place, this storm drain. And he tries to open up about his struggles, realizing, he isn't able to explain it to the notary assistant, so he stops talking. The notary assistant doesn't understand.

In the final night, the notary assistant catches Markus in the attic holding his night watch. In German, we have a word for terrifying/scary/eery, it is called "unheimlich", directly translated it means "un-hidden" or "un-covertly", something hidden is uncovered. The notary assistant sees Markus for what he is at that moment. He is pure, scary, brutal, painful, even monstrous grief. This moment scares the assistant so much that he locks himself in. Markus on the other hand experiences being seen for the first time after this encounter, and decides to finally do, what he planned but couldn't finish. He takes his father to his magical place, that he discovered with his own eyes for the first time, and burns his father, until the water washes away his remains.

In the end, Markus leaves his past behind, together with the time zone that isn't his anymore, on his way to a train station. The notary assistant realizes, what Markus did and grants him the hope, that there is a farewell.

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Detective Davis visits the morgue while investigating murders tied to a possible serial killer in the upcoming PS1 style slasher horror game 'THE WELDER'.

https://www.patreon.com/christophfrey

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Meet detective Davis who investigates the horrible murders in the upcoming PS1 style slasher game 'The Welder'! Will she catch the killer? https://www.patreon.com/christophfrey  

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Seeking truth

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Disconnected and what it all means

In this text I want to explain the themes and the ending of my short surreal horror game Disconnected.

If you haven’t played the game, you can find it here:

https://gamejolt.com/games/disconnected/294520

SPOILER ALERT!

Please only read this, if you want to know, what my own intention was. Please know, that I do value your explanations and experiences more than my own, because that’s where the magic happens. Death of the author and so on.

Disconnected is a game about the irritations of digital real-time text communication. In general it is a game about digital input and output technologies that shape our sense of reality. Why does the protagonist record his visit to Anna? The answer lies in millions of uploaded smartphone videos and our need to sense our reality through devices.

Smartphone videos show us, what's real and instant chats bring us closeness. But then there are these artifacts or gaps in this perception. And suddenly you feel uncomfortable texting with somebody you are emotionally close with, because of the spatial distance between you, that creates two separate realities lost in translation, you should feel close, but you are not. And you interpret texts by visualizing the other, but that's only yourself, reading text to yourself. The other is missing in a shared physical reality and this becomes more apparent when you start to question certain text messages and what they mean. Nothing Anna says is threatening but it seems off.

In Disconnected this realization creates rising fear and it materializes in the surreal ending of the game.

What lies there on the table in Anna's room is her smartphone. The fear of there being no living human on the other side of the line is finally visualized. It is the horrific exaggeration the sum of irritations. The fear of Anna just not being there, just not being Anna, dematerialized, dead cells eaten by maggots, an answering machine. That is the moment, where the game completely tips over into the surreal, witnessed by your smartphone camera.

With the decision to refuse a climactic relieve, I wanted to preserve the uncertain and at the same time loop the game away into obvious unresponsive software, disconnecting the player and the protagonist from software reality at the same time.

Are we sensing your reality through digital recording- and communication devices?

What are we but the sum of our digital self, shattered into different in- and output devices? Being human is ripped apart. And the gaps and rifts are the places, where the uncertainty, the uncanny appears.