#horror game discussion

[denydestiny]

might as well say something. the biggest gamble one has to take with sequential storytelling - the likes of which felt in indie game communities if you're not the creator of a game, and so, you don't know what to expect - is that the next piece in the puzzle could have something in it that really dashes audience expectation. something that just really hits them the wrong way, to put it lightly.

it's felt to me most in the indie horror genre, in how content warnings tend to be vague if they're there. i think partly it's from a sense of wanting it be a surprise, partly from working with something so closely you dunno what you'd say about it, and partly because some circles seem to think labeling it "horror" tells you all you need to know. for now though, i'm talking more about when a game is released in parts.

by the time a few parts are out, there's a chance you'd know what level of intensity to expect from a project, but like... nothing's guaranteed

in particular, this is about yttd, in that it's last part seems to me that it'll end with some pay off. classic horror movie stuff. the cast dwindles down, and the survivors probably become friends? i'm hoping that the mentor character the lead has ends up as like, her new dad. i don't remember the names right now, but like to me, that's the best case scenario. more thoughts below but.

but i will say that if yttd doesn't stick the landing i'm going to reply to this saying i called it.

also if you plan to look into the videogame i wouldn't know how to warn for the contents, only that it's called a "death game" and people sure do die. it's like about what i'd expect from a slasher film, i guess is the best way to put it

the creator seems unpredictable to me in how he writes. and i've been told the manga for the game, that wasn't written by the game developer, was drawn by someone weird? i dunno the specifics, but my point is that makes me go :/ a friend also pointed out some weird writing choices surrounding a mentor character who's kind of a dad to the lead. so that's also making me go :/ because i'm really hoping the point of this story is the lead like... realizing that her dad is lame, and finding a new better dad. because i actually haven't seen that done in many horror stories where the new dad/mentor lives. so we'll see

and i didn't get super into the game, and i don't think i'd enjoy the ending a super great deal because the part that's out right now was like the climax of the story. the tables are turning, an ending awaits... that sort of thing.

so at this point, as october draws near and i think about indie games i've seen release in installments, i'm thinking about what it means to wait. sometimes the best thing a story can do is take you on a journey. even if it never finishes. i've seen plenty of cool projects fall through and therefore, never end

i don't think i need any closure past the part that's out right now since everything up to this point has been pretty standard stuff for horror/suspense films. the cast gets smaller as they have to make harder choices, and in the end it comes down to trusting other people or like... wanting to be the final girl. i think yttd's answering all of the questions that it's posing, and that's cool. i think one ending will involve a group surviving, and another will not

but i'm still kind of meh about it. anime, and anime-inspired indie games, sometimes try to say something really profound, but... sometimes they don't stick the landing. i'm fine with a good tragedy, but if it's done wrong, it feels like a waste of time. so i'd have to wait until it actually ends to say anything more profound

it's the same kind of feeling i think one gets when waiting for an author they like to continue a series. there's no way of knowing if the small red flags are actually red flags, or if it's a poor attempt at writing something meaningful. because it could be cool, what yttd is trying to do

[anonymouspuzzler]

realized i should put my shipwrecked 64 art Literally Anywhere But Frankenbugs Server (btw watch bugs n frankie's shipwrecked playthrough it's good)

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

I'm not ready to shut up about Aveline and Carver--so, when you go see Aveline in Act 1, you can catch up with her a little bit and that's where this conversation can happen:

Aveline: "It's just one more change, though. The real end for me was Ostagar. What about you, Carver? You were there. Do you feel something similar?" Carver: No. Aveline: All right, then. Bit of a tit, your brother.

I wanted to see what she would say if Carver isn't in the party. Instead, she says this:

Aveline: Carver was there. I imagine he feels something similar. If he allows it.

......well, at least she didn't call him a tit?

[psychopacifist-rm]

This game caught my eye tonight.

Fascinating, creepy and absolutely beautiful! I love this dark art style (by Mike Klubnika), amazing banging soundtrack, the concept of the life and death game with the devil himself, where you actually can't win.

“Dealer” captured my attention for 2 hours straight. Gorgeous terrifying deathless creature with his own rules of the game.

[pochapal]

btw for reference Here are all the spoiler glimpses of beatrice's form i've been accidentally exposed to for the sake of transparency and also so you can know how surreal/funny it is for me to be unravelling the meaning of this vicious murderwitch in canon while also seeing occasional iceberg tips of what seems to be some kind of extremely thorough and comprehensive blorbo memeification going on. i think you guys are doing some breaking bad fandom shit to this woman.

[vincent-stims]

zumbo sauce. opila biwd. stinga flymn.

one of the funniest items i own. $4.

free 2 use with credit!

[loodgack]

[causalityparadoxes]

The curse of starting something new and suddenly seeing it everywhere is so real. If you asked me what 'Malevolent' was two weeks ago I'd have no idea but now i keep seeing it on every site I'm on ahsjsjdkkff

[asquared-ohgodnotthehorrors]

You know as a self proclaimed member of the Lancer community, it sometimes feels like we catch a lot of strays from disses intended for the D&D community, and I don’t know how to feel about that.

[threewaysdivided]

The Shaper of Minds and its possible consequences for a certain character

I have finally joined the rest of the internet in losing my mind over a D&D Podcast - in my case, the wonderful Dan Jones & Dragons.  With Episode 26 due to stream on Dan’s Twitch this week, I really want to talk about some of the stuff that came up across the just-finished Gala sessions because the fallout from that has the potential to be incredibly fraught.

THE SHAPER OF MINDS

The relic the Flower Crowns were going after this mission – The Shaper of Minds – is a potentially fascinating narrative device that might as well have been lab-engineered to be my exact brand of personal nightmare fuel.   It’s a small, ornate brass key that can alter any part of the target’s mental faculties/thoughts/memories at will should the wielder touch it to any part of their victim’s skin.

Now, on one hand, there are a heap of interesting (and even benevolent) applications for a tool like that.  It could instantly grant access to skills, languages and knowledge that would otherwise take a person years of study to learn.  It could be used to sort through and resolve memories that had been faded by time, muddied by trauma or forcibly supressed by magical/medical means.  But on the other…

As described and used in campaign so far, the primary function of the Mindshaper is to alter memories (and the attendant personality) with the target having no awareness that their mind has been changed.  It’s basically gaslighting on steroids, except that where a gaslighting victim still retains their original recollection – and has to be manipulated by their abuser into doubting their own perceptions and instead accepting the alternate telling of events (a cognitive dissonance that can eventually lead the person to recognise the manipulation) – the Shaper of Minds entirely replaces the original recollection of events with the version the wielder wants their victim to perceive.  There is no internal conflict between accounts, no inconsistencies that could alert the victim that someone has broken into their head and rewritten their perceived reality.  The person they reshape you to be is the person you believe you always were.  And all it takes is a single touch.

That is a brand of existential horror that had me on edge all throughout Session 24 (basically from the moment it was implied the key was in play).   Reality may be objective, but each individual person’s internal reality is governed by their perception – their memories – of the events in their life, no matter how incomplete, biased or otherwise skewed that personal perspective may have been.  You have value just by being you because you are not replaceable, but the thing that makes you unique is, in large part, the sum total of those inimitably specific personal memories.  No-one else will perceive the world in exactly the same way you do, and even a few minor changes to just a few of those perceptions can flow on to massive differences in ideals, values, priorities and future choices.  In that regard, the use of the Mindshaper Key isn’t so much an alteration as an obliteration of the victim’s former self and replacement with someone new; even if that new stranger is largely indistinguishable from the original.  And, again, all it takes is a single touch.

[Sidenote:  This made Mister Wick an especially effective antagonist to wield the key, since his Galas functionally trap even targets who are aware of the threat within the rules of high-society behavioural expectations.  Otherwise-innocuous actions like a handshake or private conversation suddenly become incredibly dangerous, while being nigh-impossible for the Flower Crowns to extract themselves from without committing an atrocious faux pas and potentially tipping Wick off.  Perfectly designed stage for a psychological horror-thriller encounter.]

Which of course, brings us to a certain character who fell victim to the key in Episode 24…  [put under the cut for spoiler reasons]

MORENTHAL

This poor Drow, he can never catch a break…

Morenthal may not have been the most mechanically dangerous party member to fall victim to Mister Wick’s manipulations although, given that the key was revealed to let its wielder read existing memories during the alteration, and that all of the Flower Crowns were fully briefed on the locations and nature of the Eversteel artefacts, him getting a hand on any of them could have been very bad plot-wise but from a character point of view I think he’s the one who the key’s effects had the potential to be most personally devastating for.

The way things ended up playing out across Session 25 was precisely the nightmare scenario Gamb was fretting about out of game: Mister Wick forcibly implanted Morenthal’s mind with false memories of being his lifelong trusted confidant and supporter, then – before the Flower Crowns could reverse the key’s effect – Morenthal discovered that Mister Wick had been killed in combat with Coil and Preston, leading to the Party having to physically restrain him so they could use the key to undo the damage, thus confronting Morenthal with the realisation that not only was everything he thought he knew about Jonathan a lie, but in actuality Jonathan had committed possibly the most invasive violation he’d ever been subjected to in order to forcibly make Morenthal into one of his loyal tools.  That level of emotional and mental whiplash would be rough on any character, but for Morenthal it’s particularly brutal because…

Based on what’s been revealed in-game so far, the core of his character is that Morenthal is an abused child.  This most-clearly came up in his conversation with Gelnek in Session 14; he was a child who grew up with nothing, raised by the Bloodletter Mercenaries as a tool instead of a person, and taught to see faces only as targets – with him also mentioning to Hobson in that their “combat training” involved being relentlessly beaten down until he learned to fight back.  During his Session 21 visit with the Nightmother, he openly admits that “nowhere feels safe”.  From that it’s pretty clear to read that Morenthal has never felt unconditionally loved, safe or respected around other mortals.

(This also helps contextualise why he’s so devoted to the Nightmother.  From what little we have seen of his visits to her, Iris is a fond “adult” figure, who does not threaten, does not judge, asks nothing of him aside from his company, and cares equally for all the souls that pass through her domain.  For a child “growing up with nothing” but violence, that would have been everything.)

But then, enter Jonathan fucking Wick.  And now, just for a short while, Morenthal has all these “memories” of Jonathan being there to confide in, encourage him and support his escape from the Bloodletters.  Suddenly he believes someone was there for him and, while the memories might be fake, the feelings of unconditional safety they would have brought were very real.  Little wonder that he started acting like a Trilby-level naive goober around Mister Wick to the point of accidentally snitching on the rest of the group.  Only, then it turns out to be a lie and those memories are gone.

For me, I think one of the worst things Morenthal might end up dealing with in the aftermath of having his memory fixed isn’t the specific feeling of personal betrayal or the potential shame at having been caught: it’s the realisation that he was always alone.   That there was no mortal on the outside who cared or came for him when he needed them – just him and the distant fondness of a Divine.  That would be awful beyond words, and yet the Flower Crowns were forced to inadvertently inflict it upon him in order to restore his mind.  No wonder he wouldn’t look any of them in the eye before the session closed.

Worse still, the nature of the key makes it incredibly hard not only to trust others, but to trust your own mind.  The players and audience above-table know that Morenthal is back to experiencing and remembering reality as it happened, but the question could very well linger for him, bringing with it a hefty dose of paranoia.  Sure, Morenthal correctly remembers that Coil is a straightforward, loyal person who wouldn’t be tempted to tamper with his mind beyond undoing Jonathan’s manipulations… but he “remembered” that about Mister Wick too, and wouldn’t that be a beneficial thing for the Party to have him think?   To Morenthal, people were already Not Safe™, but now the one person he ever believed might be had actually violated him worse than anyone else in order to force and abuse that trust.  How is he supposed to trust anyone if he can’t trust the authenticity of his own recollections.  (I get the feeling that Morenthal probably isn't going to be capable of relaxing until the Shaper of Minds is confirmed to either be locked back safely in the Vaults of Eversteel or fully removed from the Mortal Plane by Six).

It makes it really tragic that all of this came directly on the back of Episode 23, where Gamb revealed during the above-table break chat that - even if Morenthal didn’t recognise why – he unconsciously trusted Trilby and Gelnek enough to jump off the airship without checking that his rope was secure, because deep-down he knew they would catch him.  To go from that high-point to the whiplash of him first thinking the Flower Crowns had killed the only person he was ever “safe” with, then them inadvertently subjecting him to the most painful realisation he could ever experience and potentially leaving him wondering whether he can even trust his feelings about them is absolutely gutting.

I think the thing that scares me most about how the aftermath could potentially play out is another trait that Gamb and Dan have established for Morenthal: he's a flight-risk.   He shies away from letting people get close and, if he feels unsafe enough, he runs.  It’s already been mentioned/implied that he’s considered fleeing the group at multiple different points across the sessions.  And with him likely not feeling safe even in inside his own mind right now, that risk is probably at an all-time high.  The poor lad is staring down the barrel of a potentially-impending multi-level emotional crisis, where a lifetime of instincts will probably be urging him to run hard and fast because People Are Not Safe™.

And the thing is, that instinct isn’t a good one for him either.  Morenthal might have gotten by on his own “just living to be” up until Filgrove, but that feels a lot more like surviving out of necessity than having an actual life.  It’s pretty obvious that he pushes people away as a defence mechanism:  if you don’t care about anyone then you can’t be hurt by them or have those people used against you.  But if you don’t let yourself care and feel things, you’re not really living.  The truly tragic part of his running being a potential foreseeable outcome is that the Flower Crowns are good for Morenthal.  (I doubt Morenthal realises it and can’t speak to Gamb’s above-table thought process but it’s interesting that one potential interpretation of Morenthal’s cynical, faux-apathetic, “stinky” behaviour is that of a former abused child quietly testing the boundaries of whether he’s allowed to exist in a way that’s inconvenient for others, to which the answer from the Party has largely been yes provided he isn’t actively encouraging Trilby to get himself killed, or killing people without explaining himself).  He survived alone before because that was all he knew, but I get the feeling he wouldn’t do so well if he tried to go it solo again after being with people (he’s already confessed that the idea of Feyli being gone makes him miss her).   That’s not a road to walk on his best day, let alone with his current headspace and tendency towards self-destructive choices. 

It reminds me a lot of this article:

“Still, it’s easier for us to keep blaming ourselves because it’s preferable to facing the unthinkable: the fact that our parents don’t love us. …  Most people would rather do anything than accept this as the truth. Not only is it painful; it’s humiliating.”

So yeah, suffice to say I am incredibly concerned about how Morenthal’s arc is going to play out over the next session(s).  Here’s hoping that Gelnek and/or Coil have enough emotional savvy to keep an eye out, and enough patience to stick to him even if he lashes out in attempt to drive them off.  Even if it all works out okay, I get the feeling that this one’s going to be ugly.

Can’t wait to see how everyone chooses to play it ❤️‍🩹

[certifiedstrawberryblonde]

Just played saya no uta for the first time im genuinely so intrigued by the fandom and lore i love it so much ….lets discuss pls im so down

[disappointingcabbage]

I was talking about this a bit on twitch but I didn’t want to spoil anything without a warning that you have to like actively click to bypass so I’m posting it here. Anyways here are my thoughts on Still Wakes The Deep.

Love the Scottish setting, it’s so rare for me as an American to see popular media to have characters with accents and cultural backgrounds that aren’t just American and sometimes British.

Also I think the fact that the captions essentially translate some of the Scots terms into more common English is so funny. Like hearing the characters say “aye” and then reading “yeah” in the captions had me losing it laughing

I think the oil rig was a really cool setting and I love the themes of capitalist greed and I feel like the game was practically screaming at its audience to unionize which is awesome lmao

I also love how detailed the graphics were, parts of the game seemed almost like a movie

Personally I think that there should have been a bit more variety with the appearances of the people-turned-monsters (rather than having them all look and act basically the same)

Like I get that all the people got turned into monsters by the same creature but I just think there could be more variety in how each of them looks and behaves now that they’ve been monster-ified, yknow?

Also I wanted to see like a Cthulhu esque being as the One Big Monster that started this

Speaking of the thing that caused the whole plot, I think it should be made more explicitly clear that the monster thing tearing apart the rig was caused by the workers being forced to drill into it despite warning their boss that something was wrong. Like we get the idea that the drill hit something but it’s not made clear what was hit.

Specifically I think seeing the monster or at least part of it rise from the deep at the beginning of the game when the player character falls off the rig would have been so dope

That said, I love that no one has any fucking clue what’s going on. There’s no lore dump about the monster itself or why it seemingly is either made of or lives in/thrives on oil and I appreciate that bc it makes the situation seem more unexpected and organic.

Also I would have loved to see a segment (maybe dlc or secret ending) where you dive into the water in a diving bell and fight the monster somehow

I understand that the Whole Point of the plot is that the player character can’t manage to redeem himself no matter how hard he tries but from a perspective of I Love Spooky Shit rather than a narrative perspective I wanna see more monster and maybe fight it

Also I think there should be a speedrunner Easter egg where if you get to Roy on the roof of accommodation fast enough you can actually save him. Like it would have to happen too fast for a casual player to be able to do it and it would have to not change the ending but it would be cool if a speedrunner could.

[sexysecy69]

I have no idea if someone else already said this, probably yes, still i think it would be such a good opportunity to explore more of Andraste real story.

It would be fun to have a game where you can play Andraste like every other Dragon Age game protagonist, make decisions, shape her character, drive for change and a better world, even have a romance, only to be crushed by the ending, where no matter what you did and what you chose, Andraste will always be burned at the stake.

Or maybe not.

Because you know what happens to saints, heroes and legends? Their real stories are forgotten, their words rewritten and their tales changed to suit the current needs of propaganda. That's what the Chantry did for centuries probably. Maybe Andraste wasn't even her real name, maybe she wasn't even blonde, maybe she was a mage.

So yeah, my idea for Andraste's tale would be a parallel to the Inquisitor's: two people in place of leadership, associated with religion (bride of the Maker/Herald of Andraste) even if they don't believe themselves, whose origins and actions gets modified or misinterpreted or forgotten (as we see with Inquisitor Ameridan in DAI)

[pigswithwings]

south scrimshaw. can anyone hear me

[facefox]

it's a pity that i cannot let f.xface win her games without altering the plot of the series so drastically and dramatically and kind. of ruining the overall plot at that. but will that stop me from creating an au where that's exactly what i do? no, no it will not