Transcript
Speaker: So, Nick Cage in Dinosaur Bones.
Speaker: I mean, man.
Speaker: I just, you kind of feel for the guy, but you're also just like,
Speaker: Just stop buying dinosaur bones.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: How much can I feel for the guy in the end?
Speaker: I understand being addicted to like drugs or nicotine or sugar or whatever.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Eating paste.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Because there's like, I guess there is a chemical rush that you get from the purchase.
Speaker: Eating paste.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: Whatever you were going to say.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Dinosaur bones.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I guess I have to take his word for it.
Speaker: I just kind of can't fully relate on that one.
Speaker: No, I can't either.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But you know what I can relate with?
Speaker: What can you relate with, Kevin?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: I'm not.
Speaker: I'm only wearing a slip, Kevin.
Speaker: You have to warn me.
Speaker: The audience can hear my nipples.
Speaker: Oh, and today's a special bonus episode bonus bonus time playing a little fast and loose clearly with the clothing.
Speaker: Obviously, obviously this is this is what this is.
Speaker: This is why you come here for the bonus episodes, because you'd never know when someone's going to get a little PG 13 on your ass.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: It's like it's like a PG 13 remake of an R movie that you loved as a kid.
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: And it just ruins your childhood.
Speaker: It just just destroys it, just powderizes any good memories you had of that childhood.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So let's Fright Night this episode, huh?
Speaker: Let's do it.
Speaker: Oh, hell yes.
Speaker: I actually don't know if the Fright Night remake was PG-13, but, you know.
Speaker: I have no idea.
Speaker: I only ever saw the original.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: But that is an appropriate way to go with it, though, because today we're having another bonus Halloween episode.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: And I don't know when I'm putting this up, either tomorrow or on Halloween itself.
Speaker: We'll see.
Speaker: Woo.
Speaker: Woo.
Speaker: Woo.
Speaker: You will know the audience.
Speaker: I won't until I hit the publish button.
Speaker: So we'll see about how that is.
Speaker: That's going to be fun.
Speaker: That's going to be fun.
Speaker: But today we're talking about a top five list of horror games that Phil and I think you should probably play.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And may have haven't, you know.
Speaker: So it's not necessarily going to be super obscure.
Speaker: But they underrated, you know, underrated.
Speaker: They could have slipped through the cracks.
Speaker: And each of us brought five games to the table.
Speaker: So we're just going to go through the list, talk about them a little bit, have a little fun, e at a little cheese, you know, cheese, the the favored snack of Halloween.
Speaker: Cheese, the podcaster's treat.
Speaker: Well, Kevin, where should we begin?
Speaker: Why don't you want to get us started here?
Speaker: You know, I'm going to go ahead and get us started with
Speaker: Number five.
Speaker: Number five.
Speaker: Number five on my list, and I slotted it at number five because y'all probably have heard of it because just about every YouTuber played it when it came out.
Speaker: Stories Untold, which.
Speaker: Hell yes.
Speaker: Stories Untold is such a cool little game.
Speaker: It comes in basically four parts and each part is its own style of gameplay.
Speaker: And the opening segment is done in a way that it's almost like the fourth wall breaking of a text parser game, like an adventure style game and called the House Abandoned.
Speaker: I believe that's what the first part was called.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's super memorable because of how effective it is at getting spookums out.
Speaker: translated out to the audience with just a little bit of like lighting effects and screen shake and, and a little bit of sound effects, sound design.
Speaker: Oh, this is lovely sound design.
Speaker: And then, then there's parts two through four also awesome, but it really sets a tone with the house abandoned.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Stories untold.
Speaker: I mean, everybody's played stories untold a scary game squad, uh, played stories untold.
Speaker: And, you know, if if they were a YouTuber and what was it, 2018, I want to say 2017, they probably played Stories Untold and famously Stories Untold.
Speaker: Actually, it looked like it was kind of capitalizing on the Stranger Things.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: At first, because it has this opening kind of.
Speaker: like title sequence that the music and the vibe and even the logo are very much in line with Stranger Things.
Speaker: And it's it's just a smart kind of like a smart play on their part because Stranger Things was like the horror horror adventure meta at the time.
Speaker: And I think doing that really, really drew some people in who probably wouldn't have otherwise tried to play it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Now that was a, that was Devolver, wasn't it?
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: I believe it is a published by Devolver game.
Speaker: I mean, they do so many things that they just, they just, they know how to pick the good ones.
Speaker: There's something there.
Speaker: There's just something so consistent in the quality of the games that they publish.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: So that is a Devolver game.
Speaker: And one moment, let me check a few of the other games on my list because they may also be Devolver.
Speaker: Oh, that would be funny.
Speaker: It's just our top five Devolver horror games.
Speaker: No, no, it's not.
Speaker: The other one, the other one I am thinking is not.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: There's that at least.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yes, stories untold.
Speaker: It's a really neat game.
Speaker: You can get it on Steam.
Speaker: I probably should have looked up.
Speaker: It's I don't think it is.
Speaker: It's ten bucks.
Speaker: Story.
Speaker: Oh, ten bucks right now.
Speaker: Ten bucks.
Speaker: And I think it's like, yeah, it's ten bucks.
Speaker: And it's like, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Speaker: It's on sale right now.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: Special promotion ends November 1st.
Speaker: So I'll try to get this episode out before November 1st.
Speaker: I mean, we have to because it's a Halloween episode and that would be super dumb.
Speaker: Oh shit, that is so cheap.
Speaker: $2.49.
Speaker: Dude.
Speaker: Right now.
Speaker: All right, that's, you know what?
Speaker: For Stories Untold.
Speaker: That's what we need to do.
Speaker: We need to, because there is the Halloween sale going on.
Speaker: There is a Halloween sale going on right now.
Speaker: So let's, let's do that.
Speaker: Let's try to, let's try to, I'm going to make sure I'm on top of these.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Let's throw a slip.
Speaker: Some of these prices in there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cause these are quality games.
Speaker: These are quality games.
Speaker: It's $2 and 49 cents right now.
Speaker: And it's like a four or five hour game.
Speaker: It's a, it's a four or five hour.
Speaker: That's like 50 cents an hour.
Speaker: It's just solid.
Speaker: It's so, it's so good.
Speaker: I have, I have such good memories of that game.
Speaker: It was, that was one of my top 10 games of 2017.
Speaker: And I remember that because it came out at the very beginning of 2017.
Speaker: And you know how that is, that that's kind of the death knell for a lot of games when they come out of the beginning of the year, because by the end of the year, everyone's forgotten about it.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's both games and movies.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: The beginning of the year is like the the dump period.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Typically, I mean, games are a little less formalized in that logic, but movies definitely.
Speaker: It's like if you're coming out in like January or February, they're just trying to get it out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And that one, and that one just stuck with me for a long time.
Speaker: I was, there is a, not a sequel there.
Speaker: The followup game from no code is, which is the developer is called observation.
Speaker: I haven't played it.
Speaker: Observation.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But it looks like it has some, some similar vibes of unique gameplay elements.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that is stick.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I'm going to have to look into that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Also published by Devolver.
Speaker: Observation.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That is a solid game to start this whole thing off with.
Speaker: My friend stories untold stories untold.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: I'll have some esoteric ones and some, uh, and I think one of them is, is free on my list.
Speaker: Actually, even better.
Speaker: And but that's it.
Speaker: That's it for stories until that's my number five.
Speaker: Number five.
Speaker: OK, all right.
Speaker: I'm going to I'm going to pitch my number five then.
Speaker: This kind of sounds dirty when you put it that way.
Speaker: But fuck it.
Speaker: My number five game is Phantasmagoria.
Speaker: Now, this one is for us old grognards in the room.
Speaker: For those of you who might remember, this one came out in 1995.
Speaker: It is an FMV horror point-and-click game.
Speaker: It was designed by Roberta Williams, who you might remember as the person who designed King's Quest.
Speaker: So right there, you've got a lot of pedigree, if you will.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it was one of the first games that was on CD-ROM, as I recall.
Speaker: So he was able to pack a whole lot into this game.
Speaker: And like I said, it's FMV, it's horror.
Speaker: And there were a few death scenes in it that when you look at them now, people kind of
Speaker: it's, it's, it's laughable.
Speaker: It's really very funny.
Speaker: I'm sure it was a, it was a, Oh my God.
Speaker: Wasn't we, it wasn't fan was Phantasmagoria.
Speaker: One of the games that got brought up at some point or am I as far as, as far as like Congress or, or Senate or, um, I think, I don't think it was, it was definitely a lot of people, uh,
Speaker: didn't like it but I think it was kind of overshadowed by a lot of the other games that were popular at the time Mortal Kombat and Doom and what was the one with the oh what was the other FMV one
Speaker: Oh, that's what I was trying to think of.
Speaker: The one that was the night, night hunt, night, night, night, something.
Speaker: Night trap, night trap, night trap.
Speaker: There it is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think, I think it was, I think this one was specifically kind of overshadowed by night trap.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is a shame because this is a way better game.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's way better.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Night Trap is not a very interesting game.
Speaker: If you know, if you play it for any length of time.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Or just actually don't.
Speaker: It's not worth necessarily playing.
Speaker: Just watch somebody else play it.
Speaker: You should get the same effect.
Speaker: But they Night Trap, not Phantasmagoria.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Well, they built up this huge like.
Speaker: a legend around it about it being this horrifying game and it was banned for a while and they didn't release it for years.
Speaker: And, and when they finally released it, you're like, Oh,
Speaker: That's what that's it.
Speaker: Okay, fine.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And, and phantasmagoria wasn't quite as bad as all that, because like I said, I think it got kind of missed, but it honestly, it had better death scenes, like people's heads getting smashed and stuff like that.
Speaker: And it's just cartoonish.
Speaker: It's, it looks like it looks terrible.
Speaker: But in the game, you play a woman who has moved into this group.
Speaker: creepy old house with her pony tailed husband who is wearing a black long sleeve shirt and a safari vest the whole time.
Speaker: So he's just the most odd looking.
Speaker: He looks like he should be writing songs for meatloaf.
Speaker: It's just a very weird, specific vibe that he's given off.
Speaker: And you're playing this woman who kind of looks like the main lady protagonist in Werewolf, for my MST3K fans.
Speaker: And you're just working your way through this mansion and
Speaker: and your husband is losing his mind and there are ghosts and secret compartments and secret underground spaces that you can investigate.
Speaker: And it's it's nuts.
Speaker: And when I was a kid, no matter how campy and over the top and silly it was, I remember seeing clips of this game.
Speaker: I didn't play it fully until I was an adult.
Speaker: But it scared the piss out of me when I was a kid because the FMV thing, there was something so vaguely sinister about it.
Speaker: And I can't quite put my finger on what it was, but it always felt so weird.
Speaker: I think because it was so grainy, the quality is not so great.
Speaker: And that kind of, as a kid, leaves a lot of room for your imagination to play.
Speaker: Sure, sure.
Speaker: I hear you.
Speaker: And a few years back, I did end up buying it.
Speaker: It is currently $9.99 on Steam, which is its normal price, but $10 for kind of a classic.
Speaker: If you're into horror games, if you're into FMV games, or if you're into...
Speaker: Just old school video games.
Speaker: This kind of ticks all of those boxes.
Speaker: And it's it's I played it for the first time years ago.
Speaker: I actually played it and and did a let's play of it from beginning to end on my YouTube channel.
Speaker: And it's still up there.
Speaker: So if you want to watch me play my want to dig that up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, go check out El Conquistador on YouTube and dig.
Speaker: It's somewhere in there.
Speaker: And for those of you who might be confused by a similar sounding title, it is not Phasmophobia, the four-player online co-op game where you're hunting ghosts.
Speaker: It is Phantasmagoria.
Speaker: Phasmophobia.
Speaker: We've got a couple of friends who did say that that one is scary as hell, though.
Speaker: Phasmophobia.
Speaker: I mean, it's not on this list because obviously it blew up like gangbusters.
Speaker: Everybody and their mother knows about phasmophobia for such a small budget game.
Speaker: And there's a bunch of other games that do bad.
Speaker: The same thing, you know, you're it's like co-op investigating spooky places.
Speaker: Phasmophobia was basically the first one to kind of break out, though.
Speaker: And yeah, it can have some really spooky moments.
Speaker: And I played it with our our UK pals a few times.
Speaker: And it's it's it's fun, but it's not Phantasmagoria.
Speaker: They are two different games.
Speaker: Two different games.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, that's, that's my number five, number five, number five.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Um, so on my list, I'm going to, I'm going to go with my number four as faith.
Speaker: And this is also including faith to, um, Oh yeah.
Speaker: Faith is developed by Air Dorf and published by new blood interactive who, um,
Speaker: You might know from things like Ultra Kill and Dusk.
Speaker: Faith is another one of their the games that they they publish.
Speaker: And Faith is now actually on it's available on Steam sort of.
Speaker: Oh, is it?
Speaker: I didn't know that.
Speaker: Yeah, not totally because
Speaker: There's a store page for it where you could get the Faith Unholy Trilogy or Unholy Trinity edition when Faith 3 comes out, the third game in the series.
Speaker: So right now there's just like a store page with a demo.
Speaker: And then once the third one is finished, it's going to be released as a full thing, Faith the Unholy Trinity.
Speaker: Very cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Faith is I actually interviewed Erdorf for my YouTube channel some time ago to talk about how he got started in making games.
Speaker: It's a really cool interview.
Speaker: He's a he's a neat dude.
Speaker: And the games are basically these top down adventure games.
Speaker: Almost like Apple IIe Commodore, you know, mid-1980s.
Speaker: So it's very simplistic, and he does so much.
Speaker: He does so much with these simplistic graphics and juxtaposing them against these really intense rotoscope scenes that...
Speaker: That as he put it, it's something that you're seeing something that you shouldn't be seeing is the idea.
Speaker: So faith is pretty cool.
Speaker: It's loosely based on some of the concepts, some of the things that people were scared of in the satanic panic world.
Speaker: You know, that the that the children are under attack by Satanists and stuff like that.
Speaker: So it's it's it's basically he wanted to make a game that you could like you accidentally find it in a yard sale.
Speaker: you know yeah like it's its own creepypasta it was like yeah it's like it's it's like its own creepypasta come to life um and that's that's the faith series um so faith is my number four on the list um it's a pretty cool game uh you can check it out i think it's on i think if you wanted to get the first and second one you can still buy them on itch.io
Speaker: Yeah, they're available on on it.
Speaker: You know, but otherwise, if you just want to wait and get the whole shebang, you can check out the Steam page and it has it has a demo for, I believe, Faith 3, the third game in the series is up right now.
Speaker: I couldn't agree with you more in terms of how much he was able to do within the confines of such an old school sort of setup.
Speaker: Like, he did rotoscope stuff in there.
Speaker: Like, it's just incredibly effective and really spooky.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a good game.
Speaker: It's a really good game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, number four, Fate.
Speaker: Number four, Fate.
Speaker: Number four.
Speaker: Number four, Fate.
Speaker: Okay, my number four is The Shrouded Isle.
Speaker: And this was another one that came out in 2017, and it was a good year for indie spook games.
Speaker: This one was basically the idea is you are... It's like a strategy resource management sort of game, and you're the head of a group of priests in this...
Speaker: old hamlet that worships this elder god and the whole thing is you're trying to raise uh this this you know lovecraftian god uh from its slumber beneath the ocean uh near your little island hamlet and you have to keep everybody happy there are all these families that have power and you know for now you're the one who's in charge but if you
Speaker: If you piss off the wrong people, you know, it's got kind of a Reigns vibe to it.
Speaker: But it's not as simplistic, obviously, as like, you know, swipe left or swipe right.
Speaker: It's told through this whole kind of green swamp, old school Game Boy color scheme.
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: Which is fascinating, and I think only adds to kind of the gross, uneasy quality that the whole thing has.
Speaker: It's pretty terrific stylistically.
Speaker: It's really hard, I will say.
Speaker: I did have trouble getting through it, getting through it to an ending where I was, you know...
Speaker: Nobody wins when you wake up an elder god, but theoretically, that's the win state in this game.
Speaker: And it took me a while to get there, but by the time I got there, it was absolutely worth it.
Speaker: It's pretty brutal.
Speaker: It's pretty tough.
Speaker: And they actually have a new DLC for it that came out recently.
Speaker: I haven't played it yet, though.
Speaker: I'll
Speaker: It's called The Sunken Sins, and it's free.
Speaker: Free DLC.
Speaker: Who doesn't love that?
Speaker: Who doesn't love it?
Speaker: Who doesn't?
Speaker: Who doesn't?
Speaker: And I'm looking at it, and normally this one is also $9.99 on Steam, but right now, until November 1st, this sucker's going for $1.99.
Speaker: Yeah, it's also part of a couple bundles.
Speaker: Yes, yes.
Speaker: So Kitfox Games, which developed and produced it, has a bundle of all their games on Steam right now that's available for $32.68.
Speaker: And they kind of make, you know...
Speaker: They have a pretty wide variety of games.
Speaker: Lucifer Within Us, for example, is like a mystery puzzle-solving game where you're solving murders.
Speaker: And that's the only one I've actually seen some gameplay of.
Speaker: And actually, I believe I've played or watched some people play Fit for a King, which is a real... It's basically a really old...
Speaker: CRPG style game where you control a king basically Henry VIII and you can do whatever you want you can kill or you can sleep with or you can it's pretty funny I think I watched the Super Beard Bros play it
Speaker: Well, they did.
Speaker: They did have a game that came out this year called Super Boyfriend Dungeon, which did get some attention.
Speaker: Oh, is that them as well?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It's a visual novel where you... Well, it's a visual novel with a little action RPG thrown in, from what I could tell.
Speaker: I haven't played it.
Speaker: But the whole idea is that there are these swords, or otherwise weapons, and when you go into a dungeon and fight with them, they're weapons.
Speaker: And then when you get out of the dungeon, they're handsome people that you can...
Speaker: date and maybe kiss on.
Speaker: Uh, and, uh, and who doesn't, who doesn't love that?
Speaker: I doesn't love the smooches.
Speaker: They're, they're a very eclectic game studio.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They're also developing a, yeah, they're also developing like a, a graphical version of dwarf fortress.
Speaker: So in case, in case ASCII was, was the thing that ever held you back from, from playing dwarf fortress there, they're working on fixing that for you.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: And if that was the only thing keeping you from playing Dwarf Fortress, I question that.
Speaker: I think Dwarf Fortress might be the thing that was keeping you from playing it, if we're being honest here.
Speaker: But yeah, The Shrouded Isle, really interesting.
Speaker: It's not going to be for everybody.
Speaker: It's a strange, strange, dark little game.
Speaker: But I found it really intriguing.
Speaker: And frankly, for two bucks, you could do a hell of a lot worse.
Speaker: So that's my number four.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: My number three, number three, number three is the uncle who works for Nintendo.
Speaker: Oh, now I've heard of this one.
Speaker: I don't know much about it, but I've heard of this one.
Speaker: So it is, I don't know what specifically this type of game.
Speaker: It's just text.
Speaker: It's like basically a text adventure.
Speaker: You're just clicking on hyperlinks.
Speaker: It's available on Itch.io for free.
Speaker: And so it's ztool.itch.io slash the uncle who works for Nintendo.
Speaker: There's dashes in there.
Speaker: But if you Google it, it'll show up.
Speaker: Probably just Google it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just Google it.
Speaker: Just imagine me like going, all right, it was the, oh God, just Google it.
Speaker: Just Google it.
Speaker: So the uncle who works for Nintendo base, the synopsis is right on that page.
Speaker: For the game, you are 11 years old.
Speaker: You are sleeping over your best friend's house.
Speaker: You and your friend like video games.
Speaker: Your friend has a lot of cool games.
Speaker: And believe it or not, an uncle who works for Nintendo.
Speaker: And he's coming to visit at midnight.
Speaker: A narrative horror game.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: That is really spooky.
Speaker: Isn't it like the way that's written is super spooky?
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It's very spooky.
Speaker: There are some trigger warnings for it because it talks about some really heavy topics.
Speaker: So it's worth checking those out before you start.
Speaker: Just based on that description alone.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And to give a little backstory, the phrase blah, blah, blah works for Nintendo is it's kind of this it's it's almost like a meme.
Speaker: And I don't mean a meme in terms of like present day memeage, you know, on the Internet.
Speaker: I mean, people would say this.
Speaker: In playgrounds when Phil and I were kids to try to basically prove that they knew something about like an upcoming game or a secret for a game or or how to actually beat something or what what have you.
Speaker: It was meant to lend authority to you.
Speaker: Yeah, it was it was it was meant to try to argue from a position of authority.
Speaker: Be like, well, my my dad's cousin works for Nintendo and my dad said it's this or whatever.
Speaker: So that's kind of where that phrase comes from for those who might be too young to.
Speaker: to grasp the person who worked for Nintendo was almost entirely was always fictional they never actually existed it was just kind of like something that was grabbed from the ether in order to prove that they knew something that you did not yeah and shut down the debate basically
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So, yeah, I remember playing this a few years ago because it was on a I think it was a Kotaku article or something like that.
Speaker: It was just on my Twitter feed.
Speaker: It doesn't take long to get through.
Speaker: But it is very chilling with its use just with it just uses text and like some looping background sound design to really give you a flavor of of the horror.
Speaker: It's it's emotional, psychological horror.
Speaker: But.
Speaker: really really neat stuff and it's totally free you could go and you can play it right now the uncle who works for nintendo it'll take you it won't take you very long to get through it and get all five endings um if you if you just want to kind of click through it um so that's that's my number three is the uncle who works for nintendo number three that's a good one damn
Speaker: Like, that's the kind of just the urban legend-y quality of it.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It's like an interactive creepypasta, basically.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Lo-fi stuff really, really has always creeped me out the most.
Speaker: And actually, looking over this list, all of my games are pretty indie.
Speaker: Now, to be fair, like we said, we're trying to cover underrated games.
Speaker: Video games that maybe you haven't played.
Speaker: So that does lend itself to that naturally.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: But even if we were just doing like our top horror games, these kind of games would all be included.
Speaker: You know, you'd have your Alien Isolation, of course, and Resident Evil and shit.
Speaker: But, you know, I love that kind of thing.
Speaker: That sort of thing creeps me the fuck out.
Speaker: Yeah, I think...
Speaker: More than any other genre, low fidelity works to horror's advantage when wielded skillfully.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Because it kind of fuzzes up the translation between the participant and the content just enough to introduce like...
Speaker: Yeah, that that mystery and that vagueness of, oh, there's some stuff out there.
Speaker: There's some spooky things out there.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It can really get into you, get into your head when when used effectively.
Speaker: I know there's a bunch of like horror games out there that because horror games are you can find horror games all over Steam that are absolutely that are just like a joke at this point.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you'll see and they'll slap like they'll slap like a VHS filter on on the on the game.
Speaker: That's not what I'm talking about.
Speaker: That's that's like just like that.
Speaker: What I talk and I'm talking about specifically when I say low fidelity, I mean something like faith, which is in terms of in terms of a recreation is like a high fidelity recreation of something that was low fidelity rather than just throwing some some some scribbly stuff on the screen and saying that you can't see very well.
Speaker: Oh, well.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Yeah, totally.
Speaker: And also, and if there is any game developer listening out there, a VHS filter, unless we are looking through the point of view of a video camera, it never makes sense.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it doesn't.
Speaker: It's like you said, it's cheap and easy.
Speaker: That's all it is.
Speaker: Or you're you're the idea is it's like second person and you are watching a playback of a tape or something like that.
Speaker: But right.
Speaker: You have to do the work to set up why the why things exist the way they do in order for it to actually have any real effectiveness.
Speaker: Yeah, it has to have some level of explanation.
Speaker: You know, you know, we don't have to go into it real deep.
Speaker: You don't have to give it like 500 pages of explanation, but, you know, something.
Speaker: You don't have to Stephen King this explanation.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: No one asked you to do that.
Speaker: No one asked you to do that.
Speaker: No one asked Stephen King to do that, but he does it anyway.
Speaker: But he does it anyway because he loves us.
Speaker: Stephen King giveth and he giveth.
Speaker: Excuse me.
Speaker: You there?
Speaker: I'm here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You cut out for a second.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Cause I just had a big sneeze and I wasn't sure if you heard it or not.
Speaker: I heard the excuse me.
Speaker: Okay, good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The mute, the Yeti, which is a metaphor.
Speaker: I'm sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Because as I was saying while you're sneezing, Stephen King giveth and he giveth.
Speaker: He giveth and he giveth and he giveth.
Speaker: He never taketh away.
Speaker: He never taketh away.
Speaker: He might giveth you more if you tell him to take some of it away.
Speaker: He giveth and he never editeth.
Speaker: But, but I love the man, love the man so damn much.
Speaker: So there you have it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Is it my turn?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's your turn.
Speaker: I just, I like, I like this format.
Speaker: Just sit and talk about spooky games, spooky games.
Speaker: Number three.
Speaker: Oh, my number three.
Speaker: Now this one, I, I, I thought it was my own little trip for a minute there.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And I reviewed this one years ago when it came out and I found myself playing it constantly.
Speaker: And a bunch of our friends play it, too.
Speaker: And it's kind of a sleeper hit.
Speaker: It's called Distrust.
Speaker: And distrust is the best way to describe distrust is a love letter to John Carpenter's The Thing.
Speaker: You play one of several different styles of characters.
Speaker: You got a lot of them you can unlock and play with and that sort of thing.
Speaker: And your goal is to get through.
Speaker: It's like an isometric survival game.
Speaker: And you've got to make sure that you're fed.
Speaker: You got to make sure that you're warm.
Speaker: You got to make your way through these different stages of an Antarctic world.
Speaker: science station while avoiding aliens that come when you sleep.
Speaker: That's the difference.
Speaker: Instead of like the thing like taking over someone's body and you can't trust somebody, which don't get me wrong, is fucking awesome.
Speaker: But instead of doing that, it's it's you if you sleep too much, you attract these horrible little alien things that will attack you and you're running out of sleep, you're running out of food.
Speaker: It's that kind of resource management sort of thing, which is super stressful, but a hell of a lot of fun.
Speaker: And it just captures that that the thing Antarctic polar horror sci fi.
Speaker: atmosphere fucking beautifully.
Speaker: And not long ago, they actually released an update for their old.
Speaker: They've been working on this thing kind of constantly since it came out, which was in also in 2017, interestingly enough.
Speaker: But they've been working on it kind of constantly, and they came out with a co-op version so you can play with your friends.
Speaker: Normally you can find survivors that are NPCs and take over them.
Speaker: And so you got better chances of making it through.
Speaker: But I imagine playing.
Speaker: We ought to play this together.
Speaker: Yeah, that would be fun.
Speaker: It would be a lot of fun.
Speaker: And it couldn't be a better time to do it because, Kevin, until November 1st, this game, which is normally $11.99 and by the way, worth every penny.
Speaker: At full price.
Speaker: It is $1.79.
Speaker: $1.79.
Speaker: I'd like to point out again, no one's paying us to do this.
Speaker: I just I think this is a smart thing to do for you guys, the listeners, just to let you know where there are good deals.
Speaker: Hey, there's some good deals out there.
Speaker: There really are.
Speaker: And these are genuine games that me and Kevin really actually love.
Speaker: And I got the feeling that by the end of this thing, you'll be able to buy the entire catalog of our 10 games for like 20 bucks or something.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the developer, by the way, of, of distrust, um,
Speaker: Or the yeah, yeah, the developer, a company called Cheer Dealers.
Speaker: They have they have three games and their newest one just came out like 10 days ago.
Speaker: Oh, nice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's called They Always Run.
Speaker: It's a 2D platformer space western where you chase bounties.
Speaker: Oh, now that sounds fun.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: How can you not go for that?
Speaker: So, yeah, that's that's and it says similar to games you've played Hollow Knight and Hades with.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: With way too many hours on record for both of them.
Speaker: for me.
Speaker: I believe that you, those, those were both games that really, those, those games both just got you right.
Speaker: I was right in them.
Speaker: Those.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Those are two big ones for you.
Speaker: So that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Shit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So if, if you like, if you like survival games and it's actual survival horror, it's not, you know, you've got a submachine gun and you're killing zombies and you're running out of, you every now and then run out of ammo for it.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: It's actual survival, research management.
Speaker: It's that kind of really addictive form of it, too, where the first, I think it's like five stages.
Speaker: And the first stage and maybe even the second stage, you're able to get to a point where you're like flush.
Speaker: You're like, OK, I got plenty of food.
Speaker: I got a little ammo.
Speaker: I've got plenty of sleep.
Speaker: I'm in good shape.
Speaker: This is the run.
Speaker: This is the run.
Speaker: I'm going to do it.
Speaker: No problem.
Speaker: I'm going to kick its ass.
Speaker: And then...
Speaker: By the third stage or so, everything just starts to, you start to, okay, all right, I actually, I really, really need to sleep, but everything else is fine, and we're good.
Speaker: We're just, I'm just gonna just keep on moving.
Speaker: Okay, well, actually, I have way less food than I thought I did, and that sucks, so I really need food, too, but I've got, the rest of it seems fine, and you just get everything.
Speaker: It's like, if you've ever played Banished, which is one of my,
Speaker: addictive games.
Speaker: It's just like that, where it starts out like, I've got it.
Speaker: I'm under control here.
Speaker: Everything's cool.
Speaker: And then before you know, everyone's dead and on fire.
Speaker: It's just that good.
Speaker: So that's my number three, distrust, polar survival.
Speaker: It is so good.
Speaker: So basically it's survival, comma, horror.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because I feel like survival horror has a connotation of like Resident Evil, you know?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I think, yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker: And honestly, the monsters, like the aliens, are kind of secondary.
Speaker: They're there and they provide a bit of a pain in the ass.
Speaker: But the thing that's going to kill you, that's probably going to kill you is the Arctic.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: You're probably going to freeze to death.
Speaker: That's probably how it's going to work.
Speaker: Yeah, that's exactly it.
Speaker: So yeah, definitely worth getting.
Speaker: I think you guys would like it a lot.
Speaker: That's my number three.
Speaker: Number three.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: My number two coming in at the deuce spot.
Speaker: Oh, that was a burp.
Speaker: That is not so unfortunate that you said that while getting that horrible bubble burp coming up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The new spot.
Speaker: The deuce.
Speaker: Number two is blasphemous.
Speaker: Now, hell yes.
Speaker: This is not a game that is, I will say, scary in the traditional sense.
Speaker: So every other game that I have listed so far has moments of just genuine terror.
Speaker: Blasphemous is what I like to call aesthetically horror because it is a it is a Metroidvania.
Speaker: It is a side scroller 2D Metro Metroidvania with with gorgeous, gorgeous pixel art.
Speaker: And it is so, so good and so, so creepy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Basically, so a game is set in the land of Custodia, which is like a stand in for for Spain.
Speaker: It's almost like it's almost like ink was Spanish Inquisition style Catholicism is is what blasphemous kind of represents.
Speaker: It's not Catholicism.
Speaker: It's a it's a totally fictional religion, but it is super Catholic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I remember seeing that one and being like, oh, this is Catholic horror.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: This is Catholic horror.
Speaker: And specifically Catholic horror that you would have found in Spain like 500 years ago.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So the basic story is you have you are this guy who has
Speaker: You're part of an order, a holy order that has taken on a vow of silence and your entire order has been killed.
Speaker: But by some miracle, you are resurrected and it is up to you to set right the sins of basically the Pope.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: And it's really hard to summarize the story in kind of like a meaningful way because it's very... The lore for it is super...
Speaker: deep um it makes sense the more you read it right it's one of those things that you but it is it and i say this not to use it as in a like a charged way but it's very foreign in yeah the the way the story is written but the more you read it and if you have any experience um
Speaker: with Catholicism or, uh, or any other sect of Christianity that is very pomp and circumstances centered.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: you're going to start to kind of get it because the world of custodia has been beset by this thing called the miracle.
Speaker: And the miracle has blessed or cursed literally everybody in custodia.
Speaker: And the blessings or the curses are grotesque in nature.
Speaker: So you'll find people that are just like,
Speaker: turning into trees.
Speaker: Um, people that just have to walk around with the gravestone on their back.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: You know, it's terrifying.
Speaker: And then the bosses, the amazing thing is these bosses, the design of the bosses is top notch.
Speaker: And you will fight a giant baby.
Speaker: I'll say that right now.
Speaker: That was actually going to be my next question.
Speaker: So I'm glad you brought that up.
Speaker: Esposito, the scion of abjuration.
Speaker: Yeah, you're going to fight a giant baby.
Speaker: You're going to fight a giant baby.
Speaker: You're going to kill that giant baby.
Speaker: I hope so.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's terrible.
Speaker: He is terrifying.
Speaker: You'd better.
Speaker: Let's put it that way.
Speaker: And here's the crazy thing.
Speaker: And I'm not I don't think I'm spoiling anything in specific.
Speaker: The game's a bummer.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: The ending is a bummer.
Speaker: There is a good ending.
Speaker: Also a bummer.
Speaker: There is.
Speaker: You are not escaping this game without being a little bit bummed out by.
Speaker: A, the nature of the game, and B, the ending of the game.
Speaker: That's really surprising when you think about the Catholic Church.
Speaker: That's really, yeah.
Speaker: Genuinely, yeah.
Speaker: This is not a feel-good story.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: You're you're the first boss you fight.
Speaker: This is the first 15 minutes of the game.
Speaker: Your dude wakes up.
Speaker: He fights a boss.
Speaker: He he takes he drains the boss's blood into his helmet and then he puts the helmet over his head and is awashed in the blood.
Speaker: And yeah, that kind of sets the tone for the game.
Speaker: It's yeah, it's I'll tell you, you know, we've had some discussion on the kind of get good games and how I feel about them.
Speaker: And this is this is one of them.
Speaker: This is this is a side scroller.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's very difficult.
Speaker: It does have, I believe it's been, I haven't played it since 2019 when it came out, but I, the month it came out, I pretty much played exclusively that for like a month.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: getting through it but uh yeah it's um it's very it is difficult it's not an easy game it i it's i don't want to say it's a the on steam it is tagged as a souls like it is not a souls like it's a metroidvania there's no stamina bar uh if i recall correctly there's no stamina bar it's just health and magic
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the only thing that kind of makes it Souls-like is that it, I think it has a corpse run in there.
Speaker: You do have Souls or whatever the equivalent of it is.
Speaker: You do have Souls, yeah.
Speaker: You do have things that you spend.
Speaker: So it's very loosely been called a Souls-like.
Speaker: It's mostly a Metroidvania.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was enough.
Speaker: It was not so brutal that I didn't.
Speaker: I played it for a little while.
Speaker: I didn't get very far because actually metrovanias are tough for me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just in my attention span and trying to remember where I'm supposed to go.
Speaker: And I get really frustrated with that kind of thing.
Speaker: It's tough on me.
Speaker: Uh, but I'll tell you what, I'll play a game that, uh, is not necessarily made for me for way too long, just for the aesthetic.
Speaker: Uh, and that, that was absolutely a case, uh, with, with this one.
Speaker: I, I have fond memories of it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, um, blasphemous is also in the Halloween sale on steam right now.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: So what are we looking at?
Speaker: We're looking at and I just clicked off of it because I saw a neat bundle.
Speaker: I was like, oh, that's that's neat.
Speaker: Oh, I like that bundle.
Speaker: So you can get Blasphemous right now for $8.49.
Speaker: You could also get the Digital Deluxe Edition for $16.38.
Speaker: Now, the Digital Deluxe Edition is actually kind of cool because it has it.
Speaker: It contains the
Speaker: a digital art book, um, for some, some really cool art from the game.
Speaker: And there is a digital comic as well, which I believe is the, um, it's basically the story leading up to where the game begins.
Speaker: It's like, what was your character?
Speaker: What was your dude doing?
Speaker: Um, that's awesome.
Speaker: Before the game began and what led to his death and resurrection.
Speaker: Um, um,
Speaker: So, yeah, it's it's it might be worth getting because once the sale ends, the game goes to twenty four ninety nine, which is more expensive than the digital edition is.
Speaker: I mean, it's you could get the digital edition for less than the whole game right now as well.
Speaker: There's also it also it would be part of the the dark cult bundle, which would which was in there with with the shrouded aisle church, the church in the darkness and outlast two for 1739.
Speaker: That's a pretty good deal.
Speaker: That's not a bad deal.
Speaker: Or you could get the sword and whip bundle if you're if you prefer the Metroidvanias, which is bloodstained, which is straight up Symphony of the Night, but not Castlevania.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Bloodstained.
Speaker: Really, really cool game.
Speaker: I played the heck out of that when that came out.
Speaker: So that that might be worth it as well.
Speaker: Hell yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, Halloween sale really coming in.
Speaker: And this is just, yeah, currently, good timing.
Speaker: Currently adding things to my cart.
Speaker: I am literally, as we talk, just going.
Speaker: These are awfully cheap.
Speaker: Things are awfully cheap right now.
Speaker: You know what's funny is that it's like, oh man, all these things are games are so cheap.
Speaker: And then it's like you buy all these games and it's like, wow, that's a lot of money.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: It does have a way of adding up, doesn't it?
Speaker: It does have a way.
Speaker: Numbers have this thing where they add up after you add them together.
Speaker: Yeah, it's bizarre.
Speaker: It really is.
Speaker: I never expect it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Never expect it.
Speaker: You never see it coming.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Oh, there's a cool anime trailer now for the game.
Speaker: What the heck is this?
Speaker: Oh, that looks sweet as hell.
Speaker: Anyway, Blasphemous, number two.
Speaker: Go check it out.
Speaker: Yeah, check it out.
Speaker: Go get that one.
Speaker: Let me see.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I have got my number two line.
Speaker: Now, you kind of started yours with a caveat for number two that you didn't see it as quite a Halloween spooky game.
Speaker: You know, it's spooky, but not like jump scary.
Speaker: It's just, yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's just like, oh, I don't feel so good.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I've got a similar thing, but not quite in the same vein.
Speaker: But you're just going to have to trust me on this one.
Speaker: My number two, it's two games.
Speaker: It's Costume Quest 1 and 2.
Speaker: Oh, there we go.
Speaker: They're made by Tim Schafer and Double Fine Productions.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They're not scary games in the slightest.
Speaker: In fact, they're really sweet, charming, G-rated games.
Speaker: You could play this with your kid, and in many ways, it would act kind of as like baby's first RPG.
Speaker: But the whole aesthetic of it, I have never played a game that...
Speaker: that felt more flawlessly, effortlessly Halloween than this game.
Speaker: And that's because it is you play a group of kids on Halloween night and a group of like goblin things have come into your town and they're dressing up and they're up to no good.
Speaker: And you and your friends are all dressed in different costumes and stuff.
Speaker: And you got to go put an end to these goblin things, you know, their, their plans.
Speaker: And when you get into a fight, you start out, you know, you got, you got a kid, he's, he's wearing like a cardboard robot costume.
Speaker: And the one little girl's wearing a knight.
Speaker: She's got a cardboard knight sword and she's using a trash can lid as a shield and that kind of thing.
Speaker: But when you actually get into combat, you,
Speaker: it goes like full on Kaiju Power Rangers and you grow into this giant, you know, idealized version of your costume.
Speaker: And it's so cute and fun.
Speaker: And, you know, you're you know, you go from I'm a blue costumed robot guy.
Speaker: And then suddenly you're this towering Gundam looking thing that's firing missiles.
Speaker: And I've never played a game.
Speaker: that better capture just the spirit and like the really honest to God fun, the childhood kid on Halloween, the imagination of the kids.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: That is adorable.
Speaker: And that's actually, that is like the, that's like the best thing about being a parent on Halloween is, it's just like taking your kid around the neighborhood and they're with all the other kids and they're like, pretend they're in their costumes playing and pretending and, and all that stuff.
Speaker: It's just,
Speaker: It's just adorable.
Speaker: I'll have to check this game.
Speaker: It's it's it's so pure.
Speaker: It's so pure.
Speaker: And you can get both of these games right now for five bucks.
Speaker: And frankly, the the costume quest bundle outside of the of the of the.
Speaker: sale is 20 bucks.
Speaker: These are, these are, you know, again, real cheap games.
Speaker: They're not super long.
Speaker: I don't think it took me that long to be, I think it's like five, six hours, something like that.
Speaker: Maybe a little more.
Speaker: But God,
Speaker: They're charming and funny and fun.
Speaker: And they pull from a lot of the old classical, not classical, but, you know, just old school action RPG kind of things.
Speaker: You know, like when you're in the overworld and you and your friends are dressed in your little costumes, each one of the costumes has a different ability.
Speaker: You know, at one point you've got like this space knight, you know, person and you've got a glow up.
Speaker: like a flashlight with a cone at the end of it that you're pretending as a sword or lightsaber.
Speaker: And there's a dark area and you use your flashlight cone to, you know, light up the area so you can get through it.
Speaker: And I think it's the robot.
Speaker: He's got these rocket skates that you can go off ramps with it.
Speaker: It's just so charming and so pure.
Speaker: It doesn't have a cynical bone in its body.
Speaker: And that is hard to come by.
Speaker: That is adorable.
Speaker: It really is.
Speaker: I, I, I honest, honest to God, uh, of all of the games on this list, this is the one that like, this was the first thing I wrote down when we decided we were going to do this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was like underrated Halloween games.
Speaker: I was like, well, I got to talk about costume quest, but it's not a scary game.
Speaker: It's gotta have a spook.
Speaker: It's, it's just so great.
Speaker: It's, it's a lot of fun.
Speaker: I cannot recommend it enough.
Speaker: I really can't.
Speaker: That is awesome.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: It's in my cart.
Speaker: It's sitting in my cart.
Speaker: You're not going to.
Speaker: You are not going to.
Speaker: Honestly, that's the kind of thing you can play with your kid.
Speaker: You know, like it's it's it's simple enough and it's fun and and funny that you guys both enjoy it.
Speaker: It's not like some of the some of the TV shows that I imagine, you know, parents have to deal with as their kids grow or you're just gritting your teeth through the whole thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's genuinely cute and funny.
Speaker: It's fantastic.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: It's time for number one.
Speaker: Number one.
Speaker: One, one, one, one, one.
Speaker: This game is also part of the Steam Halloween sale.
Speaker: And my number one is World of Horror.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: You told me about this one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So World of Horror is it is a. Basically, you take you take Junji Ito.
Speaker: You know, Junji Ito, the Japanese manga horror god, Junji Ito.
Speaker: Everybody, everybody knows him.
Speaker: He's and everybody has their own tale that he's he's written that that is theirs, that that really gets them the most.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: For me, it's the I believe it's called the Enigma at Amigara Fault.
Speaker: That one.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: That one really ruins my day.
Speaker: So World of Horror is is basically a love letter to Junji Ito with a dash of Lovecraft.
Speaker: Not not it.
Speaker: It has Lovecraftian elements in terms of like the the end game and some of the some of the way the setting is is used.
Speaker: But I I really think it's more Junji Ito than than Lovecraft just because of the art style.
Speaker: The art style is really upsetting.
Speaker: Yes, it is.
Speaker: It's one bit just black and white.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Or there's other there's other styles that you can choose from color palettes rather that you can choose from.
Speaker: Basically, you play a character in the main quest mode.
Speaker: There's several modes of the game who has to investigate five mysteries in the town.
Speaker: Now, these mysteries are random.
Speaker: It is a roguelite.
Speaker: So basically, you every time you fire up the game, you're going to have like a different disadvantage.
Speaker: You know, like what what's the Elder God's advantage, right?
Speaker: You're going to have different mysteries that you got to solve.
Speaker: And then within those mysteries, the encounters are also random.
Speaker: So you're going to you're occasionally you're going to run into enemies that are going to be weird and upsetting and disturbing.
Speaker: And you're not necessarily going to know which ones you're going to run into.
Speaker: There's certain like plot enemies within each mystery, of course.
Speaker: But otherwise, the random encounters, I should say, are as they typically are in an RPG random.
Speaker: But they are truly random.
Speaker: like one of a kind random.
Speaker: It's not like fighting slimes over and over again.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's like, oh, you run into this guy who he cut his face off, but he put it, tried to put it back on.
Speaker: You know, things like that.
Speaker: Like, why?
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: It is it is terrifying in so many ways.
Speaker: And so there's like and there's two different health meters that you have to deal with in in true like this is the real love craft of it is you have your stamina and
Speaker: just your physical grit and ability to just like get through things and you have your reason
Speaker: Oh, God, one of these.
Speaker: Okay, okay.
Speaker: Basically, you can either lose your health or you can lose your mind.
Speaker: And so it can get pretty dicey.
Speaker: But the fun thing about it is it is a roguelite.
Speaker: So, you know, well, you died.
Speaker: You can start a fresh game and it's not going to... You're not going to...
Speaker: You're not going to lose too much.
Speaker: You know, it doesn't take very long to get through it.
Speaker: You know, it takes maybe like an hour or two to get through a five mystery run.
Speaker: If I believe I can't recall off the top of my head, but I think it only takes a couple hours to get through the the the five mystery run.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You win, you lose, whatever.
Speaker: You start back at the beginning and you have a fresh experience and it's it's kind of fun to play through.
Speaker: It's still in early access.
Speaker: Now, this is the caveat that I need to put out there to the world.
Speaker: It is still in early access, and the developer, Panstaz,
Speaker: had up until recently been radio silent for the past year or so.
Speaker: However, Pants, I'm just looking up their Twitter.
Speaker: On October 14th, after basically being radio silent for a year, Pants Daz tweeted,
Speaker: It's truly been a miserable year, but good news soon, along with four screenshots of new content that they are adding or he is adding.
Speaker: There's no gender listed, but I believe it's he is adding to World of Horror.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: The game is back in development, but even if it wasn't, it still has a lot of good stuff going going for it.
Speaker: The other fun thing about it is that everything illustrated in the game was illustrated in MS Paint.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: That's amazing.
Speaker: I had no idea.
Speaker: I believe that having looked at it and everything like that, but Jesus is very good looking for MSP.
Speaker: Crazy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the the interface feels very like old Macintosh style interface.
Speaker: You know, the the the text and the the the UI and all that stuff.
Speaker: It's it's really cool.
Speaker: It's got a lot of neat stuff.
Speaker: Can't say enough about World of Horror.
Speaker: If you are a horror fanatic, you know, World of Horror.
Speaker: But if you're not a horror fanatic, like I don't I don't I'm not assuming that a lot of our fans are necessarily horror fanatics.
Speaker: Then you owe it to yourself to check it out.
Speaker: It's.
Speaker: It's not on sale for that much.
Speaker: It's technically part of the Steam Halloween sale.
Speaker: It's only 13% off, which is basically a dollar.
Speaker: It's normally 15 bucks.
Speaker: But it is in early access.
Speaker: So your mileage may vary.
Speaker: You get what you get.
Speaker: But I recommend it even though with those caveats.
Speaker: That makes a lot of sense, though, with you.
Speaker: Just that...
Speaker: that broken, simple kind of look.
Speaker: You're you are no fan of no fan of glitch horror.
Speaker: I didn't actually I didn't actually put any true glitch horror games on the list.
Speaker: No, but this this comes close.
Speaker: It comes close.
Speaker: And the uncle who works at Nintendo has some.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, it's not it's not like a it's not like a pony island.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Oh God.
Speaker: You listeners.
Speaker: I gotta tell you when, when pony Island was popular, if it was ever popular, quote unquote, you know, I heard, I loved that game.
Speaker: And, and, but I heard from Kevin about that.
Speaker: What, what is this?
Speaker: You're like, I don't know if I could do it.
Speaker: I don't know if I could do this.
Speaker: I don't like it.
Speaker: I'm not fucking around.
Speaker: I don't know if I could do this.
Speaker: Like the glitch horror is, is his kryptonite.
Speaker: It's, it's, and I don't know if we need to be putting that out in the world, but there it is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was, it's just that effective.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I guess it is kind of surprising that, that, that none of these are like full on, but then again, most of them are kind of popular.
Speaker: You know, you got your Doki Doki literature club and your pony islands.
Speaker: Those are pretty well known.
Speaker: Those are underrated.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They, and, and, and stories untold kind of, um,
Speaker: No, that does have a little.
Speaker: Yeah, it has it has it a bit.
Speaker: It's it's weird if you're like really looking at the meta narrative of it to consider it glitch horror.
Speaker: But glitch horror in my mind specifically is when the program, the game itself behaves in a way that you don't want it to or is surprising to you.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Whereas because of the point of view chosen for something like Stories Untold, it is your it is one step to remove step removed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Like you it's you as a person in the game interacting with the UI that is glitching as opposed to the game itself doing the glitching.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: If if that makes sense, it's a very fine line.
Speaker: But it is it is a very effective fine line for me personally.
Speaker: You're a man of code.
Speaker: Like you, you're a man of tech.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You're like, no, they're not supposed to do that.
Speaker: It's not supposed to do that.
Speaker: Why is like, it is like, why is it, why is it changing the size of my screen?
Speaker: It shouldn't, it shouldn't be allowed to do that.
Speaker: I shouldn't have to, to beat this boss.
Speaker: I shouldn't have to go into the files and find an execute file and delete it.
Speaker: That seems wrong to me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That does fuck with me too, though.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: You're number one.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: My number one, you know, I was thinking of this recently, recently because it's like super underrated.
Speaker: My number one, it's this little indie horror game.
Speaker: You guys probably have never heard of called dead space two.
Speaker: I beat dead space two today.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: super indie go out and buy dead space 2 it's a masterpiece it's amazing I just had to get that out I just had to get that out I can't believe it took me this long to play that franchise it's a masterpiece I love it it was amazing holy fucking shit didn't you finish dead space 2
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So good.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's so good.
Speaker: It was so much better than the first.
Speaker: And I really liked the first, but we're going to, we're going to get into that.
Speaker: We've got a whole episode.
Speaker: We've got a whole episode dedicated to the, I just had to get it off.
Speaker: I had to get off the, off my chest.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: This is actually a very underrated game.
Speaker: I don't know how horror it is, but it's deeply upsetting and unsettling and spooky.
Speaker: And it's a series called Rusty Lake.
Speaker: It's three games, Rusty Lake Hotel, Rusty Lake Roots, and Rusty Lake Paradise.
Speaker: They are puzzle games.
Speaker: There is some they're made by a team called Rusty Lake, who are also known for another unsettling set of puzzle games called Cube Escape.
Speaker: And there is some sort of meta narrative underneath that.
Speaker: these games.
Speaker: I do not know what it is.
Speaker: I can barely bring myself to like even consider what it could be.
Speaker: But the puzzles, first off, first and foremost, the puzzles are incredibly clever.
Speaker: They're really good puzzles.
Speaker: If you're a DM and you're
Speaker: and you want some puzzles that you can rip off and transform to work for your Dungeons & Dragons game or something like that, and you want to take credit for something clever, rip off Rusty Lake.
Speaker: They're amazing.
Speaker: And they could totally work in any number of styles of game.
Speaker: First and foremost, their team, their designers are badass puzzle designers.
Speaker: They're great.
Speaker: They're clever.
Speaker: And they're also really off-putting.
Speaker: The games take place in these far off middle of nowhere places.
Speaker: Rusty Lake Hotel, as the name suggests, takes place in a hotel and it's filled with this cast of animal anthropomorphic animals.
Speaker: And you have to kill.
Speaker: the animals one by one and feed them to the party, the remaining guests.
Speaker: And it's very posh.
Speaker: They're all dressed in fine clothing and everything like that.
Speaker: And it's really that kind of eyes wide shut, weird, upsetting sort of atmosphere.
Speaker: And as you go on throughout these games, you deal more with more humans.
Speaker: But the animal masks are still a part of it.
Speaker: There's this weird Victorian sense of of what's the word?
Speaker: When you're when you can't you're not good with sex and stuff like that.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Like, why is it on the tip of my tongue?
Speaker: Yeah, it's driving me crazy.
Speaker: Like Victorian prudishness.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: There's this very puritanical.
Speaker: Yeah, and it's got a very strange vibe to it.
Speaker: The puzzles...
Speaker: are always in a style that's kind of familiar if you play puzzle games, if you've played these sorts of games before.
Speaker: They're familiar enough, but the outcome is always
Speaker: gruesome or morbid or just flat out weird.
Speaker: And I don't know what the fuck they're getting at with the story.
Speaker: They might not be getting anything at all.
Speaker: And I wouldn't care.
Speaker: They're just so good.
Speaker: The games are so good.
Speaker: They don't take very long to play.
Speaker: They'll probably take you a few hours at most.
Speaker: But
Speaker: But they are, even without the sale going on, and they are a part of the sale, but even without the sale going on, they're $2, $3, and $4 each, just normally.
Speaker: And you can get all of these games for $6 right now.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: During the sale.
Speaker: I can't describe them so much without...
Speaker: giving certain things away and without just, and it's also, also really hard to put your finger on it.
Speaker: I challenge you, you play these games for a couple of hours and then you try and explain to your friends, you know, what they're about.
Speaker: You can't do it.
Speaker: You can't do it.
Speaker: The Cuba escape games are really good too.
Speaker: And they're very closely related.
Speaker: In fact, they're probably, they probably have a similar storyline.
Speaker: I haven't played them as much though.
Speaker: You know what's interesting is the art style is not the same necessarily.
Speaker: Not quite.
Speaker: Well, the art style is not the same, but...
Speaker: It reminds me, it gives me an Edward Gorey vibe.
Speaker: Yes, yes.
Speaker: There's a bit of that.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So for those of you who are unaware, Edward Gorey was a cartoonist.
Speaker: He basically drew these really just...
Speaker: macabre cartoons.
Speaker: Um, like they, you know, they, a lot of them would feature like death or the grim reaper or, or, um, I, I think I, there was like one where it was just like, um, Oh, if you ever saw, um, the opening to mystery on PBS, um,
Speaker: which was always on when I was growing up.
Speaker: My parents would always watch, watch mystery.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And mystery was just a series on PBS that played, you know, it would play like a Sherlock Holmes movie or, or, or inspector Poirot or, or something like that.
Speaker: But the opening to mystery was animated and,
Speaker: by Edward Gorey.
Speaker: And I didn't know that.
Speaker: That's interesting.
Speaker: It is, uh, the, the animation plus the music is absolutely terrifying and lives rent free in my head to this day.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: So, yeah, Edward Gorey.
Speaker: If you like the weird vibes of Rusty Lake, check out the cartoons of Edward Gorey and be vibed out completely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: Yeah, this this these were it's so funny.
Speaker: The one game that's expensive compared to all the rest of them is Phantasmagoria.
Speaker: That's just because it's not on sale.
Speaker: It's not doing it's not on the sale.
Speaker: But honestly, even with or without that one, I feel like you could probably, yeah, the entire price tag of this thing for the next couple of days is like 30 bucks.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If you guys are looking for something spooky or unsettling or something to play over the weekend, any number of these games are going to do you well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we talked about so a few of the things that we did reference that that aren't necessarily on our list.
Speaker: Pony Island.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: But also you can check out the creator of Pony Island, his other games.
Speaker: He actually just released one.
Speaker: I just downloaded the demo.
Speaker: It looks really, really good.
Speaker: It's called Inscription, which is on the surface, a deck-building roguelike.
Speaker: But as you should be aware with Daniel Mullen,
Speaker: Nothing stays on the surface of that bastard.
Speaker: Yeah, it's going to get under there.
Speaker: It's going to get into that.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Another game that I adore and the early access for the sequel just popped up, unfortunately, on the Epic Store.
Speaker: Not that I'm one of those people that gets all worked up about the Epic Game Store.
Speaker: Yeah, but it's like when it's all in the same place, it's so nice and tight.
Speaker: Darkest Dungeon 2 the early access for where it is out now they made a whole thing they made this whole announcement they're like it's early access it's early access I appreciate that someone still remembers what early access is meant to be exactly and they were like I think that's important to them because Darkest Dungeon was
Speaker: It was basically the first game to really utilize early access the way it was meant to be and to come out of early access with like a polished finished product.
Speaker: Yes, they did what they were what they said they were going to do.
Speaker: And while you're at it, you know, you can, you can always get darkest dungeon because that is, that game is so, so fucking good.
Speaker: That is that, that is, I'm going to say right now that's, that's better Lovecraft than Lovecraft.
Speaker: It absolutely is.
Speaker: It's Lovecraft the way it probably should have been done all along.
Speaker: It's still got combat and everything like that, but man, that game, I find that game every eight months or so.
Speaker: I go, oh, right, that game.
Speaker: I really got a, hmm.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Maybe I'll play that game.
Speaker: And I do for a little while, and it goes the same way that I mentioned with some of these other games, where you're like, okay, I'm doing great, no problems, this is gonna be the one, and boom, I'm dead.
Speaker: Boom, you lose all your party members to some sort of mania, and that's the end of your...
Speaker: That's the end of your trip.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: That's the and also Darkest Dungeon has the best voiceover of all time.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What is his name?
Speaker: I forget his name.
Speaker: He's terrific.
Speaker: And he you can actually find him.
Speaker: I'm going to look it up because it's on Cameo.
Speaker: Oh, that would be awesome.
Speaker: No, he actually does narrate a lot of H.P.
Speaker: Lovecraft stuff.
Speaker: Oh, that's amazing.
Speaker: And if you can find Wayne June.
Speaker: Wayne June.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Wayne June.
Speaker: And he has the best voice.
Speaker: And if you can find any Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, any of the old pulp writers, he's read a lot of them.
Speaker: And God, he's the perfect voice for it.
Speaker: You remember our estate, opulent and imperious.
Speaker: Oh, my God, it's so fucking good.
Speaker: He's just he's just he's just got that wonderful voice that he can say all kinds of bizarre and strange and horrible things.
Speaker: And you're just like, please continue.
Speaker: Keep don't don't stop.
Speaker: Don't stop.
Speaker: Just keep talking.
Speaker: Just say these.
Speaker: They just give him a list of weird things to say.
Speaker: And he's back.
Speaker: Keep saying the back for Darkest Dungeon.
Speaker: Here's the thing is, I don't think Darkest Dungeon is nearly as successful.
Speaker: I mean, maybe it is.
Speaker: It's a really good game at its core.
Speaker: But I think there's like a certain panache to it that's added by Wayne June's narration.
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: I mean, that's just such a huge that kind of thing.
Speaker: It's a huge part of it.
Speaker: You know, he is constantly talking like, yeah, there it's rare that you're not hearing him say something.
Speaker: That's the thing about the way the game is designed.
Speaker: is he has so many lines because he and it it keeps the it keeps the uh the atmosphere going you know it's it's fantastic it's just fantastic
Speaker: Oh, I'd also recommend Oxenfree.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Oxenfree.
Speaker: Surprisingly spooky.
Speaker: Like I didn't realize it was the kind of game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Very, very spooky one.
Speaker: I liked that one.
Speaker: And a classic that we're going to be getting to eventually.
Speaker: I have no mouth and I'm a screen.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Which is just another classic point and click.
Speaker: horror yeah uh bleak let's just say bleak bleak bleak uh it is just so dark uh it will fuck with your head real real bad yeah i'm actually i'm actually going to get this episode out tomorrow uh which will be the 29th um so hopefully you guys are listening to this on friday the 29th
Speaker: Um, because the Halloween sale only goes to November 1st.
Speaker: So, um, you might as well get in there.
Speaker: You might as well get in there and get your stuff.
Speaker: Uh, cause there's just like, there's just a bunch of goodies.
Speaker: If you like spooky games, uh, people, let's play some spooky games together.
Speaker: Let's play some spooky games together.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I've got, I've got hunt now.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: Oh, you do.
Speaker: I got, they, I didn't even realize they, I got a, I got a, they comped me on that one.
Speaker: They sent me one.
Speaker: Oh, nice.
Speaker: I didn't even notice it.
Speaker: I was like, I was like looking at my, my key mailer account and it was like hunt.
Speaker: And I was like, Oh,
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Because I was thinking about buying that one because it's on sale.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: That does look good.
Speaker: I'd play that with Kevin.
Speaker: That would be fun.
Speaker: I am considering getting the super fancy version of Blasphemous because I have it on my PS4, so I might pick it up on Steam.
Speaker: I mean, yeah.
Speaker: Forever buying games twice.
Speaker: That's my...
Speaker: It's your curse, my friend.
Speaker: It's my curse.
Speaker: But what a way to go.
Speaker: If I really love a game, that's the thing is if I really, really, really love a game, I will eventually buy it on PC because I have more faith that I will be able to play it in 10 years on my PC than on a console.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, that's fair.
Speaker: That's totally fair.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Here's one that doesn't sound like it would be underrated, but it's I find I can't believe more people don't talk about it.
Speaker: Blair Witch.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: That is a good game.
Speaker: It's not flawless, but it does the whole, you know, witch in the woods thing that you'd expect from that.
Speaker: That's the whole point with, you know, Blair Witch.
Speaker: It does it so well, and it is really creepy.
Speaker: It's really good.
Speaker: It's really worth the time.
Speaker: And speaking of sales, this is not a scary game, but if you want Deathloop, it is like 20 bucks off this weekend.
Speaker: So you loved that game.
Speaker: I love that game.
Speaker: Yeah, you really liked that.
Speaker: That's a good one.
Speaker: If you're a fan of the arcane games, if you're a fan of of of Prey and and Dishonored, then, you know, you're I think you'll enjoy Deathloop.
Speaker: But I think that all about wraps it up for our super special Spoopy Games episode.
Speaker: Hell yeah.
Speaker: We will have, so we're going to have this episode, we're going to have another episode with a special guest out this weekend.
Speaker: And I hope all of you have a spectacular and safe and appropriately scary and spoopy Halloween.
Speaker: Spoopy.
Speaker: Spoopy games.
Speaker: Spoop.
Speaker: Spoop.
