Wow. Time flies when you’re existing. So much so that it’s been a couple of months since I’ve gotten to do the round-up. I wish I could blame Christmas, but I worked through Christmas. I can blame the Lunar New Year though. I partied through that. Chúc mừng năm mới!
In the precious little time I’ve got to myself these busy months, I’ve grabbed some titles that caught my attention.
Buckshot Roulette
If you’re invested at all into the indie horror space, especially on YouTube, you’ve probably come across this little gem a while ago. Buckshot Roulette is a fantastic experience. It’s short, paced perfectly, and delivers on an amazing atmosphere with its grungy, low-fi vibe that blends dirty reality with an otherworldly weirdness. It has a hit of Inscryption with Mike’s own signature artstyle and twist.
It’s executed perfectly, on all fronts.
You’ve got this intense, deliberate atmosphere set by the thudding techno-music of the dirty rave club you’re playing this sick game in. It fades away into this muffled, yet still intense ambiance that befits a game of buckshot roulette. It gives way to the clatter of an ejected shell, muting in awe of the sudden, sharp explosion of a point-blank shotgun blast pointed straight at your face.
It cranks the tension as the dealer fairly, yet brutally, plays the game as well as you. With his menacing sharp teeth and a face that tells you he’s a pro at being nailed with a 12 gauge every night, you’d expect sinister intentions. There’s no cheating. You are on an equal playing field with an opponent that logically would make the same choices as you, uses items the way you do, and has the same stakes on the line like you. It’s much better for it.
It’s hard to describe the sheer, heart-pumping tension I got from this game as I traded shot-for-shot with the dealer, gambling on the probability of whether this will be the lucky live round I need, or if I’m going to leave the dealer sitting pretty with all the remaining live shells in the tube.
Buckshot Roulette is really only the shining gem on the surface of Mike’s gameography (is this a word?) With only about thirty minutes of your time and a couple of bucks, he delivers on unique horror experiences in a style I can only describe now as his signature.
Concrete Tremor is simply battleships, but you’re deliberately detonating buildings you know are filled with people, and your ‘reward’ for missing is phone-calls with the people left alive in the buildings you missed who just witnessed what happened to the people you didn’t. Infineural, probably my favourite, is an utterly terrifying look at some far-off dystopic future with time-dilation mind-prisons.
Working through Mike’s catalogue is a worthwhile, inexpensive treat. Keep up the weird shit man. It rocks.
Jussant
A gorgeous game all about climbing, Jussant was suggested to me by one of my good friends and it was a fantastic shout. I usually like to rave on about the scenery and artistic choice of indie games, it’s what they’re best known for after all, but Jussant takes the cake for its controls.
Jussant is a game about very active climbing. You’re perching on outcrops, ledges, and shimmying across inch-thin holds. You don’t transition to one state to the next fluidly, not immediately, because you control your characters arms. You hold left to grab with your left, and your right to grab with your right. It seems intuitive, right? Because it is… after a little bit. To begin with, you’re a fumbling mess (I was, anyway.)
I made myself into human spaghetti a few times, accidentally getting my arms awkwardly crossed to the point I forgot which was what and suddenly I was plummeting to a very embarrassing dangle on my safety rope. It’s pretty much how I’d fare if I actually went rock-climbing, I think.
Getting to grips with the game was great fun, and the genuine feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction I got when I made some climbs quickly and effortlessly can’t be understated. Exploration really opens up once you realise you can slam your pittons just about anywhere, and you can start doing some free-form exploration to little hidden coves, or just finding a better angle to eye up the scenery.
Art wise, Jussant is lovely. Very lovely. I wasn’t taken away by any particular vista in my time playing it but I don’t need to be to find it charming and fun. Not everything must be the best to wow me. Sometimes a little light wow’ing is just what you need.
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