Narzack

I got some feedback from Matt on my urban fantasy story.  I’ve come to realize that Matt and I just write stories that the other person likes; our tastes seem to line up pretty well.  The stuff I write he digs, the stuff he writes I dig.  It’s neat.  He was a fan of what he called a twist at the end.  I thought it was fairly obvious from the start, but maybe it’s harder to pick up on for a reader.  I certainly wasn’t trying to go for a twist, just a neat little moment.  Either way, I’m interested to see what Haley and Emery have to say.  I’m sure they’ll be a lot more vicious.  .

A Machine for Pigs just released last week.  TA was an awesome dude and gifted to Haley for us to cast, so we played through it a couple of nights.   It wasn’t as scary as Amnesia, and I honestly think that the Amnesia name in the title- Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs- may have hurt the game’s reception.  I think that probably gave people an expectation that the game never intended to meet. 

Much like Dark Descent, though, the game starts you waking up in a strange place with no memory and has you slowly piecing together the narrative from notes and journal entries.  The story in Machine for Pigs is actually darker and more disturbing than Dark Descent.  It’s just not very scary.  And, much like Dear Esther, it’s a fairly linear and narrative heavy game.  There isn’t much emphasis on exploration or ‘playing’ even.  It’s more of a horrid haunted house that you proceed through at your own pace.  That’s not to say there weren’t scary moments, they were there.  But, it seemed to me that the emphasis from thechineseroom was on the story, rather than the fear.  I remember an interview from last year where Frictional was talking about how they wanted to explore emotions other than fear with Machine for Pigs.  I think it was accomplished, because I certainly felt despair, revulsion, grief, and pity. 

Really good game overall.  I like the story a lot.

After that, we followed up with Outlast, a game from Red Barrels out of Montreal.  In it, you play an investigative reporter checking out an asylum with a shady reputation.  You have a camcorder with which to document all your findings and it comes equipped with a nightvision mode.  So, when you’re in a particularly dark area, you pull out the camera and navigate via the nightvision.  And holy spamoley is it scary.  It looks just like a scene from [Rec]. In fact, with the camera, the whole game feels like a found footage movie.  The entire time I played it, I felt like I was in a horror movie.  And it was awesome.  And terrifying.  In fact, Outlast is one of the scariest games I’ve ever played.  We’re talking Fatal Frame levels of scary.  We have three really good highlights of Haley screaming her lungs out.  Really, really scary game.  I liked it so much.  It, too, was a gift from TA.  I really, really liked it.  Defintely a game to pick up if you’re into horror and found-footage style movies.

I want to play Minecraft, but every time I log on, I just sit in my house trying to figure out what I want to do.  I built an addition to my house, but that just means that I have another that I most likely won’t furnish.  I don’t need any gems or minerals, so I have no reason to go into the mines.  Perhaps I can build a basement.  I’ve also considered making a bunch of ‘ancient ruins’ underneath hills and stuff for people to come across.  Maybe put notes and books in there that hint of some great cataclysm.  Maybe some spooky or tragic stuff could have happened in the deep past, I dunno. I just don’t have any worthwhile projects, and everyone else is on for hours at a time, just building and building. 

First preproduction meeting for Alms and Ohms on Wednesday!  Hooray!