Mia Blais-Côté, 2018

Hir Corruption is an extremely short bilingual (fr/en) interactive story written in visual novel engine Ren'py, although it's not a VN in the strict sense.

You are disturbed by a mental connection from another world, where the game's protagonist has found themselves in a dire situation in a famously haunted hotel. If you answer hir plea, it becomes your job to monitor hir vital signs and guide hir to safety. There are seven distinct endings, most of them going from bad to worse, and one of which I got unexpectedly by tapping in the wrong place.

The writing's enjoyable in both languages, particularly on some of the bad endings and on the stairway sequence. However, getting the good ending was surprisingly hard, because one of the choices it hinges on really doesn't signpost the fact that it's any “better” than its alternative in terms of in-game logic. Fortunately, the meat of the story is in your less wholesome decisions.

Rather than offering a language selection screen, Quebecois author Mia Blais-Côté has opted to display both French and English text on-screen. I liked this approach more than I expected to, although I ended up playing the game mostly using the French text, as it's at the top of the screen, with English at the bottom.

The game is runs on Windows, macOS and Linux and can be played with a mouse, controller, or the Steam Deck's touch screen. I used the latter, which was comfy but not as accurate about on-screen button presses as either of the alternatives.

No content warnings are supplied, but prepare yourself for some light body horror, a description of a dead child, reality warping, and a couple of claustrophobia triggers.

Blais-Côté has made Hir Corruption free to download on itchio: https://miaqc.itch.io/hir-corruption

Hir Corruption is no longer available to buy on Steam, but if you previously bought it, you'll find it in your library. Its community page includes some notes and guides: https://steamcommunity.com/app/982770#scrollTop=0

If you fancy spending zero money and perhaps ten to twenty minutes on a tiny, incidentally queer, interactive horror story about reality gone bad, it's a fine choice.

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#IndieGames #LinuxGaming #NativeLinux #SteamDeck #HorrorGames #CasualGames #VisualNovels #LGBTQ #HirCorruption #InteractiveFiction

Dead Idle Games, 2021

This isometric point-and-click portmanteau horror game is the reason the initial run of these reviews was a full day late, because I was compelled to finish the entire thing. This was an excellent decision on my part. You'll get a couple of hours' gameplay out of it, if you set about things in a leisurely fashion.

Set in the late 1920s, If On a Winter's Night, Four Travelers is one of the most elegant works of horror fiction I've encountered in the medium, touching on both the existential and the personal. If you enjoy questioning the relationship between reality and perception, you'll have fun thinking this this one through after completion.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a game that's titled after a postmodernist novel (If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino) there's a literary feel here, but this is no book masquerading as a game.

You might be forgiven for assuming that after the first, very short, act, The Silent Room, in which we see the tragic unwinding of an illicit love affair between two men, as this part of the game is rather puzzle-light.

However, Act 2, The Slow Vanishing of Lady Winterborne, sees some inventive puzzle design kick in. There's no serious moon logic, but you'll have to follow the internal consistency of a person experiencing grief and drug/withdrawal induced delusions – patterns and sequenced order are important to her. This serious subject matter that is handled well here as we follow Lady Winterbourne as she struggles with memory, loss and an unquiet mind in the wake of tragedy.

Act 3, The Nameless Ritual, is a my personal highlight of this outstanding game, concerning a doctor who seeks solace in occult ritual. With strong themes of self-annihilation, redemption and once again that fuzzy middle ground between what reality might be and what we understand it has, this one really speaks to me. The puzzles in this act also fit the sense of ritual.

The fourth act presents a resolution to the anthology's wrapping device. It's short and ends in a sufficiently satisfying manner, although it leans into somewhat conventional mythology after the third act's esotericism.

We don't often see the portmanteau structure used in the games – I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream and, in a more serialised manner, Lamplight City, are the only adventuring gaming examples that immediately spring to mind, although I'm sure there are others. It's something I'd like to see more of, as the self-contained tales here never overstayed their welcome and provide the means to explore a range of engaging themes and puzzles.

The native Linux version of the game worked well on Pop!_OS 22.04. If you're playing on a higher resolution display, there are a couple of points where small objects can be hard to find amid the pixel art – hardly a surprise given the AGS engine's 320x200 resolution. These are rare, but I nonetheless wonder if I should have played this one on the Steam Deck. The game will run in ScummVM's AGS interpreter, which allows you to resize the window, if you'd prefer your pixel art a little more petite.

The art is, incidentally, excquisite, with particularly notable use of colour to reflect the characters' emotional landscapes.

I've seen some forum complaints about this, so will also note that AGS games are by nature pretty old-school in certain conventions – there are no auto-saves: invoke the menu and hit save before you quit.

If On a Winter's Night, Four Travelers carries content warnings for “thematic elements such as racism, homophobia, mental illness, murder and suicide.” Its art book adds warnings about “pixel-graphic depictions of corpses, horror themes and war.” See my next toot for an extra CW about a couple of extra personal triggers that I encountered, which constitute light spoilers.

There are no jump scares, but there is some pixelart gore and a general tone of sombre tragedy.

If On a Winter's Night is a fascinating jewel of a game, and well worth your time.

Get it on itchio (pay what you want, $1 or more for OST and art book): https://laurahunt.itch.io/if-on-a-winters-night-four-travelers

Get it on Steam (free): https://store.steampowered.com/app/1603980/If_On_A_Winters_Night_Four_Travelers/

Steam supporter pack DLC with OST and art book 3,29€ : https://store.steampowered.com/app/1628970/If_On_A_Winters_Night_Four_Travelers__Supporter_Pack/

Additional Content Warnings for If On a Winter's Night Four Travelers (light spoilers)

I'd also add the following content warnings:

• opiate drug use (oral, active depictions of consumption)
• death of a family member (husband)
• death of an animal (pet, cat)

Although it has a metaphorical role and has left me with some really interesting questions about Act 2, I am really, really over the use of animal death as an emotional lever in fiction. I adore this game nonetheless.

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#IndieGames #LinuxGaming #NativeLinux #HorrorGames #PointAndClick #AdventureGames #Horror #CosmicHorror #ExistentialHorror #GameJamGames #FreeGames

Maldo19, 2020

Set in post-revolutionary Chile of 1992, Ignacio “Maldo19” Maldonato's The Horror of Salazar House (formerly known as The Enigma of Salazar House) is a visually distinctive adventure game that tips its hat to the classics of Italian horror cinema, something of a recurring theme in games published under Puppet Combo's Torture Star label.

Taking the role of journalist Elisa Muñoz, you're dispatched to investigate the deserted house of author Jaime Salazar, whose entire household disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1986, the house left untouched ever since. As you wander its corridors, you'll find yourself at the centre of a cursed ritual, which you can end... or complete.

The graphics in the first person viewing window are inspired, the creator says, by the Virtual Boy. Their atmospheric use of solid block colour leans into that, but there's also something of 80s first person graphic adventures like Shadowkeep in there.

Gameplay revolves around exploring the map, locating a series of ritual sacrifices and learning how to safely negate then, all while avoiding the monsters that wander the corridors of the Salazar house.

The monsters are lovingly created, with rotoscoped animation for you to enjoy as they beset you. The house is dripping with atmosphere and personality, and it's worth the 3,29€ entry fee for this alone, but I'm also having fun working out the solution to each victim.

Although the graphics are simplistic, there is real horror, a couple of jump scares, and some dark themes here. The game carries content warnings for: “A hanged depiction, a face without skin, and the use of medical drugs and overdose.”

It works very nicely on Steam Deck using touchscreen, touch pads, and controls. Native Linux and Windows builds are available. Helpfully, the deck appears to default to native Linux runtime.

Buy it on itchio: https://torturestar.itch.io/salazar-house (steam key included, better profit share, you should get this one)

Buy it on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1405440/The_Horror_Of_Salazar_House/

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