Hey, everyone, this is Oculus Reviews.
Today we’re gonna be doing things a little differently, because I’m covering a medium I haven’t done on the blog yet: video games. I’ve brought two horror games from indie developers, called Anatomy by Kitty Horrorshow and DIA by Vidas Games.
First: Anatomy.
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| kittyhorrorshow.itch.io |
I actually can’t tell you too much about this game because it’s relatively short and simple and most things I could tell you would be spoilers, but let me just say that I love it. LOVE it. The basic rundown is that you’re in a house and you collect audio tapes with narration about the build and layout of a house and what you could call its anatomy compared to a human being. However, things soon start to get… not normal.
I won’t tell you where this all goes, but I was genuinely scared all the way through. It’s a psychological horror game, so rather than relying heavily on jumpscares and chase scenes (which are fine, of course, I’m just not a fan of ‘em) it mostly opts for unease that slowly mounts into terror as you go on with the game. The tagline on the developer’s site is “Every house is haunted”, and if you play, that tagline will soon make terrifying sense to you. The game is based on a very old fear, that the safest, most basic personal space in your life is not so safe after all, but takes that in a direction much more insidious than simply a ghost or monster going BOO in your face. As the narrative – if you can call it that – slowly unfolds, the experience inside the house becomes genuinely terrifying to sit through, even if the gameplay mechanics are simple and straightforward: walk around, find tape, play tape. If you want gameplay that’ll make you sweat I’d suggest a different game, but play this one for the dread.
That being said, I do have some issues with this game. For one, it is very dark, and I don’t just mean the content, but literally dark. You can’t see more than a few inches in front of your face. Now I realize that this is intentional and part of the gameplay, and I’ll be the first to say that it’s very effective because you just never know what could be lurking in the dark. And once things start to lighten up a little, you’ll wish they hadn’t. However, in the beginning I actually couldn’t see something very important because it was too dark. I simply kept missing a room I needed to go into, and my dumbass had to look up a walkthrough so I wouldn’t just wander around in the darkness like an idiot. But that might just be me being terrible at games.
My biggest issue, though, is the lack of subtitles. This game is very dialogue-heavy, and as things start to unravel it also gets very static- and distortion-heavy, and while there’s some in-game text none of it belongs to the dialogue. Now, I’m thankful that my auditory issues aren’t bad enough to warrant medical attention, but I do have problems with making out distorted dialogue, especially because English isn’t my first language. And I imagine there are would-be players of this game with very different and possibly worse auditory processing problems than mine who might have been thankful for a little help. I was at first unsure if you can put subtitles into a Unity game, which is the engine on which Anatomy was made, but some friends assured me that you can put subtitles into any game – and here especially I feel like that effort should have been made.
Thankfully, though, these are my biggest gripes, and I still found the game a very intense and beautifully crafted horror experience. Rather than being in-your-face with its approach, it’s subtle, weird, unsettling in an almost eldritch way, which in my opinion is the best kind of horror there can be. Sorry, Five Nights at Freddy’s. If you want an unconventional and genuinely unnerving horror game that won’t give you a heart attack every five minutes I strongly recommend Anatomy. It’s more than worth the price the developer is asking for it; and I found it so cool that I’ll definitely be replaying it a few more times. (That’s also a little joke to y’all who have already played it.)
Now, on to DIA, another little gem – and I do mean little.
As far as gaming goes, I’d call DIA more interactive fiction or a short walking simulator, since literally all you can do is walk along and play into the story; and the gameplay time wasn’t longer than, say, 10 minutes or 12 if you want to be generous. However, what little there is is worth getting into. Without telling you too much, you’re in a town named DIA covered in blue fog and snow, and there’s a mysterious dead body that keeps turning up no matter where you go...
Tell you the truth, I was actually dreading the damn thing as the game went on, because that’s what DIA does excellently even with such few tools: creep you the hell out. And the ending… well, there’s a BRUH moment if ever I’ve seen one. The only thing that kinda lost me was what happened after the ending. [SPOILERS:] It does the thing a famous free horror visual novel also did (do you know the one?) where it gets your username from your PC to make it look like it’s calling you by your name. But if you’ve got your username on the default setting or just something that’s not your name, that just becomes Narm instead. Plus I feel like it’s kind of a cheap shot to begin with. [end of spoilers] That little questionable moment aside though, DIA is a fun, short ’n’ sweet creepy experience, especially because I love winter horror; the replay potential is sadly not very high, but it’s definitely worth experiencing once.
Visuals: Anatomy has genuinely the most creative I've seen in a Unity horror game; and DIA is just lovely in a wintery, unnerving way. 5/5 to both.
Audio: You want unsettled? You'll get unsettled. Also, good voice acting. 5/5 to both.
Gameplay: I won't rate this one because I for one enjoy simple and to the point games, but to hardcore gamers it might be a turn-off. I liked not having to count on my terrible reflexes, that's all I'll say.
Availability: They're indie, one of them is free and the other literally costs 3 bucks. I can't tell you any system requirements, but from the looks of it they'd probably run even on a coffee machine. 5/5
Get ANATOMY here from Kitty Horrorshow.
Get DIA here from Vidas Games.
When a house is both hungry and awake, every room becomes a mouth.
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