HORRORBANOFFEE

This review contains spoilers. I completely forgot that I was supposed to review this game. Apparently, I even forgot to write a Steam curator review for it. This happens sometimes. I'll introduce something on my Instagram feed first, then somehow forget about everything else. Anyway. Soup's Tail. I originally introduced it because I saw ghosts. As it turns out, this isn't really much of a horror game. It's more of a Disney-style adventure through the afterlife. Which is fine. The developer is called Super Sandwich Games LLC. I already like that name. Super Sandwich. Easy to remember. Their logo? A cat. The loading icon? A cat spinning around and around. I'm fairly sure these people like cats. I don't particularly like cats. I'm a dog person. That doesn't mean I hate cats. I was petting cats and calling them cute while playing Project ACCIPITER not long ago. My grandparents also used to have a Russian Blue called Vicky, and I petted her quite often. I pe...

This review contains spoilers. My curator review for Escape from Yandere was very simple. Deranged girl. I think that remains a fairly accurate summary. First of all. Is the title supposed to be a play on Escape from Tarkov? I have no idea. But surely I can't be the only person who thought of it. Anyway. Then there is Yuki. I'm not entirely sure what her background is supposed to be. Japanese-American, perhaps? Or maybe she's Japanese and simply speaks English most of the time. I don't know. She has a Japanese name, and very early in the game there is one moment where she gets embarrassed and calls you: "Baka..." You idiot. And then, as far as I remember, I never heard her speak Japanese again. Most of the time, you communicate with her in English. And I do mean communicate. Escape from Yandere uses your microphone as part of its dialogue system. Yuki says what she wants to say first. Then you answer through your microphone. It isn't really a free conversa...

This review contains spoilers. KAMLA is an Indian horror game. And essentially, it's a game of tag mixed with a scavenger hunt. That's quite a good combination. Especially when so many horror games are basically tag mixed with an escape room. Granny is still a very good horror game, mind you. Anyway. Puzzles are still an important part of KAMLA. But they're considerably less painful than the ones in many other horror games. For one thing, the game makes it fairly clear what sorts of objects you're supposed to be looking for. The puzzle mechanics themselves are relatively simple too. So even someone like me, who hates puzzles, didn't have too much trouble getting through them. Well. I did have a little trouble. But I think that's simply my natural condition. Anyway. Let's talk about Kamla. There isn't actually a huge amount of elaborate horror staging surrounding her. It doesn't really need it. If Kamla catches you, she shoves that gaunt, almost feral...

This review contains a few spoilers. I think I've mentioned Sysreb Games before. When was it... Probably while I was talking about that deranged hamburger pet-raising game. Anyway. It must have been sometime around the winter of 2022. Possibly even earlier. I don't necessarily play a game the moment I receive it through Curator Connect. Sometimes I leave them sitting there for quite a long time before I finally get around to them. I suspect other curators do the same. Probably. For small indie developers, I imagine it can be rather nerve-racking when someone accepts a copy of your game and then doesn't review it for ages. Sorry. I wasn't deliberately trying to torment you. But there's not much I can do about it. Curators have schedules too. So if you're planning to send a curator a copy of your game, try contacting them at least a month in advance. Then they might actually be able to arrange their schedule around the period when you'd like the review to appe...

This review contains plenty of spoilers. I said in my Monster Hunter: World review that perhaps my next review should be Fallout. So here we are. There are three games I could start with. Fallout 3. Fallout: New Vegas. Fallout 4. I'm starting with Fallout 4. The opening scene of Fallout 4 takes place at the earliest point in the timeline. That seems like a reasonable place to begin. I'll get to Fallout 3 and New Vegas eventually. Probably. I do still have actual horror games to review. Anyway. There is one thing I should probably establish first. I don't personally read Fallout as simply a game about how terrible war is. War is terrible. I know. Thank you. And I don't really take War Never Changes to mean nothing more than: "War is bad." To me, it feels closer to the idea that the human desire to dominate, destroy and fight one another, along with all the misery that follows, hasn't changed very much at all. The weapons change. The world changes. Human bei...

I had never played a Monster Hunter game before. Not once. It isn't even the sort of genre I normally enjoy. My boyfriend likes Monster Hunter. Yes. That's how this happened. He persuaded me to play Monster Hunter: World with him. I thought it was just a fantasy RPG. I was wrong. This is cosmic horror. Well. Strictly speaking, I suppose it's closer to creature horror. But to me, it feels more cosmic. Human beings are not the centre of this world. The natural world we think we understand is actually far larger and more frightening than we are. Even the monsters we hunt are only parts of a much greater living system. Just look at those hostile creatures towering over human beings. Against something like that, a person can only feel helpless. You can cut a few tentacles off Cthulhu and cook them if you like. That doesn't make the source of the problem disappear. And then there was that thing that looked like a T-Rex. What was it called again? Right. Anjanath. I felt actual...

Last year, I received a message asking if I could introduce these awards to my Instagram followers. I'm only getting around to properly looking at them now. I was quite busy last year and didn't do nearly as much curator work as I would have liked. Sorry about that. And thank you for giving someone with all of about 300 Instagram followers an opportunity like this in the first place. Anyway. The Ultimate Trick or Treat Game Awards. UTOTG Awards, apparently. I apologise. That abbreviation is going to take me a while. The full name is considerably easier to remember. The basic idea seems to be a smaller horror-game awards event, something for developers who may never find themselves standing on the stage at one of the larger year-end ceremonies. Winning something like The Horror Game Awards is, presumably, a tremendous honour for a horror developer. It's also an honour available to a very limited number of people. The horror-game market is enormous. And crowded. So I imagine ...

Dead by Daylight was a great slasher game. At first. The original Killers were already great. Then you had famous killers from other horror franchises joining them in what was essentially an elaborate game of tag. How could I not play it? And the basic idea itself was brilliant. You could become an overwhelmingly powerful killer, hunting down weaker human beings and enjoying the simple pleasure of controlling the situation. Or you could be one of those weaker human beings, working together with other ordinary people to overcome the killer. In a strange way, it isn't all that different from an RPG raid. One side is the overwhelming threat. The other side has numbers, cooperation and a shared desire not to die. What a wonderfully simple, deeply human and entertaining game. People all over the world became obsessed with it. Take one of the oldest and simplest forms of play imaginable, then build an excellent horror idea around it. I was obsessed with it too. And whatever I think of th...