{"id":14800140,"date":"2016-11-25T20:33:25","date_gmt":"2016-11-25T20:33:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/?p=14800140"},"modified":"2016-11-25T20:38:13","modified_gmt":"2016-11-25T20:38:13","slug":"its-been-surreal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/?p=14800140","title":{"rendered":"It’s Been Surreal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Surrealist games have it rough. Surrealism is about taking your assumptions and twisting them in a way you did not expect. You should come away with the cogs in your head grinding furiously. \u00a0The best surreal titles juxtapose the insane with the mundane to show you their contrast and, if you’re lucky, a startling similarity or two. \u00a0But to do this, to startle you and make you think, the surrealist title has to defy your expectations. \u00a0It has to tell you it’s one thing and then be another. \u00a0And in the world of video games, where titles are sold on trailers and box art and numerical review scores, that’s a rough spot to be in.<\/p>\n

\"here-they-lie-1\"You can’t sell a game on surrealism. \u00a0It doesn’t work if you go in expecting some weird-ass shit. \u00a0Metal Gear Solid 2<\/em> is a surreal game, but you don’t sell it by talking about the part where the President of the United States\u00a0grabs the protagonist’s crotch, or the part where the mini-map is replaced by a pin-up model, or the part where the game tells you to turn the PS2 off. \u00a0You sell it as a stealth military action game and then you\u00a0let the weird stuff seep in in the second half, when the innocent player is already invested and doesn’t realize he’s about to have his assumptions challenged. \u00a0You sell it as a game about a white dude shooting masked terrorists so that you can pay the bills. \u00a0The\u00a0surreal\u00a0stuff has to be surprising. \u00a0You gotta ease them into it. \u00a0And still they’ll say that\u00a0Metal Gear Solid 2\u00a0<\/em>is the worst Metal Gear because it makes no sense.<\/p>\n

I played two surreal horror games this year,\u00a0Here They Lie<\/em> and\u00a0Albino Lullaby<\/em>. \u00a0I played both in VR, and VR has a lot to do with the way those games operate, but \u00a0for today I’m going to ignore that aspect. \u00a0Oh, and, full disclosure: I worked with the Albino Lullaby<\/em> team on their Oculus Rift version, which launched earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Both\u00a0Here They Lie<\/em> and\u00a0Albino Lullaby<\/em> received mediocre reviews, and I think that’s mostly because they are just too weird for the mainstream crowd. \u00a0There are legitimate complaints as well, of course: both titles are sickening for some people in VR (but not for me),\u00a0Here They Lie<\/em> has some problems with the fidelity of its graphics, and both are mechanically very simple (no combat, no items, minimal\u00a0puzzles, some stealth). \u00a0But I think the real complaint here is that these games appear to be building towards some narrative conclusion and then, part way through, take a left turn to Weirdville and never come back. \u00a0They are designed to make you think after the game machine has been shut off, and that’s not generally what the mainstream review system values.<\/p>\n

Here They Lie<\/em> starts out looking like it’s going to be a scary walking simulator with some enemies and a bit of stealth. \u00a0From the beginning, it’s clear that there is more going on than what appears on the screen. \u00a0In fact, the game goes out of its way to use color contrast to highlight the idea that the world is not what it appears to be. \u00a0But then\u00a0Here They Lie<\/em> takes a turn and drops you in the a city of people with animal heads. \u00a0If you’ve been paying attention, you might have noticed that\u00a0the enemy design is pretty Freudian, and that raises questions about who exactly you are playing as. But if you aren’t paying much attention you probably just think the freaky animal people are some weird shit in a horror game.\u00a0 Eventually the twists get more dramatic, and if you didn’t think much of the breathing subway tunnel then the flying space mandala is almost certainly going to seem like it came out of nowhere. \u00a0The “problem” with\u00a0Here They Lie<\/em> is that it’s asking a lot of the player, and as a surreal game it’s not about to make any of the answers easy.<\/p>\n

\"albino\"Albino Lullaby<\/em> is thematically a completely different beast. \u00a0It uses a crazy, tongue-in-cheek art style that looks more like the box art for a ’80s direct-to-video horror flick than a surrealist video game. \u00a0Albino Lullaby<\/em> is more straightforward with its narrative too,\u00a0and you can easily play it with your brain on autopilot. \u00a0That is, of course, until you find something that gives the weirdness meaning, and makes it more horrible than it was before. \u00a0Despite its bombastic style,\u00a0there’s a method to Albino Lullaby’s\u00a0<\/em>madness, and the clearer the truth becomes the more thought it requires. \u00a0If it sounds like I’m speaking in vague\u00a0generalities here, it’s because I am: it’s very hard to talk about this title without undoing it. \u00a0Suffice it to say that\u00a0Albino Lullaby\u00a0<\/em>is a level designer’s game, with crazy architecture that is surprising and occasionally genius. \u00a0But under the hood, the real meat of the title is its surrealist, dreamlike quality, and its penchant for posing uncomfortable questions without providing answers.<\/p>\n

Both of these titles sell themselves as horror games with unique visual styles. \u00a0And that’s what they are. \u00a0But that pitch doesn’t prepare you for what\u00a0Here They Lie\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Albino Lullaby<\/em> are really up to, and I think some players come away\u00a0surprised and confused. \u00a0They were expecting some spooky monster shenanigans and ended up with cryptic meditations on the structure of consciousness and the complicity of victims in abusive relationships instead. \u00a0They expected\u00a0the latest Stephen King novel but got\u00a0Fyodor Dostoevsky.<\/p>\n

But that’s how it has to be. \u00a0You can’t sell\u00a0Here They Lie<\/em> on space mandalas. \u00a0If you did, it would be expected and would cease to be thought provoking. \u00a0The whole point is to subvert the player’s expectations. \u00a0But some players don’t like that. \u00a0Some aren’t ready for it. \u00a0Some were just looking for a way to relax on a Friday night with a beer. \u00a0And those folks aren’t interested in the dramatic difficulty of what\u00a0Here They Lie<\/em> and\u00a0Albino Lullaby<\/em>\u00a0are attempting to do.<\/p>\n

I’m telling you, surrealist games have it t<\/p>\n

         o<\/p>\n

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                u                   g<\/p>\n

                      h.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Surrealist games have it rough. Surrealism is about taking your assumptions and twisting them in a way you did not expect. You should come away with the cogs in your head grinding furiously. \u00a0The best surreal titles juxtapose the insane with the mundane to show you their contrast and, if you’re lucky, a startling similarity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,2,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14800140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-releases","category-game-design","category-vr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14800140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14800140"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14800140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14800148,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14800140\/revisions\/14800148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14800140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14800140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horror.dreamdawn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14800140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}