The next accommodates some spoilers for Concern & Starvation (Haverinen 2018).
I’ve spent some time ranting and raving about simply how good Concern & Starvation 2: Termina (Haverinen 2022) is, whereas principally neglecting the unique sport in my writing. I believe that’s as a result of Termina is the extra attention-grabbing and extra complicated sport, in most regards. There’s a sense of uniqueness to the sequel’s setting, and a robustness to the character dynamics and the gameplay, that has captured me and never let go. The unique Concern & Starvation, nonetheless, is a sport I nonetheless have an incredible quantity of respect for.
Concern & Starvation doesn’t pull any punches. Or so it appears. There are a couple of brief moments originally of the sport, throughout character creation and standing within the mist outdoors the Dungeons of Concern and Starvation, the place you may assume – okay, this is rather like some other darkish fantasy sport. It appears on the outset to be a sport about survival in a world each like and in contrast to our personal. And I believe this theme of survival is one which transforms all through the sport. If I may evaluate the sport to something, it’s a rotten apple that seems shiny and regular on the surface. However the second your enamel sink into its flesh, that one thing is fallacious. Linger for a second too lengthy within the outdoors space and massive, slavering canine burst onto the scene. There’s virtually no approach your character can take them at the moment, and also you’re ripped to shreds in moments. An inglorious finish that alerts how the sport will go for the remainder of its brutal runtime. But on the identical time, this scene reveals a quiet ingenuity to the sport’s fight. In the event you’ve picked up a stick, throw it, and the canine will probably be distracted. As I’ve mentioned earlier than, Concern & Starvation designs fight like a puzzle to be solved, relatively than a brute drive wall to be damage-per-seconded into oblivion. Do the suitable strikes on the proper time and also you’ll emerge victorious – or assume outdoors the field.
The preliminary horrors of the dungeon are excessive, and so that you may assume that the sport is exhibiting its hand too early, as one thing like Outlast 2 (Purple Barrel Studios 2017) does with a pit stuffed with useless infants. However whereas Outlast 2 has nothing to say and nowhere past that to go, Concern & Starvation has the notorious guards, monstrous masculine lumps of muscle with huge phallic stingers, used to rape and assault the participant character. They’re accompanied by Manebas, slow-moving mentally unreadable creatures that poddle alongside on their tentacles. They’re both a lethal menace that may poison you should you’re unfortunate, or enemies that you just’ll by no means even should struggle as a result of they’re so gradual. In the event you don’t study to keep away from combating enemies to begin with, the sport will ultimately educate you this lesson. Not like different video games which can be reliant on fight to realize expertise or loot objects, many of the monsters in Concern & Starvation is not going to provide you with something of value. Why would a mutant jelly on tentacle stilts have something that will help you survive this horrible place?
And a horrible place it’s. The scent of gore and human waste of every kind is a frequent sensory element as you enter new rooms. Torture implements lie round as if they’re decorations. Darkish cells are both ominously empty or include the undead stays of tormented prisoners. Each room has one thing that would kill you. Working too quick and step on a rusty nail that you just actually ought to have seen? Higher hope you’ve gotten some medication that may remedy an infection, in any other case you’ll be useless in a couple of minutes. Run too low on meals and also you’ll starve to demise. Run into an enemy that seems underneath the umbrella of no matter phobia your character has? Deal much less injury and get brutalized right into a positive human paste. Once more.
As you worm your approach by way of the preliminary passages, you begin to get comfy. Guards may be crushed. You may keep away from Manebas and the little flying Gnomes that deal scratch injury however go away you with but extra contaminated wounds. You virtually get complacent. That’s when the sport does one thing new, unveils one other twist. You attain the mines after which hear an odd noise, accompanied by the message “A TERRIFYING PRESENCE HAS ENTERED THE ROOM”. Staying to come across the terrifying presence earns you a swift demise. So that you study. You progress quicker. You get your leg imploded by a rogue darkish wizard. You might be devoured by an infinite water dragon. You might be decapitated by a ghost you’ll be able to’t hit. The record of how you’ll be able to die begins to turn into dizzyingly lengthy. You need to begin remembering what killed you all of the earlier instances. Like a recipe that turns into inexplicably extra difficult every time, you notice that you just’re having to get increasingly more proper the longer you survive. You need to struggle your approach by way of the dungeon. And why? All to achieve Captain Le’garde – both to save lots of him, discuss to him, or kill him. The sport’s concept of future – of heroes or mercenaries going to meet their responsibility – devolves right into a messy survivalism, messier than the sport initially implied. You begin to get jaded.
You may (should you’re a monster) decide to supply up an harmless little one to an Uzumaki-like human hydra, within the hopes it’ll provide you with one thing to assist afterward. You hack off the contaminated limbs of your social gathering members simply to maintain them alive for later. You ration your meals, and save the wine to your personal character. You kill first and ask questions once you’re stomping on the lumpy, bony corpses of the monsters that inhabit this place, ensuring they’re useless. One of many sport’s greatest moments comes once you sit down in a darkish, chilly, near-empty touchdown, certainly one of many within the stairwell. You may simply plop your self down in a chair and ask your self – why? Why am I right here? You may be anyplace else, the sport says. And but… you’re right here. You’re on this depressing place, the place you’ll die – the place you’ve gotten died many instances earlier than already! – so why hold going? Maybe spite is the one reply that’s value mustering. Beating the sport is a aim unto itself, proper?
However there’s extra to enjoying video video games than simply beating them, isn’t there? there may be. So you’ve gotten a extra cautious assume. As you carve your approach by way of the previous couple of enemies that stand between you and Le’garde, as you work them out, you surprise. What is driving me right here? For me, writing is a approach to assume by way of my emotions. As I’ve mentioned various instances earlier than, horror video games – and gaming normally – may be an emotional course of. Horror video games are a few of the greatest types of producing emotional vulnerability on the subject of enjoying video video games. We’re disempowered, and the very core of why we play video games – satisfaction and empowerment – is thrown into stark reduction. But I believe all the perfect horror video games have this unstated promise constructed into them: hope. We’ve got hope that we – or the opposite characters we like – will make it out okay. There’s catharsis in that, however there’s additionally catharsis in being caught, in being defeated. We are able to relaxation for a second. We tried, and failed, but it surely’s okay. Video games are all about repetition. About getting up and making an attempt once more, irrespective of how lengthy that takes. In Concern & Starvation, your vulnerability is clear by way of your entire sport. It’s that very same vulnerability that makes triumph style so candy. That makes combating for only one extra day value it.
The sport doesn’t finish at Captain Le’garde. You may even discover him useless, should you took too lengthy, should you didn’t pull the run off in addition to you could possibly have. The sport’s random components may need conspired to screw you over – a map change you weren’t ready for, or an enemy that did only a bit an excessive amount of injury, or hacked your leg off, or one thing – and Le’garde is gone. However the sport goes on. There are extra depths to plumb. The psychosexual horror turns into subtler and extra profound unexpectedly. A mysterious Metropolis lies past the Dungeons of Concern and Starvation, and if you understand how to open the door to it, you’re rewarded with solutions, with catharsis, and possibly with hope. Possibly one thing you do in right here will change the world. Or simply change your poor hapless character’s life.
Concern & Starvation evokes me to not solely make video video games, nor merely to only write about them extra, however to maintain myself moving into life as properly. It’s a sport that takes an unbelievable quantity of focus to exist in and to beat, and but places into focus all the things that issues. That the human spirit is robust and typically mindless however is finally all the time value combating for. Love and goals and hope – these can exist, even within the pits of the darkest, most horrible, most alien environments. Radiation-blasted hellholes stalked by historical dinosaurs fabricated from uncooked meat – even right here, I flourish. Even right here, my spirit glows.
You should purchase Concern & Starvation on itch.io.
