Horror video games lean into the mundane to emphasise moments of terror, shock, or surreality. If we don’t have a way of the fact we reside into, how can we turn into disoriented? It is a query that pursues me into the depths of sweeping, mopping, and taking out the trash. Why would I be invested in this stuff if nothing fascinating is occurring?
I’m reminded of the sport Rewind or Die, an inexplicable disappointment of a horror recreation that ripped its central idea and major promoting level away within the first half an hour. Why promote your recreation as happening in a video retailer for those who do a couple of chores there after which spend the remainder of the sport in a darkish manufacturing unit advanced? It merely doesn’t make any sense to me. It took me various years to get round to the 2020 Chilla’s Artwork recreation The Comfort Retailer, which really makes use of only one house and sticks to its weapons.
The sport shouldn’t be very lengthy, however nor does it must be. You play as a hapless retailer clerk that falls beneath the affect of a spirit. The sport is a mixture of coping with bizarre little happenings – the digital door going off whereas no-one is there, as an example – whereas stocktaking and spraying rats to demise with anti-rat spray. Your complete recreation is uncanny. Strolling to work was possibly my favorite half, as after the primary night time all of the streetlights exit. Even when nothing appears to occur (or does it?), the stroll by means of pitch darkness within the rain is contrasted by the method to the comfort retailer itself, which takes a surprisingly haunting position within the context of the story. Each time you cross the bridge from the darkish city to see the beacon of the blaring lights from the comfort retailer, a dawning sense of unease crosses your thoughts.
The Comfort Retailer isn’t a singularly superb horror recreation. I discovered it didn’t frighten me all that a lot in the long run, even with a few cool, well-done setpieces and a intelligent puzzle on the finish, however I’m prepared to advocate it due to the ambiance and the merely odd, uncanny feeling the sport offers you. I do know it’s an overplayed cliche to write down, however the recreation does really feel like a little bit of misplaced media itself, much like the tapes that the protagonist receives within the mail. The sport is gripping sufficient to carry you there for the hour or so it’s going to take you to beat it.
It’s value noting that Chilla’s Artwork have a little bit of hit-and-miss historical past with me, I’ve performed a couple of video games of theirs which can be merely terrible and in a single case didn’t boot in any respect on both of my machines. I do additionally want they’d make one other within the model of Aka Manto or Yuki Onna, the latter of which I’m appreciating increasingly after I wrote a little bit of a destructive piece on the sport earlier. That was again in 2021 although, and I don’t assume I’ve the identical opinions about video games that check your persistence to the nth diploma anymore. I’m looking for out these destructive feelings, these vaguely traumatizing (however nonetheless protected) experiences. Ones that actually push the boundaries of bizarre or horrifying. In brief, I’m changing into extra of a fan of masochistic horror – what on earth that claims about me I’m unsure I wish to know – and the gnarlier the higher. The Comfort Retailer isn’t significantly on the market by any means, however it’s haunting sufficient to say “purchase on sale”, to absorb some nice ambiance, and to surprise – what does it imply to do the identical factor, over, and over, and over once more? What finish does it serve? Or, maybe the extra vital query is: what finish will it deliver you?
You may watch my blind playthrough of the sport right here, and also you should buy the sport from Steam right here.
