Creepy Games - Tumblr Posts

Footnote: This look familiar? Or want more? This is my new blog! Due to some technical issues with the old one, I will be rblging the original MMM and CFF posts on this account, as well as continuing the future rambles!

Media Marvel Monday, #3:

Covetous, it’s the Name of the Game

There’s a lot of reasons I love games you can finish in their entirety in 5-30 minute sit downs. Usually, they’re extremely affordable. They’ll typically run fine even on old garbage computers. They’ve very characteristic of host sites that make great breeding grounds for original and extremely creative forms of storytelling (newgrounds and Itchio come to mind. They’re often browser games that don’t make me have to go through any middlemen of downloads or extra set up. My diagnosed ADHD really likes that one in particular. You get going, you get the idea, you move on. (Or obsessively gnaw over it here and there for the next few years until you make sure you’ve introduced it to everyun who cares to listen, heh~)

It’s the kind of format that may have a low barrier to entry (relative to game design as a whole) but what it really strains a creator for, what it demands out of them in return, if it wants to be seen and remembered out of a sea of other 3 minute indie titles, is a remarkable craftiness at presenting its “gist” well. Where content’s quantity is lacking, quality better not be damned.

Few things to me are more impressive than an artist of any medium being able to show off just how little room they need to knock it out of the park with a premise. You may guess this might also be what I love so much about flipnote animation, about short stories and creepypastas the same. Have no doubt it’ll be a recurring theme in this series.

Now, of all the works to spotlight after this sort of introduction, where does Covetous exactly slot in, and why? For one, it’s as short and bare bones as a finished narrative can get. The controls are limited to arrow/WASD keys, the soundtrack a minimal and repetitive handful of notes, and the visuals boiled down to a vague and pixelated art style. Short game too. Two possible endings, and you can easily get through both of them in about the time it takes to eat lunch. Getting through Covetous feels a little less like gameplay and a lot more like progressing through a tone poem, and that has to do with the background of how this golden nugget came to be.

Austin Breed is a prop and background designer who’s dabbled about in sketch artistry, animation, and pixel/flash art games. Covetous was released on July 18th, 2010 as his personal entry into the Ludum Mini-Dare 20. For context, you can basically think of Ludum Dare as the indie game developer equivalent of those little writers’ boot camp events and competitions- an online jamboree that challenges programmers to scratch-bake entire games within a single weekend, centered around a chosen theme. And the theme selected for the Mini-Dare 20 was greed.

That’s the main tone of this poem alright, but it’s not the only one, and it’s not in the way you’re thinking for sure. This tale is about the greed of a parasite. Of a cancer. It doesn’t yearn but for one primitive wish.

"I never desired wealth or status. Just existence."

The story’s unsettling approach on the concept of greed is hinted at from the title right out. To “greed” is to crave more than what you already have without being filled. “covetousness” is more specific: a desire to take what someone else has for yourself. What does it look like to covet existence? Breed’s answer comes inspired from a little bit of medical nightmare fuel wrapped in a healthy dose of body horror.

You may have heard of the term “parasitic” or vestigial twin before. Take two siblings in the womb, they develop conjoined in a way where one survives and grows fine, but the other one kind of gets stunted as a hanger-on clump of extra meat that can’t survive on its own, but it’s not in any way really conscious.

Fetus in Fetu describes a complication on another level of rarity where the embryotic parasitic twin becomes absorbed into the host body, and it remains enveloped in their tissues or organs, possibly for years before its ever even detected. In such cases the partially formed twin is more comparable to a tumor than an actual, living fetus, usually first mistaken for cysts or malignant teratomas when they cause problems for their host. The phenomenon is freaky enough on the face of the matter, and Covetous takes the concept to a further leap of disturbing.

Players begin the game upon a single line of text, delivered to them by our arguably villainous protagonist:

"By some kind of miracle, I was given another chance of life."

They are immediately treated to the graphic of their play area: the pixel body of a smiling human. A few curious taps of the arrow keys will lead to figuring out that you play as a single flashing pixel, with the goal of moving towards the few green pixels within reach, apparently consuming them. The next line from our character elaborates.

"I was the forgotten cell, left to die in the flesh of my brother."

The first sequence of play repeats, except now our single red/white pixel has grown into a larger clump, with much more "food" around to eat. And again, and again, each time with the narrator giving another card of its thoughts, and eventually showing the human's face turning into that of a frown. The confirmation could not be clear enough that you are playing as an intelligent Fetus in Fetu teratoma, aware of its circumstances and bitterly envious of its healthy sibling's survival. It's like Cain and Abel meeting the aesthetic of the Alien franchise and the utterly raw dialogue, overwhelming flashes and sirens, and medical inspiration only coalesque together to make the brief experience one that has kept its players up at night and unable to forget what they just saw.

The creature's own tale ultimately ends in one of two ways, determined by the player in a timed button-mashing final scene. This is the point where I would REALLY recommend playing Covetous for yourself, especially because I would hate to spoil something you can churn through in literally less time than it takes to read this far anyway, but major epilepsy/sensitivity warning as well, there is a lot of bright flashing and unpleasant audio involved near the end.

In the first ending, the protagonist violently erupts through the body of his brother, killing him and taking its first breath of life beyond the prison of its host. In the second, curiously, the creature seems to give up the effort and allows itself to shrivel and die instead, the final thought reading:

"In the end, I couldn't do it. I couldn't put myself to steal from another what was once stolen from me."

I love this hidden gem for scaring the shit out of me when I was younger. It was creative, unique, but most of all, it was effective in getting across exactly what it wanted to even with it's 48 hour production. There's what I wanna call a media marvel.

Listening to Sunless Sea OST while you’re playing Dredge hits so different. Gettin absolutely lost in the brine tonight. Oh my god.

Specific Track Recommendations, IMO

The Marrows: Wolfstack Lights, Opening Screen Theme

Gale Cliffs: Storm Stone Salt, Hull is Other People

Stellar Basin: Harmonium Over Matter, Bethnic

Twisted Strand: Lowlands, Vox Zombius

Devil’s Spine: Infernal, Sultry, Khan’s Heart

Doing anything besides resting at night, especially on open water, especially at high panic: Dark Sailing, Fluke’s Fathoms

The Pale Reach: The Sea Does Not Forgive

Docking, general travel vibes: Hope is an Anchor, Undulata, The Surface, Submerigo Viol, Oceana Lonissima, Elagiac

Listening to Sunless Sea OST while you’re playing Dredge hits so different. Gettin absolutely lost in the brine tonight. Oh my god.