PARATOPIC - Mind-altering-videodrome-lynchian horror mixed with Thirty Flights

[Problem]

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/211649/cc0529be-a706-4463-83f5-2cc84ab31825/image.png

"Paratopic is a short first-person horror game which draws ideas from Thirty Flights Of Loving but takes them somewhere terrible, leading them down an alley and through an unmarked door into a world which looks a bit like ours but just isn’t right."
- Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Paratopic is a short 30min - 1 hour long game by a team of three indie developers - Jess, Doc Burford, and Chris I Brown. You can find more on the game page and their twitters. Jess is also on the Tangiers team, which should speak enough to her credentials.

Paratopic on itch.io

I just finished playing it and I need people to talk about it with. Since it's so short, I really don't want to spoil much, but I will boil it down to this:

you are a smuggler of illegal tapes
you are an assassin
you are a little girl wandering through a forest
these are not the same person
body horror
vhs aesthetics and glitching a la hotline miami and videodrome
graphics resembling a playstation from hell

I am not a huge fan of intentionally low-poly games because they can often come off as lazy but this absolutely reeks of polish, atmosphere, and malevolence. It also tells a non-linear story through the use of jump cuts and dialogue. The sound design is great - the art direction is intentionally hazy and characters will often glitch and warp right before your eyes. You really must play it.

[Skelosk]

The graphics remind me of imscared

[Stolid]

It honestly reminds me of Clive Barker's Undying.

https://img.itch.zone/aW1hZ2UvMjMzMDIzLzExMDYwMjIuanBn/original/K7MKFT.jpg

Looks straight ripped from it.

[Problem]

The resemblance is definitely there. It's both less fantastical and more surreal. The dialogue and the characters really create this unnerving atmosphere by virtue of their faces animating in and out of focus and sometimes wrapping around their heads, and the dialogue is just like a cobbled together string of distorted sound and words that sometimes resemble the subtitles. It's awesome.