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Video games often require a lot of effort and time for passing-especially AAA-Tailers, which are able to stretch at 30, 50, or even all 100 hours. But sometimes I want to get high -quality experience quickly and with minimal costs. In such cases, indie projects with compact, but impressive stories help me out. And they just need time for them – like an evening watching a film.
Paratopic And No one Lives Under the Lighthouse – Two excellent examples: these are small horrors made by enthusiasts with a minimum of funds, and both cause associations with avant -garde cinema. But from a similar start point, they set off each of their own way – and one path turned out more convincing.
Lynch, Kronenberg and violence
Paratopic starts from a place in the quarry: you are standing in a dark corridor, a gloomy man with a tie and universal longing in the eyes declares: "You have an enemy, friend". After a couple of minutes, the raven sitting against the background of the credits, a bloodied corpse pecks slowly. You turn your head and find yourself in a cafe. A man at a table opposite persistently asks you to be a professional. What is happening at all? With a gun, you will open the door with a pistol,. Linings and trace caught a cold.
The face of the boss is redundant, but this, oddly enough, is a plot explanation
Paratopic does not have a single plot. The whole game is a set of stories that seem unrelated to each other. In one, the very robbery of the cafe is revealed; In another, you walk through the forest meditatively and photograph birds until something bad happens. In the third – you are conducting discussions about milk with a suspicious seller in a night supermarket. But it quickly becomes clear that in the center of the plot is mysterious cassettes. In 40-50 minutes of passing, you have to see many films, bloodied pieces of flesh, alcoholics, parasites, hooligans and a pretty bunker.
With a suspicious seller, one can talk about more subtle matters
The game does not explain the rules of this kaleidoscope. It is useless to try to determine which of the characters you are here and now: the boundaries between their stories are too unstable. But due to the fact that the scriptwriters refuse to explain, you have a chance to turn away from the narrative and pay attention to other details. For example, how the distorted speech of all characters sounds: as if it were recorded on the old cassette and lost backwards, in the style of black Vigwam from "Twin Picks". Or how Paratopic deliberately sets a broken, arrhythmic pace of passage. Some scenes are so dynamic that the transitions resemble a torn movie monitoring, and in others you will have to get stuck: then you are waiting for a long time when the elevator reaches the desired floor, then go along the endless highway at night. It turns out convincing enough to call the player paranoia. After all, you never know at what point the dynamics will change unpredictably again.
Paratopic seems chaotic, but all its scattered fragments are formed in a whole picture. At least at the level of idea: dangerous cassettes not only appear in the plot, but also mount the reality of the game world. The whole game and transitions in it-and there are several films glued together by someone's unkind whim. The fans of the project unanimously recognized "Video" Kronenberg by the ideological inspirer of this idea. Yes, and David Lynch is present here on an ongoing basis: in addition to the manner of speech, the endless night highway also refers to it. Amazon Slots Casino Paratopic successfully uses the achievements of eminent directors, but is not fond of ommes – and therefore does not seem only a copy. Such a balance provides the game with conceptual harmony, despite formal chaos.
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Sizif and lighthouse
No one Lives Under the Lighthouse also does not begin quite obvious. You find yourself locked inside the lighthouse – a dark and high brick building. On the left – the door to the pantry and the basement, right – the staircase upstairs. What to do? On the upper platform we notice that the light of the lighthouse is not burning. I mean, you need to light it: it seems that there were barrels with butter below. And why this winch? Yeah, apparently, it needs to be twisted to set the lantern in motion, – again upstairs. But where did the terrible knocks on the whole structure and ominous shadows come from? Why is it impossible to leave the building? While you have to postpone these questions and just try to establish the work of the lighthouse.
When you finally cope with this, the camera is moving away, you see a lit lamp – and then it suddenly goes out, and the prologue ends.
The first day of the game comes: after the mysterious disappearance of the previous caretaker, the main character arrives at the lighthouse – a newcomer to replace. Setting inevitably causes associations with recent "Lighthouse" Robert Eggers; There is also a small rocky island with disgusting weather and a minimum of buildings. The narrative unfolds linearly – the player just needs to care for the lighthouse, the caretaker’s house and the nearby shed. And the profession of a caretaker is not particularly diverse, so you have to do everything the same thing: to light a lantern, twist a winch, wipe the glass and wash the floors. But every day to maintain order is becoming more and more difficult. It seems that nature itself rebels against human attempt to impose its own orders. Either the lighthouse will go out, then cables will break, and strange dark spots appear on the floor in the morning.
Most of the time spent in No One Lives Under the Lighthouse, you feel like a sizif: for the stable work of the lighthouse you have to do a monotonous work day a day. And even the appearance of a very specific physical threat does not change anything overhaul. Managed to escape from an incomprehensible creature and close in the barn? Well, the lighthouse itself will not start to glow. I sat – and go further to work.
The same staircase, lantern, butter … And as a reward for labors – a restless dream in a flip house of a caretaker.
On the other hand, the appearance of the monster changes the mood of the game – but, alas, not for the better. While you work alone, on an empty rainy island it is really terrible: do not understand who or what interferes with the work of the lighthouse, makes noise in the tower, leaves spots on the floor. Paranoya throws up the most pessimistic guesses, imagination draws horrors worthy of Lovecraft. And then a giant crab suddenly begins to drive after you – it is only to run away from it is no more difficult than scoring the floors. Every time it only remains the monster, which is grieves with claws with claws and crawling out.
This part of the game causes bewilderment: I have to be scared or laugh? The monster was made so strange to confuse me, or the developers simply did not have enough resources for more? Probably, the final of the game could help with the answer, but it offers even more routine with lower content. It is one thing to regularly get out on the lighthouse, alternating at least some kind of action. And the other is to loop on the labyrinths for a very long time, and then row in the boat, pressing the e for five minutes in a row on E.
In the eyes of ominous seafood, you look very small and defenseless, but in fact it is not so difficult to run away from the monster
Between the expectations from the first minutes and the reality of the second half of the game there is a tangible gap. No one Lives Under the Lighthouse is directly and indirectly borrounds from cinema and literature, especially inspired by the already mentioned Lovecraft. But, despite an interesting idea, the game falls apart as a whole statement.
Minimalism and harmony
Paratopic and No One Lives Under the Lighthouse are similar: cinematic allusions, graphics in the spirit of the first PlayStation, a minimum of resources. Both games use the same means, but the final result is different.
Take at least the design of locations. Both developers' teams managed to create landscapes that crash into memory for a long time, despite the low resolution. It doesn’t matter that Paratopic manages to show a whole gallery of different places, and the hero No One Lives Under the Lighthouse does not leave the same island. The tower on the edge of the forest, a lone night city, an observation platform with a view of the endless sea, an inexorable wall of rain or a foggy haze – you can put everything up for a while and enjoy the views, there is nowhere to rush.
Moreover, admiring the landscapes always passes alone. In Paratopic, almost all human communication is an slurred murmur. In addition, the interlocutors are so strange that go sort it out: these are the real people or just the projections of the film. And no one likes under the like, from the very beginning leaves the caretaker one on one with horror: even if you just attacked you some kind of creature, tell someone to tell someone. You have to just live on.
One of the few ways to smooth out this endless loneliness is music. Paratopic more often puts it with a background: depending on the situation, the emphanty can be tough, emphasizing the scenes of violence, and retro-nostalgic, adding paints on a black night. And the fragmented, steep music of the “lighthouse”, by irony, recalls the narrative Paratopic. In the right points, it enhances the terrible mood of the stage, but delicately, without bending. The radio in the first game and the gramophone in the second dilute the surrounding unkind silence and distract from bad thoughts. It is characteristic that in both cases developers turn to the musical motives of the past: as if the memories of the past help heroes if not to defeat evil, then at least it is easier to survive it.
Music helps you inspire and get together with strength, but the monster is taken by surprise
But, despite the bewitching types and music, both games do not allow to get rid of the feeling of routine. On the one hand, it seems that monotonous actions and long pauses are a successful idea. They allow you to make a respite, pay attention to the contrast between ordinary and terrible, draw a conditional border of reality on which heroes are shaky.
And on the other, all these searches for deep meaning can turn out to be an air castle. That if the matter is not in the concept, but in the banal shortage of the budget and development skills? Hence the long scenes with pauses, and inevitable sagging at a pace. It is difficult to say for sure, but for some reason it seems that Paratopic is still closer to the first option, and no one likes unders the lighthouse-to the second. By the standards of the game design, a five -minute trip along the night highway is a whole eternity. It is so long that on the way you can go through all the stages of acceptance, but at the same time this boredom is felt correct. But in No One Lives Under the Lighthouse, when after dull wandering in the maze you endlessly press the same key to row … it seems that it is just tedious.
However, the main point in which the two projects dispersed is a horror strategy. Paratopic goes in a classic way: it adheres to increditedness, it escapes the sappress. Despite the murders and dismemberment, the game does not explain what actually happened. You do not understand anything at the beginning of the passage – and do not understand anything in the same way at the end. In conditions of a small budget, this option seems perfect. If you do not show the "main" horror, then you can, firstly, save, and secondly, to preserve the intrigue.
No one Lives Under the Lighthouse, on the contrary, laid out all the cards on the table. The game shows the monster, and then tells its story. Even the riddle of dark spots explains – but why? Pixel graphics work on the project until the player fully understands what exactly sees in front of himself; this really scares. But as soon as everything secret becomes obvious, there is no Saspensa, and from the sight of the monster is more likely to laughter.
The monster has a lot of physical incarnations, but it does not make it worse
However, horror and humor often go hand in hand: Rob Zombie films and other similar creations are an example. But here the issue of balance is important. Paratopic makes an unequivocal choice in favor of seriousness: yes, the game has specific humor at the level of dialogs and ultra -circular, but low -polygonal plans. However, in relation to the main idea, it remains in the background – and rather complements it.
In the "Mayak" you have to choose. If you take the game seriously, then it scares inept. If with humor, then the joke is too drawn. But if you take everything together, you get a nice project with an interesting idea, torn apart by internal contradictions. Of course, they can be tried to serve as an advantage: they say that everything was planned. But, in the end, Paratopic clearly shows that the secret of success is in harmony. Then the budget is not very important.
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