Nightmare Frames is a supernatural thriller where you'll step into the shoes of Alan Goldberg, in the search for the scariest horror film of all time. An enthralling journey through the streets of the Hollywood of the 80s, a small haunted town, and even Hell itself.
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Nightmare Frames es una aventura gráfica totalmente imprescindible, sobre todo para los amantes de los grandes clásicos de Sierra y LucasArts. Una experiencia que me ha atrapado durante más de 5 horas como pocas aventuras han logrado en los últimos años, incluso puedo decir que me ha hecho sentir algo especial al jugarla. No se si es su gran historia, sus entrañables personajes, su ambientación, su música, sus gráficos pixelados o una mezcla de todo ello, pero tiene algo.
Si te gustan las aventuras point & click o si quieres iniciarte en este género, Nightmare Frames, es para ti. Una obra con muchas cosas positivas y con muy pocos defectos, y aún con ellos te enamorará igualmente. Quizás penséis que estoy exagerando pero la he incluido entre mis favoritas, las cuales os contaré pronto en un artículo, y creo que está a la altura de grandes clásicos. Repito: Imprescindible.
Leer análisis completo en Retro & Pixel Press: https://retropixelpress.blogspot.com/2023/10/analisis-de-nightmare-frames.html
Si te gustan las aventuras point & click o si quieres iniciarte en este género, Nightmare Frames, es para ti. Una obra con muchas cosas positivas y con muy pocos defectos, y aún con ellos te enamorará igualmente. Quizás penséis que estoy exagerando pero la he incluido entre mis favoritas, las cuales os contaré pronto en un artículo, y creo que está a la altura de grandes clásicos. Repito: Imprescindible.
Leer análisis completo en Retro & Pixel Press: https://retropixelpress.blogspot.com/2023/10/analisis-de-nightmare-frames.html
Alan Goldberg is a horror movie screenwriter in the 1980s. While beloved by his fanbase, he's bitter and dismissive of the genre people adore him for. All he wants is to write high profile dramas, something to get himself an Academy Award. He gets that opportunity through Helen Westmoreland, a power broker who offers Alan a challenge: find the lost film of cult horror director Edward Keller.
The game is broadly split into two parts. The first half of the game centers on life in Los Angeles. Alan interacts with out of work actors, disgraced directors, grumpy managers, sleazy producers, cheery special effects guys, passionate fans, powerful cultists, etc etc. The different facets of the industry and all the desperate people trying to succeed within the machine. The atmosphere just really works, to the point I was a little sad when I realized the supernatural was entering the plot. The entire tone and structure of the Los Angeles storyline just works as this gritty story of Hollywood strife. Alan was a Hollywood nominated writer, but the producers react to this with a shrug. What have you done lately? The machine churns onward and its not slowing down anytime soon. Within that machine are the microcosms of people's lives. Its that same dash of focus that makes Barry such a good show: the understanding that between the success and failure of existing in Hollywood is that middle line of work. Not famous, not a flopped actor. Just work. Millions of entertainment people who don't quite make it but just get work. Everything after that is illusion and dreams that the machine builds up.
The second half of the game takes Alan to Serena, where Edward Keller's lost film remains hidden. Initially, it feels like another Lovecraft style town of monsters and villainy. But, much like the gritty middle of Los Angeles, the game takes surprising care to indicate what the actual daily life of Serena is like. Meeting the Chief of Police results in a short explanation that Serena doesn't have a police force- Chief Bowman got the job when the state realized Serena has lacked a police chief for nearly a decade. Chief Bowman's majority work is in Wade County as a regular officer, he only comes down to Serena once a month to complete a quick check-up, barring emergencies. The only lasting business is the grocer/pharmacy. The pharmacist explains that things like clothes or repair shops are typically handled by people on their own. Each character that you visit has their own past tragedy and only two of them tie into a wider plot. A local husband caring for his wife in her dementia, a newspaper building that got bulldozed during an argument over rent, a school fire, general sickness, a family massacre. These tragedies should feel egregious but there's so much care in establishing these stories as just a fact of life in Serena. People struggle, they get by, they do the daily work, and then sometimes something awful happens. And then they pick up and keep going. Rather than an evil town of fish people, it really does feel like a town of people. Its endearing.
The wider attempts to connect the plot into a cohesive whole is my broader issue. The two plotlines can intersect, but there's so much care in the realism of these worlds that the supernatural overlap ultimately kinda falls into shock value for me. An evil Hollywood man preys on a small town to create a film of True Fear. Other Hollywood people want his lost film to gush over the tragedies of others, the tragedy they can't understand in their own bubble of wealth. There's meat there, but it doesn't really come through in the actual text. The supernatural's horror is just so much less interesting than the people the supernatural impacts. That's a rare skill in writing! If they leaned into that more rather than the scares, I think this game would really stick out to more people.
While the gameplay is pretty rudimentary, the inspect feature really speaks to the game's surprising writing talents. As part of the plot, Alan meets a cultist in a theater playing gay porn. You can inspect each member of the theater's audience and the omniscient narrator provides information on every single one of them. Their names, their lives, and their purpose for watching the movie. Its excellent detail. Inspecting things also provides insight into Alan, who is generally uninteresting as a protagonist. He's a judgmental slimeball who puts others down so he can feel good. Its in the latter parts of the game, trapped in Serena, where inspecting things feels rewarding. Alan examining a magazine rack and finding writing inspiration in some of the short stories. Catching himself as he realizes he's starting to get excited to write horror again. Finding horror as an escape to be refreshing in the face of the actual horrors around him. Its a great character beat.
This is a weird negative and not even a real negative, but I think the projectionist should have lived. He's not a character that exists until the climax, a random element in what's largely a horror show of rich people getting murdered by monsters. He never dies on-screen, although his unconscious body is in the background at the end. He doesn't have a name. He only really exists for a hint in progressing, but the fact that he was pulled into the final horror nightmare to begin with really startled me. It speaks to the game's themes that the person that would obviously exist in a soon-to-be cursed theater, an underpaid projectionist, is easily forgotten about until you find him. And of course he would die, the churn of Hollywood demands that if the rich fucks are gonna die, a random innocent is going to get caught in the crossfire. Still, I feel for the guy. He wasn't getting tortured by monsters, he was just hiding out. I'd have liked to see him pull through.
Neat game!
The game is broadly split into two parts. The first half of the game centers on life in Los Angeles. Alan interacts with out of work actors, disgraced directors, grumpy managers, sleazy producers, cheery special effects guys, passionate fans, powerful cultists, etc etc. The different facets of the industry and all the desperate people trying to succeed within the machine. The atmosphere just really works, to the point I was a little sad when I realized the supernatural was entering the plot. The entire tone and structure of the Los Angeles storyline just works as this gritty story of Hollywood strife. Alan was a Hollywood nominated writer, but the producers react to this with a shrug. What have you done lately? The machine churns onward and its not slowing down anytime soon. Within that machine are the microcosms of people's lives. Its that same dash of focus that makes Barry such a good show: the understanding that between the success and failure of existing in Hollywood is that middle line of work. Not famous, not a flopped actor. Just work. Millions of entertainment people who don't quite make it but just get work. Everything after that is illusion and dreams that the machine builds up.
The second half of the game takes Alan to Serena, where Edward Keller's lost film remains hidden. Initially, it feels like another Lovecraft style town of monsters and villainy. But, much like the gritty middle of Los Angeles, the game takes surprising care to indicate what the actual daily life of Serena is like. Meeting the Chief of Police results in a short explanation that Serena doesn't have a police force- Chief Bowman got the job when the state realized Serena has lacked a police chief for nearly a decade. Chief Bowman's majority work is in Wade County as a regular officer, he only comes down to Serena once a month to complete a quick check-up, barring emergencies. The only lasting business is the grocer/pharmacy. The pharmacist explains that things like clothes or repair shops are typically handled by people on their own. Each character that you visit has their own past tragedy and only two of them tie into a wider plot. A local husband caring for his wife in her dementia, a newspaper building that got bulldozed during an argument over rent, a school fire, general sickness, a family massacre. These tragedies should feel egregious but there's so much care in establishing these stories as just a fact of life in Serena. People struggle, they get by, they do the daily work, and then sometimes something awful happens. And then they pick up and keep going. Rather than an evil town of fish people, it really does feel like a town of people. Its endearing.
The wider attempts to connect the plot into a cohesive whole is my broader issue. The two plotlines can intersect, but there's so much care in the realism of these worlds that the supernatural overlap ultimately kinda falls into shock value for me. An evil Hollywood man preys on a small town to create a film of True Fear. Other Hollywood people want his lost film to gush over the tragedies of others, the tragedy they can't understand in their own bubble of wealth. There's meat there, but it doesn't really come through in the actual text. The supernatural's horror is just so much less interesting than the people the supernatural impacts. That's a rare skill in writing! If they leaned into that more rather than the scares, I think this game would really stick out to more people.
While the gameplay is pretty rudimentary, the inspect feature really speaks to the game's surprising writing talents. As part of the plot, Alan meets a cultist in a theater playing gay porn. You can inspect each member of the theater's audience and the omniscient narrator provides information on every single one of them. Their names, their lives, and their purpose for watching the movie. Its excellent detail. Inspecting things also provides insight into Alan, who is generally uninteresting as a protagonist. He's a judgmental slimeball who puts others down so he can feel good. Its in the latter parts of the game, trapped in Serena, where inspecting things feels rewarding. Alan examining a magazine rack and finding writing inspiration in some of the short stories. Catching himself as he realizes he's starting to get excited to write horror again. Finding horror as an escape to be refreshing in the face of the actual horrors around him. Its a great character beat.
This is a weird negative and not even a real negative, but I think the projectionist should have lived. He's not a character that exists until the climax, a random element in what's largely a horror show of rich people getting murdered by monsters. He never dies on-screen, although his unconscious body is in the background at the end. He doesn't have a name. He only really exists for a hint in progressing, but the fact that he was pulled into the final horror nightmare to begin with really startled me. It speaks to the game's themes that the person that would obviously exist in a soon-to-be cursed theater, an underpaid projectionist, is easily forgotten about until you find him. And of course he would die, the churn of Hollywood demands that if the rich fucks are gonna die, a random innocent is going to get caught in the crossfire. Still, I feel for the guy. He wasn't getting tortured by monsters, he was just hiding out. I'd have liked to see him pull through.
Neat game!