the whole Of The Killer series is brilliant - by a small team, including thecatamites of 10 beautiful postcards/space funeral.

Each episode captures the feeling of some aspect of living in the 21st century amidst strange social systems..

corporate call centers, family-focused exercise gymnasiums, century-old apartment buildings. the protagonist is witty, associated with the arts, maybe a bit jaded, but her personality helps make sense of all the wild nonsense of the world around her, as she runs away from each episode's goofy slasher-film murderer.

Each episode tells a short story through a novel narrative system where the text just stays on the screen and changes as you move near different parts, the effect is like a more efficient method of what those AAA games love to do with characters talking as you walk around.

except in the Of The Killer games it works better than the expensive fancy route because text appears near certain spots, it doesn't stop the game, and you can always walk back to see the text again. So you get this feeling of a '3D comic', and it works so well with the moving objects, sound design, 3D level design, etc.

As a game designer it's particularly tricky to try to portray any aspect of the present day without just resorting to what feels ultimately like primarily text, or kind of strange metaphors like having you smack your way through an american jrpg suburb with a baseball bat. not that there's an issue with those, but Of The Killer feels a lot more 'direct' in how it chooses to represent reality as a game. When commenting on the weirdness of museums, you're literally in a weird museum. When commenting on the kind of frightening, deep nature of your old building having layers of history and old stuff - you're in a labyrinthine-esque apartment floor that sounds and feels visually stuffy/moldy. and so on! i could say more but i'm tired

trust me on this and play through all 8 in the series! probably takes you 3-4 hours tops. i'm only on the 7th but they keep getting better

this series is one of the only pieces of media I’ve stumbled across that accurately sums up how it feels to be in ur early/mid 20s and live in a Big City in the modern world. it makes me consistently feel like tony in the pilot of sopranos where he’s talking about coming into smth once everything has been done and discovered. it’s not necessarily bad but it is jarring to read up about the history of a place and find out how it was once a real place for both art and commerce and now it’s rlly not much, it’s weird and gross to be able to track the history of a well documented city that u live in and see what used to reside there. most places like this where I live that haven’t been turned into a luxury restaurant or hotel or shopping center lay dormant and abandoned, collecting dust and wires hanging from ceilings. scary stuff!!

bort doll smack cam !!

Dares to ask what video games might look like had we all gotten home computers in 1917. Much more substantial than the first one, with kind of a symphonic structure. The first section, the modern apartment building, had all the instinctive joy of pointless exploration that I remember experiencing the first time I played Deus Ex. The kitsch architectural substrata are themselves a kind of a pale, kitschy callback to something like Goblet Grotto, but it blossoms really nicely into a manic final sequence that reminds me of the experience of reading Une semaine de bonte in one sitting at 4am.

The second entry, Hands of the Killer is longer, more purposeful, and works to define the world of the series in extremely concrete ways. It pays tribute to Giallo films and similarly opulent styles in the same vein, but uses its antagonists to skewer the pretention that often arises among the fanbases of "high horror".

Between the amazing garish style (complimentary), the off-kilter soundtrack, and the establishment of a world I'm now fully fascinated by, Hands of the Killer is the one that will likely get you hooked on the series.