Dadhunter
Fearts to Fathom is problably the best horror game "franchise" out there right now. Seeing the mostly solo dev improve tremendously over each release feels so refreshing, always adding more content without bloating the experience while adding more and more subtle horror without relying entirely on jumpscares, though it never forgets it's main driving force of entertaining you and the psychotic baboons you call friends.
Extremely recommended if you have like 2 hours of dead time with friends and want to experience a solid horror story about being in the woods.
Extremely recommended if you have like 2 hours of dead time with friends and want to experience a solid horror story about being in the woods.
2013
I change my mind making people unreasonably angry by calling myself "Can Drake Get Pregnant" on steam and pretending I'm 21 Savage desperately asking people if Drake can sue me for the unwanted child is great, even more so if I can say "Drake's my babymama" when I win and "I still won" when I lose. I only go mid and never gank.
2015
The reason white people believe in feng shui
"In the terms of our Great Society the Mascot Horror games and their ilk are losers - dropouts, failures and malcontents. They are rejects looking for a way to get even with a world in which they are only a problem.The Mascot Horror games are not visionaries, but diehards, and if they are the forerunners or the vanguard of anything it is not the "gaming revolution" in vogue on indie developer spheres, but a fast-growing legion of young unemployables whose untapped energy will inevitably find the same kind of destructive outlet that "kino" like the Mascot Horror Games have been finding for years." -Poppy S. Thompson, Mascot Horror's Angels
I have been banbaning it so much recently I completely forgotified this shit can be good. Mob entertainment has proven two brothers that could or could not be euphoric can in fact make a pretty fucking decent horror game, for the kids at least. It's kind of amazing how much they have upped their A-game on this one. The wait was well worth it, if you ask me (I did not wait for this piece of shit, I infact forgot it even existed for like two years).
Everything just kind of clicks on this one, getting through an extremely solid experience with actual puzzle solving and exploring some arguably fun platforming situations. This fucking thing also has very good monster designs for the most part and an honest to god creepy atmosphere, getting a good scares out of me and the things I call friends who pestered me to play this on stream for 4 hours, most of which felt like actual game time and not padding. The game is still kind of buggy, with a lot of possibilities for sequence breaking and jumping out of line to skip sections of the game (sometimes unintentionally)
"The videogame sphere is crowded with devs who create as if their sole purpose in getting behind the keyboard is to avenge every wrong done them by man, beast or fate. The only thing that keeps them in line is their fear of death, jail and refunds.” -Poppy S. Thompson, Mascot Horror's Angels.
Quite possibly lightning in a bottle, I'm not confident they can top this one because of the track record of videogames in general, but if they do it right and hire me as a psychotic latino they might become a staple of this genre.
I have been banbaning it so much recently I completely forgotified this shit can be good. Mob entertainment has proven two brothers that could or could not be euphoric can in fact make a pretty fucking decent horror game, for the kids at least. It's kind of amazing how much they have upped their A-game on this one. The wait was well worth it, if you ask me (I did not wait for this piece of shit, I infact forgot it even existed for like two years).
Everything just kind of clicks on this one, getting through an extremely solid experience with actual puzzle solving and exploring some arguably fun platforming situations. This fucking thing also has very good monster designs for the most part and an honest to god creepy atmosphere, getting a good scares out of me and the things I call friends who pestered me to play this on stream for 4 hours, most of which felt like actual game time and not padding. The game is still kind of buggy, with a lot of possibilities for sequence breaking and jumping out of line to skip sections of the game (sometimes unintentionally)
"The videogame sphere is crowded with devs who create as if their sole purpose in getting behind the keyboard is to avenge every wrong done them by man, beast or fate. The only thing that keeps them in line is their fear of death, jail and refunds.” -Poppy S. Thompson, Mascot Horror's Angels.
Quite possibly lightning in a bottle, I'm not confident they can top this one because of the track record of videogames in general, but if they do it right and hire me as a psychotic latino they might become a staple of this genre.
2023
"Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in garten exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.
He looked about at the dark forest in which they were bivouacked. He nodded toward the specimens he'd collected. These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothing in the world. Yet the smallest naughty one can jumpscare us. Any smallest thing beneath yon palyground out of men's knowing. Only banban can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the garten." -Banban Meridian, or The Evening Badness in the Indie Horror Community by Cormack Banbarty
I really recommend everyone that travels abroad and has multiple life changing events happen to them to play some dogshit stuff the second they arrive back to their country. It's really humbling, and reminds you of the eventuality of life. I will forever be grateful for my friends for making me scrape the bottom of the barrel for some seconds of dopamine release on stream.
He looked about at the dark forest in which they were bivouacked. He nodded toward the specimens he'd collected. These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothing in the world. Yet the smallest naughty one can jumpscare us. Any smallest thing beneath yon palyground out of men's knowing. Only banban can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the garten." -Banban Meridian, or The Evening Badness in the Indie Horror Community by Cormack Banbarty
I really recommend everyone that travels abroad and has multiple life changing events happen to them to play some dogshit stuff the second they arrive back to their country. It's really humbling, and reminds you of the eventuality of life. I will forever be grateful for my friends for making me scrape the bottom of the barrel for some seconds of dopamine release on stream.
Kusoge to some, kino to others
Genuinely amazing what a year can do to a studio. They ironed almost all of the grievances I had with the first part, cutting up all the tediousness of the giant maps and key hunting (for the most part) to bring up a solid as fuck experience of being an illiterate, severly inbred drunkard with unlimited access to gunpowder and explosives going postal on the dredges of the south, both American and extraterrestial. Special mention goes to the fucking WACO LEVEL . The soundtrack is also spotless this time, with Mojo screaming about not wanting to send dick pics over the net and an Elvis Impersonator talking about how he only eats food out of cans, although the MVP is definetely Mojo's Redneck Rampage.
No notes on this one, just more Redneck Rampage with just enough quality control to make it a worthwile product this time around. I'm really gonna miss Bubba and Leonard for a couple of days.
Genuinely amazing what a year can do to a studio. They ironed almost all of the grievances I had with the first part, cutting up all the tediousness of the giant maps and key hunting (for the most part) to bring up a solid as fuck experience of being an illiterate, severly inbred drunkard with unlimited access to gunpowder and explosives going postal on the dredges of the south, both American and extraterrestial. Special mention goes to the fucking WACO LEVEL . The soundtrack is also spotless this time, with Mojo screaming about not wanting to send dick pics over the net and an Elvis Impersonator talking about how he only eats food out of cans, although the MVP is definetely Mojo's Redneck Rampage.
No notes on this one, just more Redneck Rampage with just enough quality control to make it a worthwile product this time around. I'm really gonna miss Bubba and Leonard for a couple of days.
1997
"It all returnifies to nutin it just keeps tumblirzing dewn, tumblirzing dewn, tumblirzing dewn"
Word of warning I'm attaching some files to this review so you can have a glimpse at how utterly weird this game is. The audio might be fucked up because it hurt my ears so much I had to tone it down as much as I could while I played it. Papa can't lose his noise peepers.
Yeah I have no fucking clue what they were cooking with this. If you ever played Slayers X, imagine that but non functional. Too weird to be taken seriously, too rare to dissapear from the gamer zeitgeist. Multiple times something so weird and stupid happened to me while I was playing I had to second look around me ingame just to be sure I was not hallucinating.
Everything in this beast of a game is designed to either gross you out or make you desperately angry. Buy the ticket, take the ride as they say. The enemy design for the most part is lackluster, with all save for one of them being hitscanners with the same arsenal as you. Special shout out to the bosses being completely incomprehensible. Yes, the things accompanying him are turds. The game expects of you almost complete devotion, punishing you in the most bizarre ways possible if you aren't actively consuming it's crack-based content. You'll be blown to bits by a type of cosmic stupidity fuelled by bothyour own hubris and the developer's.
Did I mention the game also has platforming? On the build engine floatiness, no less.
But even so I find myself thinking...that that was a really cool fps! Definetely not the best Build Engine one, but completely able to perform on the same level of entertainment as Shadow Warrior or Duke Nukem. Everything is there, with "gorgeous" levels that tend to feel close to life and the perfect amount of grease and doodoo. When the going gets good, you can totally get an enjoyable, if deeply weird experience or downright comically painful punishment for not acting like an imbecile alongside it thanks to the atmosphere, straight out of Corona and sound design it has, half maddening screaming and cursing with ear blasting guns and half psychobilly soundtrack with Mojo Nixon and Reverend Horton Heat among others shooting it out the park with some really good hollerings and general crassness. Mojo really left himself go with the original stuff he wrote for the game, absolute psycho shit ranting. Mc Donalds can kiss my butt. I'll forever be thankful for the game for letting me hear Dick talk about something profoundly weird and obscene while shit and farm animals explode everywhere.
A weird beast off a build engine FPS absolutely not made for human consumption yet painfully fun, clearly made with love and a respect for the sources ( RIP Dick Montana ). I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it, shit and all and I wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone who wants to feel weird for a couple of hours.
Word of warning I'm attaching some files to this review so you can have a glimpse at how utterly weird this game is. The audio might be fucked up because it hurt my ears so much I had to tone it down as much as I could while I played it. Papa can't lose his noise peepers.
Yeah I have no fucking clue what they were cooking with this. If you ever played Slayers X, imagine that but non functional. Too weird to be taken seriously, too rare to dissapear from the gamer zeitgeist. Multiple times something so weird and stupid happened to me while I was playing I had to second look around me ingame just to be sure I was not hallucinating.
Everything in this beast of a game is designed to either gross you out or make you desperately angry. Buy the ticket, take the ride as they say. The enemy design for the most part is lackluster, with all save for one of them being hitscanners with the same arsenal as you. Special shout out to the bosses being completely incomprehensible. Yes, the things accompanying him are turds. The game expects of you almost complete devotion, punishing you in the most bizarre ways possible if you aren't actively consuming it's crack-based content. You'll be blown to bits by a type of cosmic stupidity fuelled by bothyour own hubris and the developer's.
Did I mention the game also has platforming? On the build engine floatiness, no less.
But even so I find myself thinking...that that was a really cool fps! Definetely not the best Build Engine one, but completely able to perform on the same level of entertainment as Shadow Warrior or Duke Nukem. Everything is there, with "gorgeous" levels that tend to feel close to life and the perfect amount of grease and doodoo. When the going gets good, you can totally get an enjoyable, if deeply weird experience or downright comically painful punishment for not acting like an imbecile alongside it thanks to the atmosphere, straight out of Corona and sound design it has, half maddening screaming and cursing with ear blasting guns and half psychobilly soundtrack with Mojo Nixon and Reverend Horton Heat among others shooting it out the park with some really good hollerings and general crassness. Mojo really left himself go with the original stuff he wrote for the game, absolute psycho shit ranting. Mc Donalds can kiss my butt. I'll forever be thankful for the game for letting me hear Dick talk about something profoundly weird and obscene while shit and farm animals explode everywhere.
A weird beast off a build engine FPS absolutely not made for human consumption yet painfully fun, clearly made with love and a respect for the sources ( RIP Dick Montana ). I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it, shit and all and I wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone who wants to feel weird for a couple of hours.
Screamed so hard I woke up my entire house. Really cool, the creator of this games is showing a pretty good track record with the production value of each one.
Pain is mandatory
What is a Doom II on Ultra Violence? A misserable lttle pile of go fuck yourself. A huge amount of issues regarding the pacing of the whole experience sadly make this sequel fall short of surpassing the original game. Sure, the new enemies are pretty good for the most part (I will find whoever thought of adding the Pain Elemental, and I shall teach them) and the super shotgun is probably the most iconic weapon in gaming at this point, but the whole experience gets bogged down by downright mean level design. I began theorizing with a friend that they did it this way so you would just skip the single player campaign and go play deathmatch since that was all the rage at the time. The small pockets of pure fun are incredible, blasting through scores and scores of baddies and meanies with a finelly tuned arsenal of deathfuck, but the puzzle and fucking platforming sections just tank the experience to a whole new degree of unfun.
There was a whole lot of hurting in this one fellas, mostly from Petersen's level design. You heard about traps and hidden switches? Now get ready for THE AGONY CONTRAPTION. You could fill a small nation with the amount of cacodemons present in his levels (my personal theory is that he is such a TTRPG nerd he just adds them because it reminds him of DnD).
Shoutout to the music tho. I found myself stopping to just hear it after every carnage. Yeah we all know it's mostly juststolen heavily inspired by the metal they were listening at the office at the time, but the ambient tracks and original stuff knocks it off the park.
On to build engine games, starting with Duked Nuked DDD. I won't play them on the hardest difficulty since from my experience the level of fun just goes to the shitter with them, while in Doom it's a somewhat achievable punishment for trying to have fun.
What is a Doom II on Ultra Violence? A misserable lttle pile of go fuck yourself. A huge amount of issues regarding the pacing of the whole experience sadly make this sequel fall short of surpassing the original game. Sure, the new enemies are pretty good for the most part (I will find whoever thought of adding the Pain Elemental, and I shall teach them) and the super shotgun is probably the most iconic weapon in gaming at this point, but the whole experience gets bogged down by downright mean level design. I began theorizing with a friend that they did it this way so you would just skip the single player campaign and go play deathmatch since that was all the rage at the time. The small pockets of pure fun are incredible, blasting through scores and scores of baddies and meanies with a finelly tuned arsenal of deathfuck, but the puzzle and fucking platforming sections just tank the experience to a whole new degree of unfun.
There was a whole lot of hurting in this one fellas, mostly from Petersen's level design. You heard about traps and hidden switches? Now get ready for THE AGONY CONTRAPTION. You could fill a small nation with the amount of cacodemons present in his levels (my personal theory is that he is such a TTRPG nerd he just adds them because it reminds him of DnD).
Shoutout to the music tho. I found myself stopping to just hear it after every carnage. Yeah we all know it's mostly just
On to build engine games, starting with Duked Nuked DDD. I won't play them on the hardest difficulty since from my experience the level of fun just goes to the shitter with them, while in Doom it's a somewhat achievable punishment for trying to have fun.
2019
Look Romero I bought Daikatana both on Steam and GoG you don't need to punish me THIS much. But thanks nonetheless
Probably the peak of Doom 1. Straight from one of it's creators, John Romero, who would've thought the formula needed even more punishment to it. The levels are a symphony of pain and edginess, perfectly balanced to test everything you know about this game (played on Hurt me Plenty, but I have heard UV is not very well balanced) alongside a banger MIDI soundtrack and a rendition by Buckethead or something, I ain't a music nerd. From the enemy placement to the amount of health and ammo you get for each encounter, this WAD expects the absolute best from you without ever feeling cheap.
Really, a great experience. I'd say play the OG episodes before trying this one tho, it definetely is a product for veterans of the game.
Probably the peak of Doom 1. Straight from one of it's creators, John Romero, who would've thought the formula needed even more punishment to it. The levels are a symphony of pain and edginess, perfectly balanced to test everything you know about this game (played on Hurt me Plenty, but I have heard UV is not very well balanced) alongside a banger MIDI soundtrack and a rendition by Buckethead or something, I ain't a music nerd. From the enemy placement to the amount of health and ammo you get for each encounter, this WAD expects the absolute best from you without ever feeling cheap.
Really, a great experience. I'd say play the OG episodes before trying this one tho, it definetely is a product for veterans of the game.
1993
It definetely is Doom (1993).
Yeah this rocks even 30 years later, it's amazing how well they nailed everything at ID almost on the first go while basically inventing one of my favorite genres of gaming (sorry to the 3 people that like Wolf3D, you can paypal your hard earned money if you really want me to play it because I feel nothing towards that game and have no desire to replay it. I guarantee no playthrough tho, I just want to get Soldier of Fortune on GoG). Really, gramgram hasn't aged a bit in those three decades and I was surprised to find out how short it really is, about 4 hours on ultra-violence while doing little secret hunting. Yeah I'm one of those that doesn't really care for secrets, high scores never really got to me as a kid so I was never much of a completionist.
Please, play this thing, it's really as good as that one friend you have that you know it's a freak because they always have some knowledge on whatever you're talking about with them says.
On to Sigil
Yeah this rocks even 30 years later, it's amazing how well they nailed everything at ID almost on the first go while basically inventing one of my favorite genres of gaming (sorry to the 3 people that like Wolf3D, you can paypal your hard earned money if you really want me to play it because I feel nothing towards that game and have no desire to replay it. I guarantee no playthrough tho, I just want to get Soldier of Fortune on GoG). Really, gramgram hasn't aged a bit in those three decades and I was surprised to find out how short it really is, about 4 hours on ultra-violence while doing little secret hunting. Yeah I'm one of those that doesn't really care for secrets, high scores never really got to me as a kid so I was never much of a completionist.
Please, play this thing, it's really as good as that one friend you have that you know it's a freak because they always have some knowledge on whatever you're talking about with them says.
On to Sigil
2023
"A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in store bought assets or ludonarrativical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of plastic and clay baddery and pieces of model still tracked with the code of prior owners, coats of slain Jumbo Joshes, frogged and braided kittysaurus jackets, one in a boiler hat and one with an party hat and one in pink ribbon and a bloodstained mouth and some in headgear or cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a royal crown worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the suit of a court jester, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of jokes or poems done in another garten by men whose very bones were dust and many with their models spliced up with the models of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their monsters' ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored plastic and one whose bird's whole head was painted pink red and all the monsters's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, banban hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Freddy Fazbear reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools." -Banban Meridian, or The Evening Badness in the Indie Horror Community by Cormack Banbarty
You can get jumpscared in the first five seconds because get fucked. This one actually has gameplay, I can't remember them reusing a "puzzle" once, but they do make you backtrack to every single fucking place four-five times with absolutely nothing going on after you get the thingamajig. The puzzles are actually not mediocre and give you the opportunity to pass them without dying once if you drop the cocomelon asmr stim for a hot minute. Thewarwatchparty wasn't as rambounctious as previous episodes which sadly left me to fully experience the game in all it's glory. The voice acting was kinda interesting this time due to the fact they are actually trying to do something inside the game with the characters which it's at the very least an attempt.
I can't keep going on with this shit man, they had to resort to bribing me with games to keep playing. Thanks @FranzMagitek for Doom 3 BFG, I hope we both die in related circumstances.
You can get jumpscared in the first five seconds because get fucked. This one actually has gameplay, I can't remember them reusing a "puzzle" once, but they do make you backtrack to every single fucking place four-five times with absolutely nothing going on after you get the thingamajig. The puzzles are actually not mediocre and give you the opportunity to pass them without dying once if you drop the cocomelon asmr stim for a hot minute. The
I can't keep going on with this shit man, they had to resort to bribing me with games to keep playing. Thanks @FranzMagitek for Doom 3 BFG, I hope we both die in related circumstances.
A pretty interesting animated reddit horror story with really good ambience, definetely worth checking out if you have a soundbar with screaming to go alongside
Pretty interesting spooky experience let down by the fact it's an actual reddit game
This review contains spoilers
"Hey there, everybody. It's Zane, from hypno. Did you know? My favorite things are... jumping into the sludge, stale sloppo, chill soda without any ice, the newest album of Sipage, aaaand Terds. See you in the Slayers X, everybody."
As an FPS, Slayers X is a wild ride, calling back to the Build Engine games of the 90s with an insane amount of interaction with the maps and the content, making real spaces while having fun with the encounters inside them, and using the weapons as extensions of the aesthetics rather than just your standars tools of the trade. One outstanding example of this is the glass blazta, functionally the shotgun of the game, using pieces of the enviroment as ammo, merging scavenging and exploring to a deeper degree.
The presentation of this game is something else, too. Captivatingly ugly yet a smooth play from start to finish, a gift to the cool teens from the 90s from their adult self. Almost looking like it shouldn't work, the way everything looks like it's barely holding together really elevates everything in here, somehow making what appears to be a very basic palette of colors look like a rainbow in comparisson to what other games bring to the table. The devs are complete masters of this whole shtick, and I really can't wait for what they cook next.
Now humor me for a second here. I'm gonna go on a completely weird metatextual tangent on what I feel the game is actually about, and I'll spoil both Hypnospace and this game. I recommend scrolling a bit on his wikia page, particularly on the twitter hyperlinks it has to learn more about the character outside the games. This is entirely my own theory (my GAME THEORY) so expect me to overread everything to hell. If the vibes are not to your liking, please pretend it's all a joke and read the weird parts with that voice hbomberguy and SuperEyepatchWolf use at the "serious" parts in their videos. You know the one.
The narrative of this game explains that what you're playing isn't a 100% exact recreation of the game designed by teenager Zane, edgy kid from an alternative reality 90's, and a survivor of a dream internet Y2K event, but adult Zane, a dad working a deadbeat job tackling this as a way of giving his past self some bragging rights. You can see a lot of this in the "scrapped" levels you unlock after finishing the game, with an almost 40 years old Zane taking great pride in how much his past self made as a hobby, recreating places he used to be around that time. Yet you start to see some cracks in his demeanor while you play.
In the first level, you learn your mother has been killed by the psykos, the enemis of the game, to which Zane just responds with a "RIP Mom" at first. Yet there's something in his voice when this happens, a weirdly sad delivery from the voice actor playing Zane as an adult. When you finally go around and reach her apartment room, you hear a clearly uncomfortable Zane talking about how he misses his mom and wishes she was still there, looking at her stuff and chocking a bit before speaking. Maybe because I also lost someone dear to me recently, I'm trying to find a way to connect with this fictional character that I found really charming on a game I played before this person passed away, happy to see him alive and well. In a digital way, at least.
Similar situations happen fairly repeatedly on the game, with Zane revisiting his game 20 years in the future and out of discomfort or just straight up "growing out of it" editing parts of it, never fully commiting to erasing what that 15 year old kid was cooking, so you see strange things like a fence separating in half the bed his mother and step father slept in, a lack of interest in acting the death by his own hands of his teenager sweetheart in a boss battle, making them feel like bumps in his own road to having a good time while revisiting his old memories.
You can also feel this in the way the game feels like it's being future proofed for his own son, with cursing being entirely removed from it, with even some already admitely safe words being replaced (something you also see in Hypnospace, yes, but I chose to read that as a mix of Zane trying to avoid getting banned for harsh language when I played and the weird American culture of avoiding extremely tame subjects) with stuff liek "terds" for turds to try and shape them into what he thinks a proper person should be, while also trying to look cool with the cartoonish yet bountiful gore inside the game.
I know this can totally be seen as going in too deep, Zane is presented as somekind of idiot after all, constantly making spelling mistakes and going out of his way to look cool while sounding deadpan, but I can't pretend some moments got me completely undefended and shaped what I thought of it.
What a game, man. I'll be thinking about this for a while.
As an FPS, Slayers X is a wild ride, calling back to the Build Engine games of the 90s with an insane amount of interaction with the maps and the content, making real spaces while having fun with the encounters inside them, and using the weapons as extensions of the aesthetics rather than just your standars tools of the trade. One outstanding example of this is the glass blazta, functionally the shotgun of the game, using pieces of the enviroment as ammo, merging scavenging and exploring to a deeper degree.
The presentation of this game is something else, too. Captivatingly ugly yet a smooth play from start to finish, a gift to the cool teens from the 90s from their adult self. Almost looking like it shouldn't work, the way everything looks like it's barely holding together really elevates everything in here, somehow making what appears to be a very basic palette of colors look like a rainbow in comparisson to what other games bring to the table. The devs are complete masters of this whole shtick, and I really can't wait for what they cook next.
Now humor me for a second here. I'm gonna go on a completely weird metatextual tangent on what I feel the game is actually about, and I'll spoil both Hypnospace and this game. I recommend scrolling a bit on his wikia page, particularly on the twitter hyperlinks it has to learn more about the character outside the games. This is entirely my own theory (my GAME THEORY) so expect me to overread everything to hell. If the vibes are not to your liking, please pretend it's all a joke and read the weird parts with that voice hbomberguy and SuperEyepatchWolf use at the "serious" parts in their videos. You know the one.
The narrative of this game explains that what you're playing isn't a 100% exact recreation of the game designed by teenager Zane, edgy kid from an alternative reality 90's, and a survivor of a dream internet Y2K event, but adult Zane, a dad working a deadbeat job tackling this as a way of giving his past self some bragging rights. You can see a lot of this in the "scrapped" levels you unlock after finishing the game, with an almost 40 years old Zane taking great pride in how much his past self made as a hobby, recreating places he used to be around that time. Yet you start to see some cracks in his demeanor while you play.
In the first level, you learn your mother has been killed by the psykos, the enemis of the game, to which Zane just responds with a "RIP Mom" at first. Yet there's something in his voice when this happens, a weirdly sad delivery from the voice actor playing Zane as an adult. When you finally go around and reach her apartment room, you hear a clearly uncomfortable Zane talking about how he misses his mom and wishes she was still there, looking at her stuff and chocking a bit before speaking. Maybe because I also lost someone dear to me recently, I'm trying to find a way to connect with this fictional character that I found really charming on a game I played before this person passed away, happy to see him alive and well. In a digital way, at least.
Similar situations happen fairly repeatedly on the game, with Zane revisiting his game 20 years in the future and out of discomfort or just straight up "growing out of it" editing parts of it, never fully commiting to erasing what that 15 year old kid was cooking, so you see strange things like a fence separating in half the bed his mother and step father slept in, a lack of interest in acting the death by his own hands of his teenager sweetheart in a boss battle, making them feel like bumps in his own road to having a good time while revisiting his old memories.
You can also feel this in the way the game feels like it's being future proofed for his own son, with cursing being entirely removed from it, with even some already admitely safe words being replaced (something you also see in Hypnospace, yes, but I chose to read that as a mix of Zane trying to avoid getting banned for harsh language when I played and the weird American culture of avoiding extremely tame subjects) with stuff liek "terds" for turds to try and shape them into what he thinks a proper person should be, while also trying to look cool with the cartoonish yet bountiful gore inside the game.
I know this can totally be seen as going in too deep, Zane is presented as somekind of idiot after all, constantly making spelling mistakes and going out of his way to look cool while sounding deadpan, but I can't pretend some moments got me completely undefended and shaped what I thought of it.
What a game, man. I'll be thinking about this for a while.