Paradise Killer is the "not like other girls" of games but in, like, the cool trans girl way, not the internalized-misogyny way? I can truly say I have never played a game like it and I don't know why any of it works. Why is every single character name so cool? (Lady Love Dies! Lydia Day Break!! Carmelina Silence!!!) Why does Doctor Doom Jazz live on a yacht? Why is the soundtrack such a banger, with the most satisfying end credits music I have ever heard in my life? Why does a Phoenix Wright investigation-slash-courtroom sim have fun 3D platforming and exploration in it? I don't even know why cruising around this brutalist vaporwave death cult island is so enjoyable, the collectables are mostly pointless, but there are just so MANY of them (an absolutely bonkers profusion) that no matter where you go, you always feel like you are uncovering something.

That the gameplay works is something of a miracle, but then there's the fact that the story is good. Don't ask me how the developers pulled this off. Writing a good mystery is hard enough, but setting your mystery on a transdimensional island ruled by a cult of immortals dedicated to resurrecting Lovecraftian horrors with names like "Silent Goat" through human sacrifice...presents, uh, another set of challenges, I imagine. In most games, a world this wild would be the mystery, and the whole game would be a boring lore hunt. There is lore in Paradise Killer, but none of it really matters, and once you acclimate to the general weirdness of everything (which is admittedly a pretty steep hurdle at first), the mystery itself is surprisingly easy to follow, although there are lots of layers to it, and even some intriguing ethical dimensions, which are not deeply explored but make the story more thought-provoking than you might expect from a game that initially seems to not be about anything more than its own bizarre dedication to an aesthetic.

I am convinced Paradise Killer must have been made under the auspice of some capricious but temporarily benevolent alien deity, because a game this audacious at every level should not work. I kept waiting for some overreach or misstep to bring the whole thing tumbling down—the quirk that broke the camel's back—but it never came. Playing this game is like watching Icarus gleefully flip off the sun and fly acrobatic circles around it because it turns out actually he's a psychic vampire possessed by a demon trapeze artist or something. It is miraculous and delightful and kind of freaks me out and I'm glad there's only one of them.

Reviewed on Jul 17, 2022


Comments