Today is the 20th of January 2022. I finished this game on the 26th of November last year. Every day since then I have woke up thinking about this game.

When characters in a movie are playing a game on the TV with a PS2 controller, this is the game on the TV. Cruelty Squad was made by a man who has heard of the concept of a game but doesn't have the facilities to actually play one. This game is the opposite of a novelist living in a cave for 20 years to write his magnum opus. This is a man who has plugged his brain into the mainframe. It isn't that Cruelty Squad is post-post-post-modernist - Cruelty Squad is post-criticism, it is caveman art drawn with faeces, it is a sociological phenomenon.

A QWERTY keyboard will wash up on a beach 1000 years from now and anthropologists will use it as proof that we had 100 fingers. They will play Cruelty Squad and say we were blind and deaf.

The levels in Cruelty Squad are impossibilities. Ever since Adventure was released in 1980 we have been hurtling down a predetermined path laid out by God and level designers, alternating between vast open spaces and linear corridors forever, like a fractal. With every game released, the remaining pool of possible games that are left to be created shrinks, not just because one more was just made, but also that the existence of art will influence the existence of other art. There isn't an anti-Mario-64. No one would make an anti-Mario-64. Their brain is permanently cursed with the knowledge that Mario 64 exists and all future decisions will be affected by that.

That isn't to say anything about the quality of Mario 64. The trajectory of video games has been altered by lesser and worse games, but alas. Cruelty Squad is the product of a person with no brain to curse, a spotless mind. Every single level I played surprised me with its ingenuity. I often found myself laughing out loud, not at the non-sequitur or clever jokes, but at how ridiculous and funny the level design is.

I might be the only person around that feels this way but I highly prefer the gamecube release of this game to the HD rereleases because the camera angles are actually static on gamecube, but for the HD rereleased, they zoomed in on the backgrounds and had the camera pan across them as the player moves through them as an approach to widescreen conversion.

Giving the player visual priority in the movement of the frame makes the visual dynamics completely different and changes the whole atmosphere of the game.

When the camera is not panning to match the players movement, the player feels the world and reality around them is not built for them, is outside them, and that they are fighting against a system and world that is hostile to them. When it tracks and pans to their whim, they have more implicit visual agency which severely detracts from that sense of dreamlike isolation, stillness, alienation, and horror.

Also the game just looks fucking amazing on gamecube, easily the best looking game of that generation. I wish there were more prerendered games like this, not even in the horror genre but just more static, cinematic walking-through-frames kinds of games.

Selected lyrics from the parody song I just wrote:

Keep the paranoid and justified
My God
They try to hide
Now Jesus is a dirty word
Who took God out of the news?
Took the people out of God
Who took God out of the schools?
Took the children from God
Rip children from the womb
Before they ever had a chance
To see they're alive
Stare into their unborn eyes

Who gives a shit about politics
I'd like to share a thing or two about heretics
You see, evil infiltrated our government
And it wears a masquerade of sentiment
I forgot to tell you that you can't pray at school
I hope that you know that you can pray after school
And please don't mention Christ on the job
Wonder why I'm feeling like I have been robbed

Just kidding, they're from Disunion Reconstructed, a song by Tripwire President John Gibson's Christian nu-metal band Dirge included on the Killing Floor 2 soundtrack!

Rod Serling might not be a name you recognize, but you probably know his voice. He was the creator of the original Twilight Zone series and the narrator of its famous intro, ushering viewers into a world between light and shadow, science and superstition. His unique cadence was a perfect way to open the show, since it’s clear and understandable, but also a little… off. It’s hard to describe, it’s like he speaks in a slightly different time signature to the rest of us, friendly but faintly suspicious. When each episode begins, he often appears on screen in a tidy black suit and introduces the characters, who are obliviously going about their lives as the man in black hints at the intersection of the supernatural that’s about to occur. While he's not jarringly out of place, he doesn’t quite belong either, which is a great way of conveying the feel of many of the show's conflicts. They’re the sort of things that might occur in a dream, not limited by mundane logic, but are still real enough to hold truth. Sometimes they’re scary, sometimes they’re tragic, but through them all is a message that speaks to the feelings we all share.

That’s what makes The Twilight Zone so special to me. It’s not just cheap twists and pulp, there are real messages, ideas, and emotions here, just with a lair of the supernatural and sci-fi that bring life to the fiction. It’s a quality that Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors shares as a visual novel, presenting a mystery that seems steeped in convoluted and cheap sci-fi, but at the center of it is a story with a message and heart. It uses those elements as tools to help you connect with the characters, who are often just as confused as you are, and experiencing the same dreamlike horror you might be feeling as you read. It captures everything I love about that sixty-year-old show with its mysterious atmosphere, relatably flawed characters, and the sort of tragic story that gives you a lot to think about.

However, I also have to confess that it encapsulates some of what people don’t like about The Twilight Zone too. The experience of atmosphere is highly subjective, stories will never resonate with everyone, and a visual novel requires a much greater time commitment, lasting nine hours instead of twenty-five minutes. Also just like the show, it’s a bit dated. Other works have been inspired from it and played off the same ideas, and it may come off as feeling tired or obvious to genre fans who started with something else. It’s a game that, unlike most when I try to recommend them, comes down almost entirely to personal taste. I can’t highlight a certain mechanic or describe how it uses the fundamentals of good game design, it’s just a story I love and want people to give an honest chance.

Bonus Content:
Since I talked about the show so much, and love it so dearly, here are a few episodes I might recommend for people interested in the show. If you end up watching/enjoying it, you absolutely earn a place in my treehouse club for cool dudes:

Where is Everybody? (season 1, episode 1)
As a Star Trek fan, terrible first episodes are something I've come to expect, but this one does a great job at establishing the atmosphere of the series. It's quiet and tense, with shots that remind you of movies like "I Am Legend", even with comparatively primitive filmmaking tools. You could use this episode as an example for how far you can take a story without computers or a high budget, using creative methods to tell a gripping story of total isolation.

What You Need (season 1, episode 12)
While The Twilight Zone is primarily known for its horror, this episode shows the other side of the series with a cautionary tale. This is a natural fit for a show where the variables of reality are unreliable, putting people into unrealistic scenarios which test their character in a way that still feels realistic. When watching this episode in particular, it's natural to wonder how you would react if you were put in the shoes of the main character, and it's this thought-provoking nature that makes the show more than the sum of its parts.

The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street (season 1, episode 22)
I said that "Where Is Everybody?" is a good taste of what The Twilight Zone is all about, and if that's true, this episode is the main course. It's considered one of the best in the series for good reason, mixing the horrific, moralistic, cautionary, and even political elements together to deliver a story that will still resonate with modern viewers. If I had only one episode to convince someone that this series is still relevant, it would be this one.

The Shelter (season 3, episode 3)
If you're a fan of that realistic and morally-focused side of the show, this also episode is for you. With how plainly the story is told, it feels like a direct message from Serling about how insane society can be. It's a straightforward story with an obvious message, but that realness makes it one of the most relatable episodes in the entire series. You can easily see the events of this episode happening in real life, and that's what makes it uniquely terrifying.

The Midnight Sun (season 3, episode 10)
This is my favorite episode of the series, even if it's not popularly considered one of the best. The horror in this episode is unlike anything else in the show, with a threat that isn't hidden in the shadows or behind the supernatural. Other episodes may give you the creeps, but this one is set up to give an oppressing sense of dread. If you have anxiety problems and need to explain to someone what it's like, make them watch this episode. It's about as close to the real thing as you can get.