Rynling R&D

Bloodbark
https://sirtartarus.itch.io/bloodbark

Bloodbark is a free forest horror game that takes about half an hour to play. You play as a lumberjack camping out in a small cabin next to a state park where a new type of tree has been discovered. Although these trees look like normal birches on the outside, their wood is bright red and fetches a high price. The lumberjack’s job is simple – he needs to find the special trees on his employer’s fenced-in property, cut them down, and return the timber to his cabin.

Still, given how much blood is involved… Are you really sure that it’s trees you’re chopping?

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Apartment Complex
https://kinerus.itch.io/apartment-complex

Apartment Complex is a short and free-to-download narrative exploration game set in a mostly abandoned apartment building. The only human occupants of this building are its two landlords. You play as one of the owners, who is middle-aged, jobless, and depressed. In an effort to do something with his life, your character takes it upon himself to check in with the tenants, who are not even remotely human.

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From its eye-catching color palette to the dry tone of its humor, Apartment Complex makes me nostalgic for Welcome to Night Vale in the best possible way. This is a chill and creative game about monster friends and postmodern malaise, and honestly? It’s super relatable.

Blackout
https://freshgames.itch.io/blackout

Blackout is a Halloween-themed point-and-click adventure game that you can play in your browser or download for free.

You play as a teenage witch who falls from the roof of a house while trying to snatch a feather from a crow. She loses her memory during her tumble to a second-floor balcony, and she’s surprised to find that the house is filled with corpses. The electricity seems to have been cut, and it’s too dark to see anything clearly. Your job as the player is to guide the witch through the haunted house and get the lights on so she can figure out what happened.

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Fantastic news! I believe I've found an acceptable outfit for Leon Kennedy. It's a bit classier than full frontal nudity, but it still gets the job done.

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Crow Country is a retro-styled 32-bit survival horror game that takes about four hours to play. What I love about Crow Country is its Story Mode, which removes all enemies and allows you to enjoy the game as an atmospheric adventure in an abandoned amusement park.

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Crow Country isn’t a cozy horror game; there’s no learning or friendship or beautiful autumn leaves or anything like that. That being said, the horror elements are very mild. Despite the atmospheric creepiness of its setting, Crow Country is less of a horror story about zombies and more of a speculative fiction story about how we as individuals process the reality of climate change. I’d actually love to write an essay about this sometime soon.

I wasn’t expecting Crow Country to be so fun to play, or for it to be so creatively designed, or for its story to hit so hard. I have zero patience for stupid "intentionally inaccessible" retro game bullshit at this point in my life, but Crow Country is all killer no filler. Since it’s so short and inexpensive, I’d recommend the game to anyone who’s interested. Even if you’re not into abandoned amusement parks, Crow Country is the return to Final Fantasy VII’s rustpunk city of Midgar that you didn’t know you needed.

NextDoor
https://broelbrak.itch.io/nextdoor

NextDoor is a spooky 2D interactive story game based on one of Junji Itō’s short horror manga. It’s free to download or play in your browser, and it takes about ten to fifteen minutes to read.

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There’s one (very mild) jumpscare in the game, and it’s a cameo from what’s actually my favorite Junji Itō manga, Junji Ito's Cat Diary: Yon & Mu. Yon & Mu is exactly what you would expect from a cute autobio pet manga drawn by Junji Itō, and it’s marvelous. (Here’s a link) to a nice and clean PDF of the translated manga on my personal Dropbox. I’ve got viewer tracking turned off for this file, so please feel free to download a copy if you’re interested.

A Man Outside
https://litrouke.itch.io/a-man-outside

A Man Outside is a short vocabulary quiz game. This twist is that, while you play, a creepy man watches you from outside your bedroom window. You’re tasked with doing three sets of ten vocab cards as spooky ambient sounds play in the background, and you can look out of the window at any time to see if the man has gotten any closer. Between quiz sets, you can text a friend to complain and get help.

I hope it doesn’t spoil this game to say that there are no jumpscares. The vocabulary gets progressively creepier, though, and there are fun distortions in the quiz interface. The vocabulary game itself is quite good, even without the added attraction of the creepy man. Necrophagy is my new favorite word.

Based on what I’ve seen in YouTube playthroughs, your vocab score doesn’t matter, and the choices you make simply add a bit of extra flavor. In order to get the true ending of the game, you have to play it from start to finish three times. Each run only takes about seven or eight minutes, but I don’t think the second or third ending is anything special. The first ending is perfect.

As an aside... As someone with ADHD, I often have to pretend that someone is watching me in order to get past executive dysfunction. I used to “have someone watch me” by going to coffee shops, but that only worked in Tokyo and DC, which are beautiful and walkable and filled with cafés. Philadelphia is not like that. Now, if I’m having trouble sending emails or whatever, I have to conjure an amorphous imaginary person who’s standing in the room like some sort of sleep paralysis demon. So, for me, playing A Man Outside was kind of comforting. Cozy, even. Honestly, this might actually be a decent way to study vocab.

Rental
https://smarto-club.itch.io/rental

With the spooky season upon us, Smarto Club decided to take a break from being wholesome and turned spooky with Rental, an eerie game about the risks of renting beach houses.

Rental is a 32-bit game about a family of cute bunnies who rent a vacation house in the woods. This isn’t a horror game, necessarily, but it’s strange and lowkey creepy. I’m going to say it takes about fifteen minutes to play, although it might take longer for people who are out of practice with PlayStation One style 3D spatial navigation (such as myself).

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There are no jumpscares in this game, and it’s not challenging. Probably the best way to describe Rental is to say that it's a short but spooky treat for connoisseurs of perfectly normal houses that are ever so slightly larger on the inside.

An unannotated playlist, sorted by playtime:

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Inside is a 2.5D puzzle platformer originally released for the Xbox One in 2016. The near-future dystopian sci-fi setting contains strong elements of horror, and players should expect to experience numerous violent deaths. The game takes about four hours to finish, although a longer completionist run that involves accessing hidden areas will be rewarded with a secret ending.

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The actual endgame story developments are nothing even remotely resembling what I expected. Instead, Inside gradually transforms into a meditation on bioethics and subjectivity that’s all the more striking because of the player’s interaction with the story. I’m still not sure how to interpret the ending, but the path to get there involves one of the biggest ludonarrative surprises I’ve ever had the pleasure to encounter. I usually don’t have any patience for concerns over spoilers, but I’d recommend going into this game spoiler-free. The ending of Inside genuinely has to be experienced to be believed.

This isn’t quite a spoiler for Inside, but I was inspired to play the game again after restarting Ender Lilies, in which your player-character gradually becomes more of an eldritch horrorterror with each boss you defeat. I would say I love that particular trope, but it’s less of a “trope” than it is something that I’ve only ever seen in Ender Lilies. Inside comes close, though, and delightfully so.