I am turning into a DreadXP fanboy these days. The indie writer has shortly established an amazing observe document for weird, experimental horror, and though I’ve solely seen a couple of minutes of its new recreation, Amanda the Adventurer, I am already obsessed. DreadXP’s recreation appears to be made completely by mid-00s Creepypasta writers who graduated to recreation design, and I am right here for it. Should you spent numerous hours of your childhood studying about deserted Disney resorts or looking for the actual Squidward’s Suicide, Amanda the Adventurer is can be proper up your very traumatized alley.
The demo, which you’ll be able to obtain on Steam proper now, is not very lengthy, however it paints an amazing image of what to anticipate. You start in an attic surrounded by interactive objects – a grandfather clock, an oven, a wardrobe with a padlock, an alarm clock – and an eerie feeling that one thing is certainly fallacious right here. Make your solution to an outdated CRT tv within the nook and pop within the tape, and an episode of the fake youngsters’s cartoon Amanda the Adventurer will play.
I do not know what it’s about child’s reveals and outdated video tapes, however they’re so efficient at conveying creepiness. Haunted children reveals are such a ubiquitous trope all through Creepypasta tales that Channel Zero even primarily based its first season on one – Candle Cove. Amanda the Adventurer is a parody of Dora the Explorer, a couple of doubtlessly murderous little lady who likes to play with knives, and her greatest buddy Wooly the Sheep who seems to be self-aware and trapped in this system. The way in which the present makes use of fast cuts, subliminal photographs, and surrealism instantly put me on edge. It is clear the duo dev group at Mangledmaw Video games is aware of this model of analog horror extraordinarily nicely.
Within the episode, Amanda is instructing the viewers bake an apple pie (whereas Wooly begs for assist), and when it ends you will must comply with her course utilizing play meals and a toy oven to make your personal pie. Fixing the puzzle produces one other tape, and I used to be already feeling trepidation earlier than I even popped it into the TV. It looks like that is the overall loop: watch a cursed tape, then clear up a puzzle within the attic to supply one other, much more cursed tape. Proper earlier than the demo ends, the door to the attic bursts open and a few type of unspeakable horror emerges from it. Regardless that I simply spoiled it, you’ve got gotta see it for your self. It is among the best hooks I’ve seen in a horror recreation in a very long time.
DreadXP has solely only in the near past began publishing standalone video games, following the success of its micro-horror sequence Dread X Assortment 1-5. Amanda the Adventurer is its second child’s present send-up after My Pleasant Neighbor, a survival-horror shooter a couple of demonic Saturday morning puppet present. Image Bert and Ernie crawling alongside the ceiling and clamping their felt mouths down in your throat. Is DreadXP planning on turning all of my childhood recollections into nightmares? Is it bizarre if I say I hope so?
