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Lo-fi horror and the allure of an uncanny BitsyWhy haunted pixels are sometimes better than spooky polygons
Why haunted pixels are sometimes better than spooky polygons
Top 10 New PC Games For October 2021Watch on YouTube
Top 10 New PC Games For October 2021
Let’s begin with an absolute banger. Laura Hunt and Thomas Möhring’s game,In the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shinesis a good place to start us off. As in many Bitsy games, the colour-palette is limited and the text is every-so-slightly disjointed. Here, Hunt and Möhring opted for deep forest greens and greys to sing a “ballad” of a folksy Americana haunting, reminiscent of David Egger’s 2015 spooktacular,The VVitch. The grass moves gently in the wind, in a looping command, as you wander the eponymous pines, completing the story as it has been laid out for you. There is a ghost story at the end, if you listen.
This sort of simplicity is effective in telling a tragic tale. You go forward until you can’t, and you interact with what you can. It’s rare to encounter any audio, and most Bitsies can be played right in your browser. Simplicity and an economy of choice is a running theme, here, but don’t mistake simplicity for easily understood. Most of the Bitsy games I’ve played in my time on God’s green earth resist immediate understanding, instead opting to tell evocative or abstract stories with introspective lines of prose. They don’t mess about.
This Bitsy-typical simplicity serves a double purpose. Many games of the past decade or so - especially those AAA bad boys - have explored the mysteries of “choice.” What does it mean to David Cage when we, as gamers, are faced with the horrors of our own decision making, etc. etc. To this, Bitsy says: No. Bitsies are not here to coddle you through the luxury of choice, they are here to explore a brief slice of a specific story. The most effective Bitsies use this to their advantage, offering brief glimpses into a one-two punch of a story. In my experience, there are no grand sweeping narratives or drawn out plots to fill in the blanks. There is just a glimpse into a few scenes from a story before you have to call it quits. The ambiguity in there can be unnerving.
Simplicity, silence, abstract images - pixelated tentacles that might be seaweed or something a hair more sinister - are one way to experience the height of Bitsy horror. Of course, there are those Bitsies which use sound to great effect. In similar theme to Vitreous, Pol Clarrisou’smoss as texture folding in on itselfexplores the horror of the natural world (Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation in a Bitsy, imo) with a lo-fi hiphop beat to decompose/relax to playing softly in the background.
Clarissou’s Bitsy, too, deviates from the others in this group for his choice to make your sprite (typically an all-too-blank faceless figure) into a hand. This hand (your hand) sinks through murky, mossy depths and around tight corners. This hand (your hand) reaches through the rotting, rotting mess to find - to find - well… It just slipped through your fingers.
But look - it’s not all subdued lo-fi creeping horrors to keep you up late at night. If you’re looking for a horror tale that gives more Bram Stoker’s Dracula and a little less Annihilation, then perhaps you might like theGothicstylings of Fred Bednarski’sThe House of the Living. There aren’t any Brides of Dracula around to torture Keanu Reeves in this gothic manor, but Bednarski manages to put together a map that feels as expansive as I think a Bitsy can get. As you wander the halls and encounter various scenes of misery already taking place, a dreary piano drones on the in the background. It reaches a grim and stunning climax, as any Gothic horror ought.
These four games are certainly four of my favourites, but there’s nothing to say that they are the only Bitsy horror games you ought to play this holiday season. Take a look at the games for this month’sBitsy Jam, make aBitsy yourself, or check out any of the many Bitsy-adjacent tools your little heart desires, likeBipsi! Oh, and of course, happy spookin’!
