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I met a money-eating axe murderer in Sorry We’re Closed and now so can youDelicious profit
Delicious profit
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Akupara Games
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Akupara Games
Sorry We’re Closed | Horror Game Awards TrailerWatch on YouTube
Sorry We’re Closed | Horror Game Awards Trailer
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Akupara Games
It gets the feel of those old games spot on. What’s more, it’s adept at survival horror’s old habit of understatement (aka. the"doghouse"effect). In one room, a portrait of a terrifying woman looms over you, her white eyes and noseless face staring into your soul. “She is well-dressed,” says the game. In another room, you find the twisted corpses of some otherworldly creatures hanging from the walls, perhaps they are even humans, mutilated beyond recognition. “This display has a strong smell,” it says.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Akupara Games
It also has a practical effect. Thorny obstructions in the grimey world are reduced to spindly stalks you can pass through freely. Bathroom sinks that dispense filthy water in the disgust-dimension will spurt out clean water under the influence of the third eye’s aura, restoring your health. Enemies meanwhile, will be briefly stunned when you click your fingers to activate the eye, and a weak point gets revealed when they step into the aura. Prime shootin'. So long as you remember that anything outside the aura cannot be struck.
There was a period in which old games likeSilent Hill 3andLegacy of Kain: Soul Reaverwere obsessed with the idea of two parallel dimensions existing within the same space. But the technical solutions applied to that idea always meant it felt like you were merely stepping from one space into another. Sorry We’re Closed chases the same dimension-hopping dream as those old designers but applies the modern approach that allows you to see the difference between realms in real time.
This may not seem significant to many players in the post-Portal, post-Titanfall 2world we live in today, but if the creators at Team Silent in 2003 could be shown the third eye effects of Sorry We’re Closed (and, come to think of it, Bloober Team’sThe Medium), their noughties eyeballs probably would have popped out of their sockets and rolled into a fetid drain. As a developer that must be worth some pride, to know that you’ve got a tool in your rusty toolbox that the horror heroes of yesteryear would have loved to use, if only they’d had the chance.
