Score: 8.5
Ages: 12+
2016
Oxenfree feels very nostalgic, like jumping into an old school supernatural thriller movie, the ones with a bunch of teenagers. The protagonist is going on an island trip with some friends and her new stepbrother. Everyone has their own issues, which start to culminate as the island begins revealing its eerie mystery.
Score: 7.5
2016-2017
Elsewhere High is a kinetic mystery novel about a special school and the bunch of kids going there. The first chapter is free, so all friends of visual novels should give it a go. Third chapter is coming out this summer. Continue reading
Score: 8.0
2015
Tormentum: Dark Sorrow is a puzzle heavy adventure with very traditional gameplay and incredibly beautiful art style. Every screen is a piece of art. The journey through this dark fantasy is definitely worth playing. Continue reading
Score: 9.0
(17+)
2014
Penny Dreadful already finished its second season last summer but I’ve only seen the first. I’m terribly behind in most of the TV series but I’ll try to put a word or two for some of the better shows anyway. This show is wonderfully bleak and gritty compared to the many beautiful, almost fairy tale like stories out there. There’s sex and blood and death. Continue reading
Once again there are several promising games looking to be funded through Kickstarter. I checked some of them out and will give a few short recommendations here. These titles are united by a dark horror themes and are meant for mature players. They are being done by people that aren’t native English speakers so the language might not be perfect in all places, but I consider the artistic vision and atmosphere more important anyway. Continue reading
The last year. Sorry about being lazier the further I got with the decade. But aren’t we going out with a bang? So much good stuff that I just want to weep. Fight Club and The Matrix are in the IMDb top20. Sixth Sense, The Green Mile and American Beauty a bit further down. Even skipping all these, I have a lot of issues limiting things down to 5. And I shouldn’t skip them really, they’re all great psychological movies, albeit from very different angles. Continue reading
Score: 6.5
(13+)
2011
F.A.C.E.S. is one of those hidden object games, where you get a screen cluttered with all kinds of weird stuff and a list of items to find. It’s not really my favourite gameplay mechanic but I don’t hate it either, especially if it’s used with a twist or rarely among variety of puzzles. Unfortunately in F.A.C.E.S. it is overused, which forces me to give it a less than good score, even though the atmosphere of the game made it a worthwhile play. Continue reading
Score: 10
(18+)
2012
I used to be a much bigger horror enthusiast when I was younger. In the last decade or so I had turned into a scaredy-cat really. The pop culture representing horror mostly with unnecessary gore and jump scares and the horrible overuse of zombies just made me less drawn to the genre. But recently I’ve found horror again with the help of some surreal and aesthetically interesting experiences, focusing on the psychological dread rather than running away from axe-murderers. And I find things like the TV show Hannibal and this indie game something very artistic and beautiful even in their more grotesque parts. Continue reading
This is the year of the sci-fi and bizarre. I’m just going to forget my categories since I can’t place these movies in them. All these films are highly popular cult movies with fantastical elements. And there are even plenty of great sci-fi movies that got left over from my list, including Contact, Men In Black and Starship Troopers. Continue reading
There are a lot of great or at least good freeware games out there. I try a few now and then. Putting together some of the latest titles I downloaded I noticed they’re mostly themed around horror. Then I found out that three out of the five or so games I was going to try out centered with another common theme: inhuman faces. So here we have Mr. Pig and a big bunch of sexy masks. Continue reading
Lux Atarnia 