The Other Kind of Horror

A good horror story always gets under your skin. But each horror story is unique  in its internal machinations, the way it triggers specific fears and  plays around with different concepts. Horror stories, and more specifically horror games are the closest thing we have  to a controlled nightmare. And good horror fiction always stays with you. Weeks, months, years may pass since  you saw the credits or closed the book, and then one day something reminds you of it and transports you back into thi

s nightmare. I played Frictional Games’ masterpiece SOMA almost eight years ago and I haven’t brought  myself to re-experience it since, but there are times when I see a video  discussing it in my youtube recommendations, hear a snippet of its impeccable soundtrack or a memory of the game flashes in my mind’s eye. And my heart sinks. I feel… I feel like… All good horror stories  have their own unique vibes, constructed from an intricate web of  visual imagery, sound design and themes. Sometimes

it can manifest in the smallest things like how you can hear the game’s title  and instantly know how it sounds. Silent hill, for example, to me sounds like There’s this other game. Well, a collection of games, called Unsorted  Horror, made by a game designer Mike Klubnika, who had a little breakthrough recently  with another title Buckshot Roulette. While some authors, like, for example Kitty Horrorshow, may explore horror that is disturbing and raw, but undeniably organic, the worlds of Mike K

lubnika fight  any semblance of organic life. There are monsters in some of the games, yes, but even they are overshadowed by the  indifferent cold metal and concrete. These are the worlds that have  very little place for humanity. They sound like And And Unsorted Horror is five small games  designed to be played in one session. But don’t let the short runtime fool you. These games latch on to you, bury  themselves deep into your mind. There’s a lot to think about. The Other Side doesn’t seem  t

o be so horrory at first, outside of a short snippet of exposition  that tells the story of a walled-off city or a bunker where people are not allowed to go outside and claustrophobic dimly lit  environment, reminiscent of another great indie horror - Iron Lung, the game is almost… relaxing. Your character saw a glimpse of the outside world and decided to break free by drilling a hole in the wall. So, better get to it. The game doesn’t explain much  outside of the most basic mechanics, you are d

ropped into a small  space with a drill, a computer and an arrangement of various tools. What are they for, how to use them? That’s for you to figure out. You put the drill in the casing, press the button on a computer. Diagnostics say everything’s fine. You press the button again and the drill  slowly carves your path towards freedom. Then it suddenly stops. The computer says that the drill pin is broken. Okay, there are the pins. These are screwdrivers. Wait, what’s this for? The little key, o

r whatever  it is slides into the hole, allowing you to place a fresh  pin and continue onwards. Very quickly, despite the tense atmosphere you settle into a very comfortable, almost “cozy” routine, reminiscent of titles that the  game critic Yahtzee Croshaw called “post-dad games” like Viscera Cleanup Detail  or Hardspace: Shipbreaker. Run the diagnostics, start  drilling, charge the battery, change the coolant and oil, replace broken pins. Rinse and repeat. But once the drill completes its fir

st circle, the mood drastically changes. The computer informs you that starting the second  stage will alert the guards, by that time you’ve already gotten  comfortable with the drill and it's not like you can just pack it up and go back. We are here to break free. So, you  press the button the light changes Security arrives in 5 minutes If the first act of The Other  Side is surprisingly relaxing, act two I can only describe  as an anxiety simulator. Your character moves very slowly, but you  d

idn’t pay much attention to it before, but now I mean JESUS CHRIST DO YOU WANT TO GET OUT OF HERE A lot of things start to break at once, as you frantically run around the room. Security arrives in 4 minutes. As the tension rises you start getting sloppy, forgetting to close all the  lids, missing the buttons. Cursing out loud all the way through. Security arrives in 1 minute. As the clock counts down to zero you start anxiously looking into the door frame, waiting for guards or some  horribly d

eformed monster (I mean, no one said that they would be humans), but you are almost there. Just a little push, a couple of inches of steel. And then the screen cuts to black. You see the lush green grass of the outside world, bathed in natural sunlight. You take a step outside, breathing in the fresh air that wasn’t sent through the ventilation systems. You cough slightly, the air is much crisper here than the one you breathed for your entire life. You leave the giant metal monstrosity behind, y

ou’ve won. The tension pulled by the second act was so strong that I continued to look over my shoulder, waiting for the guards to run after me or someone just putting a bullet in my head. But I won’t have it so easy, the subversion of The Other  Side is much more cruel. You walk past the tree towards the hills until suddenly you are met with an invisible wall. In any other game I would probably  see this as a technical limitation or a glitch, something immersion breaking. But in this case it fe

lt authentic, like I wasn’t denied the path  further by the game’s engine, rather something inside of  me told me to turn around. And as I did so I saw a small note,  put on the other side of the tree. It says: This place isn’t what it l… The rest is indistinguishable. I look back to the horizon  once again and I see it. The horrible giant creature with  many legs, rushing towards me. I start running back to the rusted metal prison I triumphantly broke out of just moments ago. I would never make

it in time. This is how the game ends. Out of all the games in the collection  Control Room Alpha is the one that deserves a separate content  warning before we proceed. So, if you have arachnophobia, you may suspect you have arachnophobia or you just don’t want to brighten your  day with these eight legged critters, skip to this timecode or use  chapters in the description. Deal? Okay, if you’re still here, you’ve been warned. Control Room Alpha really stands  out from the whole collection as

an undeniably horror-comedy game. From the fully-voiced supervisor  with a thick Russian accent who calls you comrade ...Congratulations on your new position in the E.K.R.E. foundation... and warns you to be careful with the equipment because it costs a whopping  1 000 000 vietnamese dong which is like 40 bucks at the time of recording, to the sign that reads “Cauton. Big Ass Spiders. Exit at your own risk”. All of this would’ve been so funny. If not for the fact that you have  to work in the sa

me room as them. But hey. It’s not like you need to go in there. Yeah, the spiders might be creepy, but your job is to just push some buttons, plus your little control room is protected  with a good piece of strong glass. Right? So, better get to work, eh? The supervisor instructs you to open the lid, so you push the big red button  on the control panel and… Hell no, nah, nuh-huh, I’m outta here… Of course, there’s no way out for you. Somebody has to do the job. Your front glass gets damaged a b

it, which is concerning, but the more concerning thing is  that while extracting the samples, or whatever these things are, the manipulator malfunctions and  drops one of them on the ground. The supervisor, with his regularly cheerful tone, asks you to go outside and pick it up, adding that “most of the creatures that came out are harmless”. Which is  a peculiar choice of words. This section is predictably unnerving, the game did a great job at  laying down the foundation for it and it has a jum

pscare, not gonna lie, that totally got me. But hey, you’re back, you’re safe, you finished the job. The relief, however, is cut short. A strange sphere floats  out of the spider hole and… Carbon Steel is a game about forbidden science. The story description on Itch.io reads: “Looking to earn some quick cash, you sign up to work for a private research organization - three  days of work for a year's worth of money. There's a reason this  laboratory was only used once. It's re-opening would go  ag

ainst all moral principles.” You don’t know exactly what kind  of research is being done here, or how it will be used. These things are not for you to know. Your job is simple. Bring up creatures from  extreme depths of the Earth, cross reference its type and weight  with the handy tables provided for you, mix the ingredients in the right proportions, extract the sample, give it to the scientist and rest in this totally normal and absolutely comfortable room. The first day was rather uneventful,

outside of one nightly guest  we will talk about later. I was more concerned about learning what goes  where and how to operate all the right levers. The only disturbing thing was the  amount of rust on every surface. Like the whole world is slowly  corroding into nonexistence. Which is on par with the rest of the collection. On day 2 you have some more  steps added to your list. Now you have to determine the  type of creature yourself, using this handy scanner. But something’s not working. You

take out the scanner and find this. Hmm, another floppy drive. You insert it into the computer to see  the message from one of the engineers. They warn you that you are in trouble, the researchers have certain “plans” for you. This isn’t hard to believe the  emails that you get each day praise your work and say  that you have a big future if the quality of your work continues. And while before you may have interpreted this “big future” as some kind of promotion or just a hefty bonus at the end

of your contract, now the feeling that you may not like  what the researchers have in store for you settles down. The engineer says that to get out, tomorrow you’ll need to use  a canister marked with an X. The rest of the day is rather normal. Over the course of two days, from bits and pieces of information you get the sense that the creatures  you take samples from are dangerous, but the danger and the sheer cosmic horror of it is abstracted through the  science lingo and data points. You aren

’t dealing with some kind of  monster with dozens of eyes and limbs, you’re dealing with an Alpha class  sample that weighs 148 pounds. Well, maybe it’s for the best. Maybe you don’t really want  to see what lies deep down. But you do see it. After day 1 you wake up in  the middle of the night. The door is open, You walk out of your cell (let’s not pretend it’s more than that). And you see this deformed… meat thing, it’s multiple eyes all looking at you. Before you can do anything or even  compr

ehend what stands before you. Did you actually see that or was it some kind of hallucinatory nightmare? Best not to dwell on it too  long, still got a job to do. Day 3 follows the same mechanical  progression as The Other Side. Now the creature is aggressive, and is actively damaging the  vessel it is contained within, so you have to fix it from time to time. Just another thing to look out for, but it gives the game a nice  sense of tension and challenge. Now, there’s no time to waste. I did wha

t the engineer instructed me to do. I used the marked canister. As soon as I did that… I get on the tram and leave. No parting words or congratulations  on the job well done. I hope, at least they’ll pay me what I’m owed. You get the congratulations, however, if you ignore the warning from the engineer. The door out remains locked, you go to bed. Next morning you receive  an email titled “Goodbye”. It reads: “We just finished reviewing the final data pull. Indeed, your work has proven to us that

the risk is justified by the benefits. Excellent work. However, compared to ourselves, the lifeforms we have previously  studied are significantly less advanced. We believe that a human body would yield far more interesting results -  you will have the honor of being the first pressure treated human. Please remain seated” Wait, no, that can’t be right… You already know what is going to happen. I’m just gonna let it play out. There are no jumpscares or  spiders in Concrete Tremor. But it’s the o

nly game from the  collection that actually made me sick. The game takes you by the throat with  its jagged atmosphere from the word go, when you character says: I am starving. In a synthesised voice that will be familiar  to any fan of another indie horror Faith. I think anyone who played it can’t read the word Without this voice, created by an old 1980’s  computer program, popping up in their head. And it’s not just the sound,  even the choice of words communicates this cruelty and hopelessnes

s. Your character isn’t hungry,  or wouldn’t mind taking a bite, they are starving. In the “cafeteria” you overhear the conversation between the other two tenants. They discuss that the only thing they  can see from the window is a wall, and they have no idea where they are, but also, someone apparently opened the  door to the roof. Worth checking out. The view from the roof brings more  questions than answers, however. Then the game cuts to the scene in the helicopter. The people there request

permission to open fire (presumably, at you) and say that it would be  “unfair, if they jump ship”. We cut to another scene and here the  purpose of the whole thing is revealed. This is some kind of twisted game of battleships, only instead of ships, you play with… buildings. The ominous voice on the  other side explains the rules and adds that five consecutive  misses earn an opponent a phone call. The twisted cruelty of that particular  rule will be revealed a bit later. If you’re in any way t

uned into what’s going on and view it as not just some silly little game. It’s really difficult to do  what the game asks you to do. You know that there are people in these buildings. People that have no idea what  is happening around them. Sure enough, you quickly find out just how little they know about what awaits them. Complete miss. I am connecting you to one of the opponents tennants. My character says that there’s been a mistake and this person will be evacuated, they  just need to tell w

hat building they’re in. - Oh my God, really? - Yes. Even through the distorted voice-synthesising technology you can hear panic  and desperation in their voice. And then it hit me. The person on the other side  tried to express their gratitude, but who cares, we got what we needed. As soon as the realisation  seeped in I said out loud: “No way”. In my recording of the game there are like  two whole minutes of me sitting motionless, because I just could not bring  myself to do what the game want

ed. It was such a powerful moment of subversion,  by far, the strongest in the whole collection. But then I gave in, there was no other way to finish the game. So I, slowly at first, delaying the moment when I fully commit to this cruel game,  entered the number on the keypad. “C9” Then “C8”, “C7”... Entering the following numbers was much easier, there was no use of pretending anymore. Predictably, I hit the target. The building on the other side collapsed, forever burying the caller from C9

, crushing them and all the other  unfortunate tenants under the weight of concrete, steel and indifference. For what it’s worth, the unwilling  sacrifice of the C9 tenant was pointless. My opponent managed to beat me first. Although, I’m sure the victory for them  wasn’t as sweet as they might have hoped. It doesn’t matter if you’ve lost or won. It all ends the same way. Your character takes out the revolver and... There’s no winner in this game. Only cruelty and violence. Tartarus Engine is th

e final  game in the collection, and out of all of them is the game with the biggest amount of  “narrative” and “lore” behind it. It is also kind of a heist game. As the opening slide tells us, 2009 was the year when the  Tartarus Engine was created. An immensely powerful computer that can  simulate realities of eternal torment as a form of punishment. A machine, able to create life-like simulations is definitely an enticing thing, and so our protagonists, four technicians,  create a plan to use

the system for their own gains, presumably to  create their own virtual paradises. “There is no such thing as absolute security.” The final line of the introduction tells us. This might become important later. Out of all the games in the  collection Tartarus Engine the most has the vibe of an “interactive short story”. Not in a sense that it is a text-based  choose-your-own-adventure game, but in a sense that any  gameplay mechanics are secondary to the story being told. There’s no real gamepla

y loop to speak off, unlike in The Other Side or Carbon Steel. You’re here to do one specific heist, not a series of heists that get  progressively more complicated. And the extremely short time limit  ramps up the tension quite nicely. Tartarus Engine is also rather funny, but unlike Control Room Alpha jokes  come not from the set-up of the game, but from the characters, who really feel like they bit  more than they could chew. Although, on a mission like this you really would’ve felt more comf

ortable with  people who knew exactly what they were doing. I mean, come on, guys, we’re  on a little time-crunch here. But, it’s all good, you manage to sneak in and you have some time before  midnight, to do all you need to do. You get into the metallic  bowels of the Tartarus Engine and it is just gargantuan. This section brought back memories of exploring the Citadel in Half-Life 2 or  the megastructure of NaissanceE, this thing can be the size of  the whole city for all I know. But, no time

to look around. After the other games in the collection the mechanical puzzle and the time  limit were less anxiety-inducing and made me feel almost powerful. Like a cool thief who steals their target and  disappears right before they might get caught. Which is exactly what happened in my playthrough. I put this… I don’t know, some sort of server rack and when the clock struck midnight  I was already on my way back. Time to get to work and build  our own virtual paradises. You catch up with you

r co-conspirators and you get a little taste of what life is like for  those trapped in the Tartarus Engine. What does the eternal simulated torture look like? Well, what you see isn’t  particularly gruesome or shocking. It’s potatoes. Peeling potatoes. Forever and  ever. Until the end of times. Luckily, this was just for calibration  and your friend gets you out soon enough. Now, it’s time to be the  demiurge of your personal heaven. And the time for the game’s twist. Which,  I must say, is inc

redibly well timed. There may be no such thing as absolute security. But recklessness is definitely a strong one. Don’t worry, you’ll have  plenty of time to ruminate on that thought as the Tartarus Engine ping-pongs your consciousness from  one layer of simulation to another. For how long? Well… Let’s just say, you have no other place to be. Okay, that was intense. And definitely captivating. So, how’s everyone doing? Good? Let’s take a deep breath. Inhale And exhale. Now, here’s a question. Wh

at does it all mean? It’s easy to brush off Unsorted Horror as just a silly collection of little experiments. Quick horror subversions that only meant to say: “Gotcha, you sure did not  expect that to happen, huh?” But we are not taking the easy route. Each game in the collection is short, yes, usually no longer than 15 minutes, but exploration of serious themes is not an exclusive domain of books that  can deal +10% blunt force damage if accidentally dropped on  an unfortunate passer-by. Someti

mes you can find a lot in small things. Sometimes you wish you really didn’t. Because to me Unsorted Horror  is definitely saying something. Through its visual design, the choice of settings and mechanical limitations. It says… Tetsuo: The Iron Man is a 1989  science-fiction body-horror film, written and directed by Shinya Tsukamoto. It is not a comfortable watch. There’s only a handful of  spoken lines of dialogue, the film loves to jump  between tense drawn out scenes and rapid violent montage

s and doesn’t shy away from  depicting violence of any kind, from gross and painful body  horror to sexual violence. Most of the scenes from the film won’t look out  of place in a 90’s Nine Inch Nails music video, the observation which is supported by the  fact that Tsukamoto was actually supposed to direct for Nine Inch Nails. The job fell through, however Tsukamoto and Reznor managed to collaborate on an MTV Japan commercial and a soundtrack for Tetsuo: The Bullet Man. Both are, expectedly, as

  industrial as you can possibly get. With the relatively short runtime of 67 minutes there’s a meagre amount of  footage I can actually use without Youtube Police breaking down my door and sentencing me to five years of  making Mr. Beast reaction videos, so we have to do with some  static shots from time to time. While it may be tempting to write Tetsuo off as just some kind of grindhouse exploitation flick that’s all shock and no substance. I feel like it would be wrong. The film has a story a

nd a message. However Tetsuo is absolutely  indifferent to any semblance of cohesion or story structure. The scenes of the past, the present and even shots from Tsukamoto’s previous work  “The Adventure of Denchu-Kozo” are all mashed together at a break-neck pace complemented with a heavy use of hyperlapses that give the whole rhythm  an extremely jagged feeling. In the retrospective written for Unwinnable  Orrin Grey describes the film as: “All technology is grotesquely organic; everything orga

nic is distressingly  prone to decomposition; and it’s all happening at  ten thousand miles per hour.” Through its combination of rhythm, visuals and industrial soundscapes interspersed with some incredibly cheesy smooth jazz, Tetsuo feels like an intense fever nightmare, or, if you want to be more charitable,  you can call it a “tonal piece”. Less narrative, more vibes. Tetsuo tells the story of an  unnamed japanese salaryman and another character,  played by Tsukamoto himself, who’s usually re

ferred to as a Metal Fetishist. Following a violent encounter with a strange woman with a metal arm the salaryman slowly starts  turning into a human/metal hybrid. These transformations are always violent and excruciatingly painful. Throughout the whole film we see glimpses of, what later revealed to be flashbacks, of a hit-and-run accident that  connects the three main characters: The salaryman and his  girlfriend and the Fetishist, who was the victim of said accident. During one of the interlu

des, shown from his perspective, we see the doctor who explains that a piece of metal somehow  got stuck in his brain. Potentially, the source of  these violent transformations. Eventually the Metal Fetishist finds the  salaryman and attempts to assimilate him, to create an entirely new form of life. “Don’t You Understand?” He says, during their final confrontation. “Your Future is Metal!” The film ends with the two characters  remade in a giant metal creature, as the camera shows the words “New

World”, written on a grid fence. As the creature that looks like a  bizarre hybrid of a tank and a statue takes to the streets, the Fetishist says: “We can mutate the whole world into metal. We can rust the world into  the dust of the universe. Our love can destroy this whole f*cking world” Okay, so what does this have  to do with Unsorted Horror? I think a whole lot. Tetsuo the Iron Man behind  the gore and body-horror is, at least in my opinion, an  exploration of anxieties of the age when th

e line  between the man and the machine becomes increasingly blurred  to the point of non-existence. A topic that weirdly connects  it to another Japanese classic that came out eight years later  - Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue, which substitutes the world of metal  with the world of the early internet. The film which I can recommend  with a lot more confidence. Both works were created at the  cusp of the modern Information Age, the age we live in today, the age in which the Unsorted Horror was cre

ated and the age which is reflected in these games. While there isn’t a game in the collection  in which you slowly turn into metal, in all of them the characters  are denied their own humanity, one way or another. From tenants and the players of Concrete Tremor, only existing to facilitate the sick  game created for the unknown reasons, to being used as a test subject, or even their consciousness broken down  into code and fed into the Tartarus Engine. It is no coincidence that a lot of these g

ames revolve around methodically  operating some kind of machinery. That comfortable routine that I  talked about has the other side (pun totally intended), you’re basically a part of the mechanism. But I mean. I know that I’m not a machine. I am a human being. Unlike my electric kettle I can have thoughts and feelings and play video games, but… When looking at Unsorted  Horror from this perspective it’s hard not to think about the  situation many people find themselves in. From the industrial s

ector, to Amazon warehouse employees,  to gig economy workers, to anyone really. The situation that Ian Danskin of  Innuendo Studios poignantly described as: And it goes beyond modern labour, really. Even in our down time, with our personal interests and traits being picked apart,  digested and categorised for the sake of algorithms. You are only valuable insofar as you are useful. No one needs a kettle with  opinions so, go boil some water, keep up the good work and maybe you too will get the h

onour of being the  first pressure treated human. Here’s a little personal story. Sometimes, usually when  things aren’t going too well, I find myself stuck in an all too familiar  loop of switching between the same apps, like a little robot going in circles,  who got a bug in their software. And this isn’t doing any good for me as a  human, but for the companies that own said apps, I’m sure it benefits greatly  to turn me into a little content-consumption machine. And believe me, the irony of 

saying this in a youtube video does not escape me. That’s the paradox we will talk  about in a different essay. Unsorted Horror wasn’t scary  for me because of monsters, or “big ass spiders” or even grey soviet apartment buildings that I’ve seen more than enough in my lifetime. It was the other kind of horror. Being denied my own humanity, being seen as less than, feeling like… [A sound of machinery] A good horror story always gets under your skin.