Novinky
You don’t think psychological horror with 2D platforming can be scary? Try Them
J
John Walker
Playing as a 9-year-old automatically makes any game extra creepy. Tommy, said kid, attends an early-'90s video game club in the evening, playing the arcades and home consoles right up until closing time. One evening, Tommy asks for just one more turn on an arcade machine, and the club’s supervisor relents. But when Tommy’s done, the supervisor’s no longer there; no one is. The building is totally dark, except for the glow of an old television screen showing distorted fuzz.
Now, you might immediately assume that we’re about to get sucked into that screen and into a world of video games Poltergeist-style, but nope, it’s not that simple. In fact, the real point of malevolence, the source of the voice Tommy starts to hear, is a painting on the wall at the end of a corridor. It’s a mostly black canvas, but for two red eyes, turned-in crescents that evoke a sense of evil. Beneath the painting is something like an altar, with two candles. And the painting wants you to play a game.
It's a 2D platform game, and a sweet one too! You play as a cute little ghostie, at first just jumping between platforms to reach a goal. That’s all! It’s all perfectly innocent and nothing to worry about at all. At least, it certainly feels that way.
“The initial idea for Them was shaped in my mind from the experience of a game called Replay,” says Saman Kazemi, Them’s Producer and one of the two original members of Lexip Games. “It later combined with a story that happened to me in my childhood.” (Oh God—I’m really hoping he means that he got locked in an arcade or something, rather than being haunted by an evil painting).
Lexip’s previous projects have been much more straightforward psychological horror pieces. Silence Channel and its sequel are scare-fests where you creep around 3D environments where everything is absolutely terrifying. But Them uses a far more measured approach, and as a result, it's very intriguing. Yes, things begin in a very unsafe, uncomfortable location, this after-hours unhomely space, viewed from the low-down perspective of a small kid. And yes, there’s a creepy voice telling you that everything will be OK if you just do as it says. But then the result of this is playing short bursts of a fun little platformer. This jarring contrast makes for such a novel experience.
“Most of our group's games are horror and psychological,” Kazemi continues, “and we have somewhat become accustomed to this style. That's why I created Them in the same genre. However, the fear element in Them is somewhat more balanced than in our previous games.”
Lexip is a growing indie team, originally started by two Iranian developers, now spread around the world, with a base in Sweden. Originally developing for mobile, the group moved on to PC games, with members in Iran, Sweden, and Germany all collaborating on their projects. However, Them was mostly a solo piece by Kazemi. “I received help from colleagues for parts like the sound and the comic at the beginning of the game,” the developer explains. It seems to be a very personal piece.
Something very interesting about Them is that for a game that can be finished in an hour, and doesn't last more than two, it doesn’t feel small. I think this is primarily because of the combination of genres, the sense of moving between contrasting ideas, building something that feels larger than it is long. In each platforming section, played in the same level each time, you’re seeking items for the force in the painting, which you then somehow retrieve from the game and present to the altar. After doing so, you’re given a new in-game ability, like a double-jump, or the ability to bounce up walls. So when you return to the game, to that same level, you’re now able to access new areas, get past previous obstacles. In a sense, it rationalizes the Metroidvania format. And given this, I wondered if there was a desire to develop that into a larger game.
“The goal from the start was to create a short game,” says Kazemi, “but I really would love to make a longer game as well. Maybe that will happen in the future.”
Short games can often be a hard sell, especially those that can be completed before store refund periods have expired. It’s a constant lament for those who wish to create vignette experiences, and I wondered how Lexip approached this challenge. Kazemi says that he wanted to ensure the length was communicated from the beginning of the project, but the next step is the plan to release DLC for the game. While the story is self-contained, it does have multiple endings, so there’s obviously room to go back in and add more platforming sections, develop its core ideas further, and it’ll be interesting to see how this is done. Perhaps we could even see a whole new genre put in—I’d love to get spooked by a match-3 minigame, or see the frightening side of Space Invaders.
But there are plenty of scares in Them as it is. Honestly, there’s one section where the same jump-scare got me just as well two times in a row. The third time I tried it—I was rubbish at this bit and kept messing it up—I fully braced myself, determined not to yelp, and it didn’t bloody happen at all. Like it knew.
Them is available on Epic Games Store.