I’ve got a review of a minicomic zine appearing in Issue 4 of The Comics Courier, which is crowdfunding until July 1 on Kickstarter (here)!
I wrote about My New Hobby Craves Violence, a botanical horror story that’s also about becoming trapped in an addiction to receiving positive feedback online. Kristyna Baczynski is famous for her wholesome nature illustrations, so seeing her take on botanical horror mixed with toxic positivity is a lot of fun.
Here’s an excerpt from my review:
Pip’s situation is all too relatable as she ignores the warning signs of an unhealthy obsession while devoting her attention to the uncanny plant that serves as a consistent source of new content. Still, the analogy of “unhealthy growth” doesn’t work if the botanical horror doesn’t operate on a visceral level, and Baczynski’s horrible little houseplant is amazingly creepy. Its thickly veined leaves twist and squirm across the pages as the comic panels become increasingly crowded and claustrophobic. Text message bubbles pop up between scenes of Pip’s collapsing life, competing for the reader’s attention and engendering a palpable sense of urgency as Pip grabs a pair of pruning shears and struggles to disentangle herself from the clutching vines.
The Kickstarter project has already met its funding goal, so the issue should be out soon. The Comics Courier is a fantastic publication – I really enjoyed the first three issues – and I’m very happy to see it loved and supported.
Birds Watching(on Steam here) is a one-hour walking sim about a man who talks to birds while an apocalyptic disaster unfolds around him.
As an unending fire engulfs the world, a lone man takes refuge at the top of a mountain. For all he knows, he’s the only human left alive on earth, so he makes the best of a bad situation and does his best to survive in the company of the birds who have fled to the last unburned peak.
The man’s solitude is alleviated by an owl who not only befriends him but begins speaking with him. Birds can speak and understand human languages, the owl explains, and the man only needs to share a special password to initiate conversations. If he can observe and talk with the other birds on the mountain, something good will surely come of it.
The man realizes that he’ll need more concrete support when he receives a transmission on his portable radio. It turns out that other humans have survived the fire, violent and mutated though they may be. Their warlord has learned of the sanctuary on the mountain, and he’s on his way. The man can prepare to welcome him by surrendering his house and food, or he can expect to be swiftly killed.
The birds might indeed be able to help repel the warlord’s invasion, but they hate you. And they aren’t shy about telling you this. Though it’s not a challenge to discover new birds and observe them through your binoculars, it will be difficult to get them to trust you. Your companion owl helpfully suggests that you prove your sincerity by making yourself more like a bird. This process begins (relatively) innocuously when you eat a handful of the worms that you use to attract birds to the various feeders scattered across the mountain, but it escalates into genuine body horror if you follow it through to its conclusion.
Even without the humiliation rituals, there’s plenty of dread in the environment, which is filled with smoke and ash from the fire burning below. Though the forest scenery seems pleasant enough, the air is never clear, and it’s easy to imagine any number of things lurking at the edges of your visibility.
These vague fears are realized when the promised invasion of the mountain actually occurs. The appearance of the humans who have survived the fire is an unpleasant surprise, to say the least. It doesn’t help that these encounters occur in tense situations when your stamina meter is already depleted.
And then, on top of all that, you’ll eventually notice something else through the smoke haze: while you’ve been watching birds, something terrible has been watching you.
There are three possible endings to the game, and they’re all deeply upsetting. These endings follow naturally from your dialogue choices – whether you resist or capitulate to the warlord, and how far you’re willing to go to satisfy the birds.
Thankfully, nothing is dependent on being a completionist about filling in your bird watching notebook. You’ll probably want to find as many birds as possible, though, simply because your conversations with them are so unapologetically horrible and bitchy that they’re kind of funny. Once you figure out what the password you use to talk with the birds actually means, this knowledge adds a deeper level of psychological horror that’s fun to explore.
Since a leisurely run through the game only takes a little less than an hour, I went back and played it twice. Though the slightly murky lo-fi graphics caused a bit of trouble during my first playthrough, I appreciated the unique texture of the visual atmosphere more the second time around, when I was able to find significantly more birds to talk with. The alternate reading of the game suggested by a reveal toward the end casts all the conversations in an interesting new light that’s worth a second playthrough to appreciate.
Almost People is a narrative dark fantasy Game Boy game that’s free to play and takes about 8-10 minutes to finish.
You play as an alchemist who has created several types of artificial beings. After setting them free and leaving them to their own devices for an unspecified amount of time, you must decide what to do with them. Should they be allowed to continue as they are, or do you end their lives?
Before each conversation, the alchemist walks across a 2D screen that shows the creature (or creatures) in the lair it’s constructed for itself. Despite the limitations of the Game Boy graphics, the art is bold, striking, and very creepy.
The conversations with the creatures are subtly disturbing as well. I don’t get the feeling that the artist who made this game is coming from a well-defined philosophical perspective, but the choices the player is asked to make are interesting. If you want to get the good ending, the alchemist is going to have to take responsibility for what they’ve created. Specifically, you’re going to have to kill at least one of the creatures.
Though the game works well as a Frankenstein story, I also understood it as an allegory for creativity. As upsetting as it is to consider killing an actual living creature, I tend to think that it’s healthy to end projects that have outlived their original purpose. This allegory isn’t immediately apparent, and I’m not entirely sure that it was intended. I suppose that the themes of “creation” and “death” are broad enough to accommodate any number of readings.
Almost People is a weird and unsettling little game, and I appreciate the experience of playing as a character with dubious morality. I’m getting a little tired of the “surprise! the heroes are bad actually” trope, so it’s cool to take on the role of a wizard who openly engages in dark deeds. A teenager with a magical sword should really put an end to this asshole, but I guess that’s another game entirely.
Although this book came out back in October 2025, Comics Beat offered me the opportunity to write a review of The Art of Slay the Princess, which is something like a graphic novel adaptation of the horror game (on Steam here).
It’s difficult to summarize the story of Slay the Princess, and a serious discussion could easily turn into a substantial essay. What I therefore ended up doing in my review was discussing the success of the cross-media adaptation. You might wonder how a print book would be able to convey the multiplicity of the game’s branching storylines, and the answer is that it does so in a remarkably artful way.
Here’s an excerpt from my review:
In order to function as a book, The Art of Slay the Princess omits a substantial amount of text from the game’s script. By necessity, many of the game’s multimedia horror elements, including its viscerally upsetting soundscapes, are also missing. Regardless, Howard’s illustration work is sufficiently disturbing even in a montage of static frames, and the page layout is utilized to showcase the various forms of the Princess in their full uncanny glory. Though it’s not a traditionally linear reading experience, The Art of Slay the Princess is still more than capable of immersing the reader in its dark and labyrinthine world.
I recently had the immense pleasure of writing a review for Comics Beat about Pig Wife, a massive graphic novel drawn by Abbey Luck, a Hollywood animator who specializes in Adult Swim style bizarro art. Pig Wife is definitely Hollywood, and it’s definitely got a Gen-X style “alternative” edge to it. Neither of these things is to my taste, usually, but I love Pig Wife for what it is: namely, a gothic “weird girl” coming-of-age story set in a not-quite abandoned labyrinth of mine tunnels in rural Pennsyltucky.
I say in my review that it’s easy to read this 500-page book in one sitting, and I mean it. Pig Wife tells an incredibly entertaining story; but, appropriately enough, there’s a lot going on below the surface. Here’s an excerpt from my review:
By forgoing the nuances of character, Pig Wife can focus entirely on plot, and the plot is a well-oiled machine that grabs the reader and aggressively drags them down into the tunnels. Moreover, by virtue of the broad strokes of its characterization, Pig Wife is also able to convey the allegorical elements of its scenario.
The coming-of-age story in which a young hero embarks on a journey has a universal appeal, but teenage girls (and slightly older girls, if they’re trans) often undergo a separate ascent from innocence to experience that I think of as “climbing out of the pit.” By “the pit,” I mean the everpresent tarpit of internalized sexism and misogyny, and the mine tunnels of Pig Wife are as good of a visualization of this pit as any.
“The Annotated Kitab al-Azif” is a queer Lovecraftian romance about the slow decline of American academia and the supernatural perils of translation. In this story, a burnt-out Millennial podcaster flees the high rent of Boston and accepts a position as a departmental admin assistant in the suburban Miskatonic University, which is suffering from budget cuts and declining enrollments. During the lull of his first summer on the job, the podcaster meets a grad student working on the Gnostic religious traditions of the southern Mediterranean while attempting a translation of the Kitab al-Azif, more popularly known as the Necronomicon.
As you might imagine, this area of study has consequences for the grad student. The podcaster isn’t too concerned, however. He’s already seen all manner of awful things while doing research online, and why let something as trivial as ageless extradimensional horrors get in the way of a budding relationship?
Though I’ve never accidentally summoned an eldritch abomination, the setting of “The Annotated Kitab al-Azif” is partially based on my own experience as a grad student at the University of Pennsylvania. The “horror” part of this experience is the constant scramble for funding, the awkward negotiations with libraries for access to research material, and the unspoken expectation that you’ll work in decaying buildings that haven’t been maintained since the early twentieth century.
Meanwhile, the “romance” part is the opportunity to share space with people from all over the world. When you use the same office (and the same refrigerator and bathroom) with other people, pre-existing differences in culture, language, and nationality quickly become secondary to the warmth of the personal relationships that form between you. Universities aren’t cultural melting pots by any means, but they’re as good of a place as any to realize that cultural differences really don’t matter all that much in the face of genuine friendship.
Though I’ve largely set aside my ambitions to become a translator, one of the reasons I got into academia was to model the positive change I wanted to see in the broader field of literary studies, especially with regards to de-mystifying stories written by authors from “non-Western” countries. Even when it’s done respectfully, the academic tendency to treat these stories as “subaltern” and “marginalized” is frustrating. To begin with, nobody thinks of their own language and culture as “other”; but, more importantly, people are just people.
The Necronomicon is an interesting base for an exploration of this theme. In my understanding of the lore of the Cthulhu mythos, the Necronomicon is essentially an expression of popular turn-of-the-century Spiritualism, which was in turn inspired by the various strands of medieval Gnostic thought that sprung up along the Silk Road.
Though this sort of spiritually inclusive worldview may have seemed “mystical” to people living in Christian-majority cultures in the late nineteenth century, it’s completely normal to someone coming from a Buddhist or a Hindu tradition. All things considered, the cyclical view of time and the multidimensional view of space suggested by the Necronomicon are completely normal for many people who weren’t raised as Christian, and it’s interesting to consider the real-world foundations of this infamous fictional text without the narrative trappings of Orientalism.
But also…… What if magic were genuinely real? What then?
I’m grateful to The New Absurdist for taking a chance on this odd piece of weird fiction. I also want to express my appreciation to the story’s cover artists, Katie Rejto and Wally Tigerland, for creating such a unique and intriguing illustration.
If your curiosity is piqued by the prospect of true-to-life dark academia haunted by a touch of cosmic horror, please check out my story on The New Absurdist (here).
Project Kat is a short narrative horror game that’s free to play on Itch.io (here) and on Steam (here). A playthrough culminating in the game’s “true ending” will take about half an hour, but adventurous players might spend another fifteen minutes experimenting with paths leading to a premature death.
You play as a high school student named Kat who stays late at school one night to undertake an occult ritual of unknown origin and with unknown consequences. Kat has attempted a number of similar rituals, all to no avail. She claims not to believe in the supernatural and seems to be performing these rituals as a hobby. Unfortunately for Kat, this ritual is different.
As Kat, you have the run of three empty classrooms, a meeting room currently being used by the school’s Occult Club, and the Drama Club’s storage closet. Your job is to collect the materials needed for the ritual, such as chalk and candles, and then to perform the various steps of the ritual itself.
Coincidentally, the three members of the Occult Club are also spending the night at school. Kat taunts them as they experiment with a Ouija Board, saying that they’re deluding themselves. Despite getting the night off on the wrong foot, Kat can continue to talk with the three girls, and she can even recruit them to participate in the ritual with her.
This might be a mistake, however, as the instructions for the ritual state clearly that it must be performed alone.
Should Kat manage to complete the ritual successfully, the game ventures into a surreal space reminiscent of Yume Nikki. This is when the story stops pulling its punches, and the player begins to understand why Kat has started performing occult rituals – and also that her odds of surviving this one are very low. I was impressed by the visual creativity of the final section of the game, and also by the darkness of the ending it leads to.
I’m a fan of the Japanese tradition of occult “solo games” like One-Person Hide and Seek and Satoru-kun. While many of these rituals are meant to summon a spirit, the purpose of others is to create a gateway to a different dimension. If the dimension-linking ritual is performed correctly, what happens then? No one ever says, and Project Kat offers as good of an explanation as any regarding why this might be.
Since it’s a relatively short game, Project Kat leaves a number of questions unanswered. Still, I really enjoyed the story, which has good pacing and a nice tonal creep from camp into horror. Project Kat is a neat little game to play in one sitting, and the creators have released a longer story set in the same world, Paper Lily, which is free to play on Itch.io (here) and on Steam (here).
The Forest Temple in Ocarina of Time is one of the most intriguing dungeons in the Zelda series. It’s so beautiful and full of mystery! One of my favorite areas of the temple is the peaceful underground waterway connecting the two courtyards on either side of the main hall. This is not in the least because the upper walkway provides healing hearts that are extremely welcome after Link’s first battle against a Stalfos. If Link grabs all three hearts the first time through the sewer, there will only be one heart on his return through the passage.
Where did that additional heart come from? Where do any of these hearts come from? Perhaps it’s best not to think about it too hard.
I have very little experience drawing architecture, but hopefully this works to my benefit in conveying the brutalism of the building lines in early 3D games. The primitive perspective scaling isn’t an issue in open spaces with organic shapes like the Kokiri Forest, but it feels somewhat uncanny in confined interior spaces. I get the sense that the game developers understood this, as the slightly off-kilter straight lines of the sewer tunnel are a nice foil against the luxurious twisting corridors of the temple’s upper levels, which are equally confounding to the eye. Poor Link… that kid has seen some shit.
Il Mistero di Felina (The Mystery of Felina) is a free-to-play 2D narrative horror game that takes about twenty minutes to finish. The story follows Lara Lorenzi, a travel influencer who’s been invited to the small island of Felina to participate in a festival that celebrates the island’s cats.
Unfortunately for Lara, there is weirdness afoot. The island’s sheep have been dying, and there seems to be blood on the walls of the local church. In the downstairs tavern of the inn where Lara spends the night, a group of older men have gathered in a somber toast to their friend, who will be “leaving the island” soon. The young man who invited Lara to the island is awkward and sweaty, and he seems to be uncomfortably nervous about something.
Meanwhile, Lara’s been getting strange comments online, presumably about a nasty bit of drama with a fellow influencer. Though she’s picking up bad vibes from the island, Lara is in dire need of positive content, and she can’t afford to waste the opportunity.
As Lara, the player walks around the small town, enjoys the scenery, and advances the story through conversation. There’s also an optional but fun smartphone menu that allows the player to take pictures and upload them for Lara’s followers to enjoy.
You’ll almost certainly want to take pictures, because the art in this game is wonderful. The architecture is shabby yet quaint, while the interiors are filled with interesting details. The people on the island are all colorful characters, and the festival decorations are very cute yet deeply sinister.
I also appreciate the character animations. The way Lara walks around the island is well-observed, especially in relation to her character design. Later, when Lara crouches while wearing a costume in order to pass herself off as a child, her walking animation is even more artistic. There are a number of cats roaming around the island, and it’s a treat to stand still for a moment and observe their behaviors.
Il Mistero di Felina echoes with hints of classic gothic folk horror like The Wicker Man and The Shadow Over Innsmouth, and it also recalls more contemporary spooky stories like Oxenfree, Night in the Woods, and… Neko Atsume. Still, this unnerving little game is uniquely its own thing, and I would have gladly spent more time on Felina basking in the Mediterranean sunlight while picking apart the dysfunctional personalities of the island’s residents.
The game has a convenient autosave function, but you can easily play Il Mistero di Felina in one sitting. The story is enjoyably campy but also legitimately creepy, with excellent pacing and a tidy conservation of detail. I’m a fan of the unique aesthetic, whose bright colors work brilliantly to enhance the horror. I love every indie horror game I play, but this one is something special.
I can’t resist closing this without at least one cat pun, so here you go: Il Mistero di Felina is a purrfectly spooky cautionary tale that knows exactly how to sink its claws into contemporary anxieties.
Misao is a short 16-bit indie survival horror game originally released in 2011 and then published on Steam (here) as a remastered edition in 2024. The game is set in a high school that’s been transported to a demonic realm by the vengeful spirit of the eponymous Misao, a beautiful but quiet girl who mysteriously disappeared three months prior to the opening of the story.
You play as a girl (or optionally as a boy, in the HD version) named Aki who suddenly hears Misao’s voice in the middle of class, asking someone to “find me.” The classroom is cloaked in darkness, an earthquake hits, and the school begins to fall apart in the aftershocks. As Aki explores the mostly abandoned building, she learns that four of her classmates were bullying Misao with the compliance of their homeroom teacher. Despite the intensity of the bullying, Misao didn’t kill herself – but someone else did.
The gameplay consists of navigating the school while collecting six objects necessary to piece together Misao’s story. There’s no set order to acquiring these items, meaning that the game starts off as somewhat confounding but gradually comes to make more sense. Once you get your bearings, what you need to do becomes fairly self-evident, but a walkthrough is recommended for players (such as myself) who might find themselves overwhelmed at first. There are several excellent guides posted to Steam, but I recommend (this one) on account of its helpful division into sections.
Like Mad Father (reviewed here), which was also published by Miscreant’s Room, Misao is essentially a haunted house simulator in which your player-character can die in dozens of delightfully gruesome ways. Thanks to a handy quicksave function, there’s no penalty for dying, and the player is encouraged to get into all sorts of trouble for the sole purpose of seeing what will happen. Aside from two short chase sequences, very little skill is needed to survive, just a bit of trial and error.
What I love about Misao is how much fun this game has with the tropes and imagery of a haunted high school. The laboratory is staffed by a mad scientist who has a chainsaw and will take advantage of any excuse to use it. The hamburgers in the cafeteria are made of unspeakable meat, and the seating area in front of the open kitchen is filthy with blood and entrails. The toilets haven’t been cleaned for a very long time, nor has the secret zombie cave under the school. The Shinto shrine in the courtyard is beautiful, but the rituals performed there are anything but.
Misao’s story mixes high school bullying and friendship drama with a mystery surrounding a twisted serial killer, and everyone gets exactly what they deserve. Still, for players who think high school kids shouldn’t be condemned to eternal damnation, Aki can rescue her classmates from their personal hells in a short epilogue. A few of the characters Aki encounters are native to the demon realm, and they’re all having the time of their lives. My favorite is the student librarian, who’s fully aware of the bloodshed surrounding her but just wants to make friends. She is a treasure.
If you’re not a completionist, Misao takes about two hours to finish, allowing the story to make an impact without testing the player’s patience through needless puzzles or gameplay challenges. The haunted high school setting is creatively rendered and a lot of fun to explore, even if the open-world structure is a bit overwhelming at the beginning.
The deaths are all creative and disturbing, but the retro graphics allow the game to feel campy instead of creepy, so much so that Misao sometimes feels more like a comedy than a horror story. I grew to feel a begrudging sort of affection for the characters, but I can’t deny that I had a huge smile on my face as I watched them get picked off – and really, good for Misao. I support her.
Digital Fantasy Diary 