Media, Society, Monsters, and Magic
I had the pleasure of writing a fun article for Sidequest about how A Link Between Worlds is a perfect cozy horror game to play during the long summer evenings. It’s a dark twist on Legend of Zelda series traditions and one of my favorite adventure games.
If you’re interested, the article is here:
https://sidequest.zone/2024/08/05/spooky-zelda-game/
Many kudos to the magical LunarChibistry for creating the lovely artwork of Princess Hilda in the promo graphic!
Rental
https://smarto-club.itch.io/rental
With the spooky season upon us, Smarto Club decided to take a break from being wholesome and turned spooky with Rental, an eerie game about the risks of renting beach houses.
Rental is a 32-bit game about a family of cute bunnies who rent a vacation house in the woods. This isn’t a horror game, necessarily, but it’s strange and lowkey creepy. It takes about fifteen minutes to finish, although it might take slightly longer for people who are out of practice with PlayStation One style 3D spatial navigation.
As the daughter of the bunny family, your job is to walk through the house and collect objects. The twist is that there are House of Leaves shenanigans going on. The first half of the game takes place aboveground, while the second half is more of an adventure. There’s a shadow monster in the house with you, but its appearance seems to be random. I only saw it once, briefly, during my second playthrough, and it wasn’t a big deal. Rental is much more atmospheric than scary, and most of the atmosphere has to do with the ambient music and the oddness of the scenario.
Rental works well as analog horror. The graphics and gameplay and washed-out colors feel super outdated, as do the Hello Kitty character designs. There’s also the combination of the nostalgic childhood experience of going on vacation with the childhood discomfort of trying to settle into an unknown place. The house you’re exploring has a standard layout and floorplan, and the girl often comments on how normal and unremarkable everything is, which adds to the sense of the uncanny.
The Christian religious icons the girl has to gather are also totally normal. For me, this created an extra layer of resonance in the sense of going to a mundane place with a lot of Christian art and imagery and feeling that everything is slightly weird about the oddly suffering men and oddly beatific women and oddly mature babies. I appreciate the girl’s no-nonsense attitude toward everything in the house, which makes the ending all the more amusing.
There are no jumpscares in this game, and it’s not challenging. Rental is a simple but spooky fifteen-minute treat for connoisseurs of perfectly normal houses that are ever so slightly larger on the inside.
To celebrate Halloween and everything autumn, Sidequest created a list of cozy horror games for people who enjoy the themes and aesthetics of spooky season but aren’t into jumpscares or explicitly ghoulish imagery. I love every game on this list, and I had a lot of fun writing about three favorites of my own. Here’s a set of excerpts:
Despite its grim premise, Six Cats Under is a chill game with cute pixel graphics and an ambient lo-fi soundtrack. Even watching a short playthrough on YouTube is relaxing.
This is the perfect Pacific Northwest Gothic setting for a haunted house story, but Edith’s former home is actually quite beautiful and charming. Adding to the game’s coziness is its comfortable two-hour playtime, as well its clearly signposted guidance along the critical path.
Although you’ll gradually uncover the town’s secrets during the days leading to and following Halloween, your main goal is to reconnect with old friends in dead malls and empty grocery store parking lots after spending your afternoons strolling through streets filled with gorgeous fall foliage.
I think it’s worth commenting on my criteria for what makes a game “cozy.”
Accessibility is a major factor. You should be able to play a cozy game at your own pace without having to worry about the anxiety of time limits or the frustration of losing progress. Another key element of cozy games is their ability to inspire a sense of comfort through visual presentation. “Cozy graphics” aren’t disposable Instagram aesthetics, but rather a commitment to a distinct visual style that feels hand-crafted and deliberate in its expression of the game’s themes.
More than anything, a cozy game uses its relaxed vibes to create a safe space to ask meaningful questions that the player wouldn’t have the energy to engage with otherwise. Cozy games should be thought-provoking but casual, like a conversation with a friend in front of a fire. “Cozy horror” isn’t an oxymoron, then, as cozy games are perfect for the long nights when you can bundle up, get comfortable, and take the time to study the shadows lurking in the darkness.
You can check out Sidequest’s full list of cozy horror games here:
https://sidequest.zone/2023/10/30/sidequests-favorite-cozy-horror-games-for-weenies/
Digital Fantasy Diary 