StrucciPlays: Haunted PS1 Demo Disc Review

- [Shannon] The
Haunted PS1 demo disc

not actually a
physical demo disc,

is a collection of 17 games,
some more polished and finite,

some more unfinished
and clearly in-progress,

all in the style of
PS1 horror games,

and all available for
download for free.

- Hey, kid!

- Who, me?

- Yeah, you, dummy!

You wanna play some
cool video games?

- Yeah.

I wanna play games.

- [Shannon] The itch.io
page for the disc reads

"Roused by the
crackle of static,

"a lingering sense of dread
crawls across the floor.

"You sit alone in your room.

"A dimly lit memory
repeats in your head.

"17 demos too horrible to
describe keep you from your bed.

"Each one is a personally
crafted nightmare.

"You've tried to tell
others, no one understands.

"A CRT you don't remember
owning flashes to life.

"Frozen in place you look
upon the flickering screen

"to spy a dismal,
bloodied scene.

"A cracked and faded jewel
case sits close beside.

"A pale grey plastic
box sits in front,

"emitting a low whirring noise.

"Will you take to the controller

"or let yourself be taken over?"

I'm going to talk about each
of the 17 games individually,

including my feelings about
both the original release games

and some of the games that
were significantly altered

with a later update, but
before I do any of that

I have to say that
this is a triumph.

This is amazing.

This is so cool and so much fun,

and is such an exciting sampler

of what is available right now
as far as weird and engaging

and independently
produced horror games.

I initially saw that Bro-gone
Hackett and Modus Interactive,

two of my favorite developers

of weird and beautiful
short horror games,

were involved, which
piqued my interest,

along with just the concept
of a PS1-style demo disc

and how much people
I follow on Twitter

were talking about it.

And I'm not as familiar
with anyone else involved,

but I was pretty
immediately converted

to being a fan of a
lot of these developers

even after playing, just, like,
a 10-minute demo they made.

I'll get to it
later in the review,

but I loved Dread
Delusion so much

that, as soon as I
was done playing it,

I backed the creator's Patreon

to get updated
versions of that game

and to be able to
play it longer,

just as an example of how cool

the games on the demo disc are.

I also want to say that,
while I am going to be honest

about how I felt about
all of these games

and am pretty critical in
some of my assessments,

please take into consideration

that every one of these
games is cool as hell,

this whole project
is cool as hell,

and I have so much respect for
everyone that worked on this.

And if you play every
game all the way through,

you are getting hours of
completely free entertainment,

all of which was made with
sincerity and a clear love

of classic experimental
and horror games.

My criticisms are more comparing
the games with each other

than to any big budget
triple-A titles,

and I tried to be fair
in my assessments.

And the fact that some
games in the collection

are much more polished
or more fun to play

or more emotionally
affecting than others

does not mean that you
shouldn't play all of them.

They're right there,
and they're free,

and they're all
weird and creative,

and you might as well play them.

I'm going to talk
about the games

in the order they're
listed on the disc.

I know there's a secret
game somewhere on the disc,

but I haven't found
it and played it yet,

and I didn't want
to cheat to find it

or spoil it if I did, so
I won't be covering it.

So ...

A Place, Forbidden
has a very pronounced

and well-established atmosphere:

you can practically smell
the old books and mold,

and it feels dusty.

It gives the sense of a place

that is actively
degrading in front of you.

I wasn't a fan of
the puzzles in it,

but I certainly admired how
well its setting was conveyed,

and some of the images in
it were shocking and creepy.

Dread Delusion is, to me, the
most technically impressive

game on the demo disc.

It's an open-feeling
world full of grain,

garish neon colors that I loved

and that were used very
effectively, ghosts, skeletons,

cruel gods, death, paranoia,
oppression, and fear.

It has such a sense of scale

and so many stunning,
gorgeous views.

It's not like a ripoff
of any Zelda games

or of Zelda gameplay mechanics,

but it reminds me
of a Zelda game

in the rush I get
when playing it,

that feeling of adventure,

of exploring and uncovering
weird small mysteries,

only in a darker
and more cynical and
more upsetting world.

It's brilliant, and I am so
excited to eventually play

the full version of the game.

It's delightful, and I
would highly recommend it.

I wanted to like Dead
Heat, and I certainly liked

some of its basic conceits.

It's some kind of
noir-style detective game

where one of the detectives
is a zombie, maybe?

But it was really glitchy

and had some basic design
and accessibility problems.

The way the text populates
on the screen is distracting,

and the plain color text blends

into the background
way too much.

I also found the text
sound kind of grating.

I had trouble with the controls
and with even understanding

how I was supposed to
interact with the game.

The updated version had
some kind of issue on launch

where I couldn't select anything

that I was only able
to fix by launching

the older version of the
game in a windowed mode,

which carried over
and fixed the issue.

The updated version is
definitely less glitchy

and seems to have
more content to it,

but it still felt
unpolished and confusing

and like a lot of ideas were
just kind of thrown together.

There are filters you
can switch between

to give the feel
of different eras

to the visuals of the
game, which is neat,

but, like a lot of this game,

it just seems to have been added
in because it sounded cool,

not as part of any kind of
cohesive or polished idea.

But, of course, this is a demo.

I bet the finished
version of this game,

if they pull off everything
they're going for,

will be really cool, and the
developers seem aware of,

and apologetic about, the
fact that it's unpolished,

and it's entirely possible

that I just didn't
understand the controls

and missed out on what I
was supposed to be doing.

It could still be on me, and
you should still check it out,

but the bad AI and
hard-to-read text

and other glitches and issues

definitely hampered my
experience with this game,

and I would have preferred
something simpler

and less ambitious that
better accomplished its goals.

Effigy did remind me of
old school FPS games,

and it has a well-established
sense of wide scale

and a unique setting.

The only aspects of
it I found frustrating

were imprecise controls
getting in the way

of me completing
time-based puzzles

and the fact that I spent
a lot of time on this game

for the ending to just
kind of trail off.

Again, yes of
course, it's a demo.

I'm not expecting a
grand, polished narrative.

But a lot of games on the disc

have a pretty clear arc to them,

and while I liked Effigy,

I wouldn't have spent as
much time on it as I did

if I had known it would
just trail off at the end.

Erasure is one of the
more experimental games

on the demo disc.

It has a unique sense of humor

and it's a weird,
abstract, eerie twist

on standard sci-fi
themes around simulations

and maybe the morality
of manipulating them.

I liked it a lot.

Fatum Betula--

I'm not even gonna look
up how to pronounce that.

Is beautiful and frightful.

It's a game of grief and
dreams and imagination.

And with many games on the disc,

but especially with this one,

there are none of the
constraints of commercialism

or needing to market to
or appease an audience.

It made me wonder what
old games could have been

if they'd been approached
in the same way.

Not that there weren't
weird experimental

dreamscape nightmare
games on the PS1,

just that there could
have been more of them.

This game made me
retroactively reassess my view

of the entire retro
PS1 aesthetic.

In games as artful as this one,

the aesthetic and use of
tropes from those old games

all become tools to reclaim
a chance to make art

that could have existed
if commercial interests

didn't influence console
games so heavily.

It's that engaging and weird
and haunting and beautiful.

My only complaint is
some of the writing

seemed a little bit pretentious.

Small complaint though.

I think it is my favorite
game on the disc.

I don't expect it to
be everyone's favorite;

there are certainly more complex

and technically robust games

that are just as beautiful
here, like Dread Delusion,

but weird, small-scale, creepy,
charming, grief dreamscapes

definitely appeal
to me in particular.

Filthbreed is one of the
few games on the disc

that doesn't fit
the PS1 aesthetic.

Not that the
aesthetic is lacking.

The game is creepy, and the
filthy lens effect is cool.

The game has a sense
of humor to it,

and I liked occasional reminder

that there's a world outside
of this gross, dingy setting,

given by beams of daylight
coming in through windows.

And the cult narrative
and cow skulls

and gross dingy feel gave the
game a True Detective vibe.

I absolutely hated the jumpscare
death animation, though.

It was not scary;
it was annoying.

Also I thought it was funny

that the game's
icon is just a gun.

Heartworm's description is a
very overt Silent Hill homage,

and the main
character looks like

a Resident Evil character
or a Laura Croft type.

The game's credits
are really creepy,

and some of the shots and
scenes in it are creepy as well.

The game definitely
has potential,

but the fixed camera angles

and the style of controls
it used were frustrating,

and the mental illness angle
in horror games like this,

to me, it gets old super fast,

and it's just kind of
cliched and boring.

I really don't like that
approach or that angle,

especially when it's
used in kind of like

a very basic, standard way.

In Somnio is described
as an attempt

to recreate the developer's
dreams as games.

I loved some of the
choices the developer made

in portraying these dream-games,

like the way that the ground
movies in the second game.

The surreal succession
of vignettes

reminded me of the old
browser-based game 99 Rooms.

This whole game was
scary and felt haunted,

like it was instilled
with pure dread.

(dripping)

(screeching)

- [Garbled Voice] Somebody
was murdered in this room.

It's fuckin' haunted, all right.

- [Shannon] And really did
resemble what it feels like

to dream and to
have a nightmare.

One of the strengths of a lot
of the games on the demo disc

isn't that they're scary,
though some of them are,

but rather that
they're really unique,

surreal little explorations
of dreams and feelings.

In Somnio was really cool.

That's definitely one of
the ones I would recommend.

Here's my first set of notes

on the first release of
Killer Bees, verbatim:

Hardcore filter.

VHS mode can't see shit.

Reminds me of PT.

Didn't get super far.

Kept getting killed by bees.

Can't tell if gun does much.

And I have to say out
of all the games on here

that got updates, this was
the biggest improvement.

I went from being
frustrated and confused

to really loving the
updated version of the game.

It's a unique concept
executed very well

and with unique gameplay that
is never spelled out for you

but is still intuitive.

I'd rather not
describe any of it

because I found the act of
discovery fun in and of itself,

but I will say you're
exploring a weird building,

and there are, of
course, killer bees.

The game operates with its own
weird logic that is original

but easy to follow, and there
are a lot of flashes of images

with really disturbing
implications.

The sound design is also
great and very realistic.

Some of the aspects of this
game are very stylized,

but the soundscape you're
walking through feels very real.

And even when the game is
not actively threatening

your character, it's
still menacing and creepy.

This went from being one of
the most frustrating games

on the disc, to me,
to one of my favorites

and is a great example of
a simple but unique concept

executed flawlessly, and it's
really fun and unsettling.

You can also choose between
PS1 mode and VHS mode

for visuals, and
while I liked both,

I did like VHS mode more,

especially after
alterations with the update

that made the game
easier to see and play.

Neko Yume, or cat dream,
is, as I understand it,

an homage to the game LSD
Dream Emulator, but with cats?

And maybe referencing
Yume Nikki?

I haven ot played either of
those games, so I don't know.

But I love the work Modus
has done in the past,

Sanguine Sanctum especially,

so I was excited about
playing this one.

I was a little frustrated
when I started this game,

because I wasn't sure
of what I should do

or of how I was
expected to interact

with the world it presented,

but then I had a lot
more fun when I realized

I should just goof off and
see what I came across.

The game overall is
very charming and funny,

and, I know I keep
using this word

to describe games on the disc,

but, yes, it's also very weird.

I laughed a lot at this segment,

which gets the game's
tone across pretty well.

(quirky music)

(meowing)

(rocket rumbling)

(meowing)

Ode to a Moon has a
very cool title screen

and a striking color palette,

and I liked how it shifted its
atmosphere with VHS effects.

It's a spooky game
that uses sound well,

and I liked the way its
4:3 aspect ratio was used.

It has some lovely
landscapes as well.

One problem I had was that

it was kind of easy to
get lost in the game,

and I had trouble
being able to tell

where I was going
a couple of times,

like in different
segments of the game.

I still really
enjoyed it, though.

Orange County is a horror game
where you're on a skateboard,

and I found the controls kind
of confusing and unintuitive.

Dying in this game
is scary, though.

As far as I could tell,

the objective is to ride around
getting different drinks,

trying to not get hit by cars?

There's a lot of creativity in
the concept and presentation,

and it's worth playing
just for how unique it is,

but I found it kind
of frustrating and
never really got it.

It never really clicked with me

what I was supposed to be doing.

At least, my experience
trying to play

all these games all
the way through,

or close to all the way
through, to review them,

the more difficult to
understand what was happening

or what was expected
of me, the less time

I wanted to spend on a game

trying to just figure out
how to interact with it

before moving on.

When a game is in a big
demo disc like this,

I think focusing on something
that someone can get into,

play, and then move on,

not that you should make
your game disposable,

but just like, it's
one of 17 games.

If I'm trying to play
the whole demo disc,

I don't have time to
sit here and learn

some kind of really, really
complicated control scheme

for a game that I'm gonna
play for like 15 minutes.

I just preferred games
like Fatum Betula

which were weird and
mystifying in content

and in how to progress the story

but super easy to
understand how to play,

or games like Killer Bees that
are more challenging to play

but still pretty
quickly clicked for me,

to games like Orange
County or Dead Heat

that I had trouble
even understanding
in the first place.

Sauna 2000 is wild.

My biggest complaint is that
it was super glitchy for me,

with subtitles
lagging behind audio

and glitches actually preventing
me from beating the game

or seeing what was going on

while some really wild
stuff was happening,

so I had to keep
replaying the game,

trying to avoid the glitches,

to actually be able
to complete it,

which kind of broke some
of the atmosphere for me.

But even though it was one
of the most problematic games

on the disc for
me gameplay-wise,

it was still one
of my favorites.

From the music to the
game's sense of humor

to the mounting sense of dread,

I loved the concept
and I loved playing it.

And regardless of technical
problems, it ruled.

The basic conceit is that
you have to start up a sauna

by chopping wood and
collecting water and so on,

and then something
weird starts happening.

It's surprising and
funny and creepy,

and I really enjoyed it.

Snowy Castle was the
only game on the disc

where the proportions
felt a little off.

I don't know if it
was intentional,

but my character
felt a little short

or like the scale of
the environment was off.

The game was
somewhat atmospheric,

and I did like the little
weird mysterious story it had,

especially how it ended:

you walk around an old castle
in the snow lighting candles.

But especially for
the outside candles,

some of them felt like
I was just mentally

criss-crossing the map, like
going through the scenery

to light candles
out of obligation

versus the sense of
exploration you feel

while inside the castle.

But even then, it's
definitely a fun game

that executes a
simple concept well.

I liked Tasty
Ramen's title screen

and I thought the color palette,

out of all of the
games on the disc,

felt the most accurate
to PS1-era kids games,

like the aesthetic was
a very accurate homage

not necessarily to
old horror games

but old wacky kids games,
especially from Japan.

The game itself, though,
is what I would refer to

as an anxiety simulator
rather than a horror game.

You walk around collecting
keys trying to avoid

a patrolling ramen mascot
that kills you if it sees you.

This game got an updatte
to balance its gameplay,

and I did consider
the updated version

more forgiving and more fair,

but it still isn't
something I'd play

on my own time for fun.

I really like dread-soaked
atmospheric horror

rather than a game that
just makes me anxious,

but that's a
subjective assessment,

and I still did
really appreciate

how well this game executes
what it set out to do.

It's still neat.

My first impression
of Until Biglight

is that it is
gorgeous and weird.

You play a mouse
traversing the underbrush

with all these
canted camera angles

and little mouse establishments.

Pretty quickly, though, I found
some problems with the game.

Until Biglight is overtly
anticapitalist, which is cool,

but the way it's handled is
kind of clunky and obvious.

The game has too much dialogue,

and I'd rather that
same information

be conveyed more concisely

and in a way better
suited to the medium.

And you're very much railroaded

as far as what you
can do in the game,

which I'm normally fine
with in games like that.

I like point A to B walking sims

and weird little barely
interactive experimental games,

but it does give the
thin illusion of choice

that falls apart pretty quickly.

The visuals and
the representation

of a little capitalist
hellscape mouse world

run by evil cats
are both fantastic,

but I'd definitely want
to see the dialogue

tightened up a little
in future versions.

Okay, there's all 17 games.

I really enjoyed playing this.

I can't recommend it enough.

I think at this point a lot
of people come to my channel

for recommendations for weird,
independent art to check out,

and this is definitely
one of those.

Although, this already got
a fair amount of attention.

It's not like it's a super
obscure collection of games,

but I figured a lot of
people in my audience

wouldn't have heard of it.

And it took me a
while to review it,

especially because I wanted
to play the updated versions

of the games I had already
played before they updated 'em,

and I wanted to go a little
bit in depth on every game.

When final versions of
these games come out,

for some of them I'll
probably do a full review.

I could definitely
see myself doing

a full review for
Dread Delusion,

which already has so
much going on with it,

even though you can tell
it's barely complete,

as far as the scope
of that game goes.

I was surprised at how
many of these games

were more surreal
than horror games.

It doesn't feel like
they were mis-marketed;

it was just a pleasant
surprise to me,

although most of them were both.

It was also weird how
much a lot of the games

kind of fixated on
Japanese culture

and had Japanese
characters in them.

I don't think it was
offensive or problematic,

and it makes sense,
because PlayStation

was a Japanese console,
and a lot of the games

that people would
have played growing up

were originally in Japanese.

It was just something that
kept coming up again and again,

and I thought it was funny, or
that stood out to me, rather.

Anyway, thank you for watching.

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And, thanks.