First up, she is a talent, and there is something good going on here. There is some new stuff happening, some interesting boundaries being crossed between interaction, sound, editing, immersion. But these aren't games, and that is where the problems lie. Will leave Anatomy for another post but lets deal with CHRYZA first... Spoiler (ish) analysis:
CHRYZA
Free, on PC, available at https://kittyhorrorshow.itch.io/
A sort of walking simulator Flash fiction 'game'- a vaguely interactive nightmare podcast. Set in a barren desert bounded by mountains... with visual fog preventing line of sight beyond approx. 100 meters. You move between a geometrically shaped broken village towards massive monumental forms picking up audio diaries on route which disclose a nightmarish story of mutation and "oblation".
Low polygon graphics, limited but effective colour palette, superb use of audio. The story is good, brilliantly voice acted, creepy, but nothing special. Body horror, isolation.
Interactivity minimal, jumping and timing - irritating to be honest, poorly executed but the whole construction is clearly "anti-game". 15 minutes duration.
Now here is the problem...and it extends to all walking simulators in the Horror genre.
Whatever its virtues: because it uses the same engine and mechanics that first person shooters have used for over 20 years...veteran 'players' will feel - instantly - restricted and frustrated. First person gamers have been trained on an impulse level to test the boundaries and movement/shooting sets of a game within 5 seconds of it starting. You can't help it. Its automatic. How smooth are the graphics? how high can I jump? can I jump over invisible walls? can I die from falling? how fast can I run? how far can I see? where are the secrets? If I choose this item now will other items become redundant? What is my goal? And most importantly.. where does jeopardy lie?
With the walking simulator, all this gets thrown out of the window.
Which is fine if you've never played first person shooters before, you can wander around without all these questions distracting you from the fairly interesting story being relayed on the audiotrack.
But for the rest of us - for whom first person gaming is about testing the boundaries of freedom - to destruction - it just seems...pedestrian!
More importantly.. you don't necessarily need jeopardy but you do need the threat of it. The threat of dying, of restarting, or being confronted by something appalling.
The walking simulator's concept of jeopardy is.. words and more words, with jump scare editing and audio cues.
It's not enough...and once its finished, you go back to playing Bioshock or Alien Isolation.
CHRZYA's environment just isn't good enough.
That strange horror of being close to massive un-explained objects.. needs to be convincingly designed. Maybe 20 years ago this world would seem real. But its not good enough now. Not becuase my imagination is limited, but because we have seen better distorted massive worlds in Half-Life, Thief, Shadow of the Colussus - even Sentinel on the Amiga... and so this doesn't seem new and stripped down. It seems bad. I know the game is free etc. but if you want to do disturbing massive objects on a budget with a limited engine, you need Piranesi style levels of imagination and Kitty Horroshow does not posesss them.
She can tell a good story tho... and the audio is ecnellent. But sorry, no dice..
Anatomy is much more interesting..lets tackle that later.. when The Drowned Man finally gets round to chilling out a bit! Enough with the ruminations right?
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