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The Nintendo 64 had a weird quirk with its game cartridges.
On one of those nights, I slapped the cartridge into the N64 and flipped on the power switch.
I ran out of the room, terrified of whatever hell Id just unleashed.
Looking back, its clear what went wrong.
A car equally low res looks as though it was brutally sculpted out of gummy brown 3-D-modeling presets.
ButCruelty Squadtakes a different tack entirely.
Thats where lead designer Ville Kallio thrives.
Kallio isnt the only designer who has gotten that memo.
Scroll through Itch.ioshorror tagand youll find hundreds of fuzzy nightmares begging for your attention.
Were not facing off against an evil genius; were at the mercy of a feral video game.
The idea of a game being, well, haunted will change your perspective on anything created afterward.
That makes sense when you consider the ebbs and flows of the indie-gaming contingent as a whole.
But as the age bracket has shifted, the N64 inherited that prime, wistful terrain.
The other reason for the boom is more practical.
Cushing notes that 3-D game-making software has been democratized over the past decade.
It might be hard to master, but its a pretty accessible style for game devs to get into.
I think part of what is so exciting about this scene is that we are getting so many newcomers.
Thematically, that narrative ties in with some of her own encounters with digital unease.
When Hughes was 10 years old, she used to join emptyCounter-Strikematches from the family computer.
Its stuck with me ever since.
