Exhuming the Past

Retro-style graphics are certainly a popular choice among indie game studios.  I have to admit, I have a soft spot for pixel art.  It tends to bring back memories of playing games on my Apple IIc.  Nostalgia aside, there is a good reason to utilize older visual styles in that they tend to be less resource intensive than high-res textures and massive poliginal count 3D objects.  That said, there is one style that might be better left buried.

The original Sony Playstation had some great games and, thanks to its CD-ROM drive, high quality music/sound for the time.  What it didn't have though, was enough memory.  Textures, in particular, were very blocky with a tendency to warp when viewed from certain directions.  The lack of filtering and low polygonal models didn't help things either...even so, there are a few surprisingly nice looking games.  Just last month, I posted some animated GIFs from Vagrant Story that still hold up surprisingly well.  Another game that uses the limited processing power of the PSX to its advantage is the first Silent Hill.  The short draw distance introduces clastrophic aspects of horror by blanketing the player's surroundings in fog or darkness.  The monsters that emerge from the gloom are also murky and shrouded, giving off vague impressions rather than particular details.  It ends up working extremely well in this case because the player's brain is forced to fill in the gaps (a key aspect of the horror genre).

Perhaps influenced by the original Silent Hill, a number of more recent indie horror games have tried to emulate the visual style.  Inspired by a post on the 4Chan message board and made into a game for the Haunted PS1 Summer-Spooks Gamejam in less than 30 days, Lost in the Backrooms is one such example.  Currently, it's available for download over at itch.io for free.  Overall, it isn't a bad game (especially considering the constraints under which it was made), but Lost in the Backrooms does end up feeling a lot like the "Blair Witch" except with a bunch of empty halls instead of a forest.

Another obscurity is Paratopic.  Once again, it's an indie horror title.  The look is very PSX era aside from better draw distances.  There's also a story of sorts (albeit told in a very convoluted manner).  Perhaps that, too, is in the spirit of the original Silent Hill.  There are more examples I could go into: Back in 1995, Vaccine, Banned Memories, Devil Daggers, Garden Variety, Prototype Mansion and Dusk.  However, I think people familiar with the visuals of those games will understand what I'm getting at.  No Gouraud Shading, low-poly rendering and little to no filtering on blocky textures, are the hallmarks here.

Getting back to my original point, the presentation in these games is very...grimy.  The 3D objects are too jagged to have the impressionist vibe of Overland.  Simultaneously, the textures are too muddy and unfiltered to give off the clean simplicity of Grown Home.  I understand that what I'm saying here is highly subjective.  By all means, if PSX era graphics are your prefered aesthetic don't let me ruin your enjoyment.  Some people still like CRT monitors and vinyl record players after all...I, for one though, would be happy if this particular mold-ridden corpse of game presentation was not brought back from the dead in a big way.