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Welcome to Horror Bites on site for him. The show where we discuss the smallest gas and teeny interiors available to play on your PC. I'm Neil Bolt, and joining me as ever is my co-host from Another Coast, Jay Krieger. How you doing, Jay? Doing well, man. I'm ready to begin this week's investigation. Yes. Yeah, this week we have a retro-style game. Well, yeah, we have retro-style games all the time, but this is a retro-style game in a very different way. Before we get to that, if you're not familiar with the format, we've picked one or two bite-sized horror games and have a suitably short and sweet chat about them. Many of these games are free to play, but if you play them and enjoy them, you can help the developers out by making donations, wishlisting future projects, or just simply spreading the word because it all helps in making them the bigger and better developers of tomorrow on the biggest scale. And of course, if you do like the sound of what we've played, the show notes include a link to the game we have discussed. So, yeah, as I said this week, Jay, we have, again, I was pretty sure you picked for a joke just because of the name. It turns out that we didn't have the same pronunciation in mind. This one, I thought it was called a Moyda House, or Moyda Mansion or whatever it is, and yeah, it turns out no. Well, yeah, I'll do my best crack at it. I suppose I'll go with Moyda Mansion, which is a classic style LCD game from the 90s. If anybody had been playing games in the 90s much like we had been, they had those, I think they were called Tiger Electronic was the brand. You'd find it at KB Toys in the States. And typically it was LCD so, yeah, and they were typically tied to X-Men, Power Rangers, these popular brands, and it would be these almost sort of like 90 style game and watch kind of. But it was historically tied to very limited hardware. And so the types of experiences you could have on those games is very limited. So like Moyda Mansion by developer Lucas Pope has kind of developed with that in mind, right? So in Moyda Mansion, it's a group of mystery-solving friends known as the Adventure Club, whose mascot Turtle wandered into the Moyda Mansion. And it just so happens, the golden rule of the club is to stay out of that mansion. Now it's up to the player to not only find their group's mascot, but to rescue your three mystery-solving compatriots, all while avoiding the monster that is roaming the halls of the mansion. So again, like this game is developed with the sort of limitations of what would be an LCD kind of hand-held experience. But, you know, when we talk about games like this, that on the surface seem very simplistic. It's always impressive when developers are able to have their own tweak or their own spin on. It's a kind of like, provide an experience that might be a resemblance of one from a past bygone era, but at the same time have some type of modern sensibilities. Typically, that comes through in the gameplay, and I found that this is a perfect example of that. So I guess even before getting into the game, when you go on to the itchio page for this game, and you can find it under, I believe, it's D-U-K-O-P-E is what Lucas Pope goes by on itchio. So you get this very, like, 90-style manual that's directly beneath the game that you can play in your browser, which gives you a breakdown of, you know, the overall synopsis and then step-by-step instructions on how to play the game. So, like, right then and there, like, that's a good indication that this is someone that, you know, is making homage to that bygone era of game development or game design, and is going kind of the extra step, right? It's not just from the look of it, but really, you know, you get the feel that this is a game that, you know, you could have picked up and played way back in the 90s, but, you know, the way that this game works is you're exploring the mansion, and you can go room-by-room and then investigate various items in the room to try to find the location of one of your compatriots that's hiding from the monster. Now, what that means is that you're going to select various objects in the environment, and then you have to sit for a few seconds while you have this search bar, basically. And searching an environment or searching an object makes noise, which then attracts the monster. When you see the monster's little face pop-up in, you know, a doorway or a picture frame or window, you need to leave that area because if you continue to stay and make noise, the monster's going to get you, you're essentially going to die, and then you'll have to restart. It's worth mentioning that this game only has three buttons, and that's moving left to right. You can also, once you find a doorway, press forwards, though you can traverse the various levels of the mansion, and then you've got that search button, like I mentioned, and, you know, it's not always just aimlessly searching. You need to be on the lookout for details in the environment, so sometimes you'll come across a chest and you'll get this little, like, noise icon that pops up sometimes above it that means, "Oh, there's something rustling around in there," or it's the type of thing where in one of the rooms I found a button and I'll press the button, and then something gets activated somewhere else, so then I have to explore the rest of the mansion to kind of find the cause and effect or the correlation between the button and, you know, a secret compartment somewhere. So the game has a really great balance, I think, of not only atmosphere, which is funny to say for a game that, you know, is visually limited by that 90s kind of tech within the mind, but I think also what's really impressive is that these games typically are marred by the fact that they have limited capabilities, so you can only do so much in them, but here, the modern spin on it is the fact that it's more or less kind of like a roguelite in that, or you have procedurally generated rooms in the mansion, so every time you die, you're going to return to the mansion, but the room order and the layout and the objects within them are going to be slightly shuffled around, which is, I think, a really great, again, modern spin. You kind of have that expectation of, if I'm going to be going back to this room, I don't want to have the same sort of limited experience, and so that's a great way to get a lot of longevity out of something that on paper seems very simplistic, but there's actually a good bit of sort of interactivity not only in the mansion, but also like small puzzles. You'll find denizens that are scattered throughout, which could be like magic fairies or, like, almost an apparition, perhaps, at times, that will give you clues. You'll have to solve puzzles that are fairly simplistic, but at the same time, again, it's never knowing what to expect when you go back to replay this game, or if you die and then have to return to it, and it really is a game that requires you to scour your environment and to, you know, be on the lookout for little visual cues, but also keeping your ears open for some auditory cues that you might get if you go into a room. And yeah, you know, I thought overall just the aesthetic of the game in general is really, really phenomenal. And I think for a game that maybe people might take one look at and be like, "I've kind of got this pegged for exactly what the experience is going to be." This is one that I was really, really pleasantly surprised, kind of bucked my expectations from time to time. How did you find this one? Yeah, I mean, I didn't know till a little afterwards, you know, who the guy was at the hood actually made it. It was the same person who made "Return of the Obra Den" and "Papers, Please." You know, two games are very much that kind of game, subverting your expectations of what you think they are. And also working with like limited visual style and making something very distinct of it. It also made a game for that play-date console as well, for months after midnight. And I think, I was looking at his list here, he made an LCD version of "Papers, Please" as well, which is quite funny to think. But yeah, I'm fascinated with the idea of like taking all the stuff you must have learned doing games like that and then trying to condense it into something smaller and very backwards, you know, like this. I always found that those sort of LCD games always felt like more intimidating than they should. And normally they were quite action-orientated, which felt kind of counter-intuitive for the kind of thing they were because it just felt too limited with the sort of framework. And this actually kind of feels like it suits that sort of device and idea better than that, which obviously is a great hindsight. But as a result, it makes this feel by fresh and like you've unearthed some game from many years ago that's accidentally sort of heightened the very idea of what an LCD sort of game could be. Yeah, as you said though, you know, first you look at it and think, hmm, okay, yeah, this looks like it's fairly basic, even the limitations of that. But yeah, you soon find all these little mechanics, you know, the whole monster and searching and sneaking sort of aspect of it that you don't get caught unless you're searching. You know, if you're searching, that makes noise, but you know, generally sneak around, you're okay. It sounds very basic on paper and for the kind of game it is, you think, yeah, okay, that would probably be. But even that feels weirdly on par with like a lot of modern horror stuff in terms of like having a stalker enemy that reacts to certain actions and stuff like that. So again, just finding all these great ways to sort of condense puzzles, you know, that horror nature and things and sort of mystery gaming. All into this, it feels like a cheat, you know, it doesn't feel right. I know, obviously technically it's not making it exactly like that, you know, it's not exactly on an LCD thing, but it's clearly following the rules that, you know, as much as possible. Maybe there is the odd thing in there that is dumb for flair, but I think, nah, there's a real understanding of what you could do with that. And obviously, you know, technology wise, we can't with such more in the essence, those were sort of relevant things. And I love that little like instruction manual, you know, on the game page as well, just because I remember seeing so many like it, you know, as well. It reminds me of those and like the old Game Boy ones as well you get with the lovely little sort of drawings of things you'd find in the games and with little tips basically on how you play it. Yeah, it's a great way to sort of do something retro in a very a way I never would have expected. I really didn't think we could make an LCD game that would work like this and be as smart as this. You know, I think it is so weirdly sophisticated. Playing is believing, I think it's the best way to put it. It's screenshots don't do it justice. You really have to get into it to really understand how quite staggeringly good the idea is. I think it also helps if you came from that sort of era and remember those kind of games because otherwise I think that would be lost on you a bit. But I still think even without that knowledge, you can draw something from it and go, well, yeah, this is something really well done on a very small scale, which, you know, it's always the fun thing. I think we find about horror vices when you get that. And obviously from a developer that has made, you know, these big indie hits, you know, that are, you know, have an intellectual side to them. And as well, it feels really cool to see that, not just see starting to get bigger and bigger and bigger and just to keep experimenting these smaller spaces. Yeah, this was a fine pick, you know, and I can't say I want to see a glut of me to attempt on this one, you know, other games trying it because I think you kind of have to have got to a certain level of game development, and like to really sort of come back and make this like this, I don't think anything else would just be like missing the point perhaps, you know, if you try, if anyone tried to do it. But hey, I'd love to be surprised. And, you know, there's always a chance. I think we see it, you know, year on year with horror vices where you get stuff that's a copy of a copy of a copy of certain things that were popular once, but eventually you do get these like really original takes on it, but that takes a lot of time. No, this is just like a very different beast in a lot of ways. But yeah, this was great fun, I would say. So, but that is all we have for this week. So thank you for bringing that to me, Jay. And if you, the listener, have a short horror game, demo, game jam entry, or proof of concept, you think we should be highlighting, please email us at Saferimpod@gmail.com. And Jay, where can they find us on the blue sky? They can find us at Saferimpod in the blue sky. Okay, we got it this time. And we will be back with a more small scale horrors next week, but until then we'll be out searching for more of those wonderful horrors. You
For this week's Horror Bytes, Safe Room's indie spotlight, Neil and Jay chat about Moida Mansion!
Safe Room is a Bloody Disgusting weekly horror video game podcast with new episodes every Monday and Thursday. For additional streaming services, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Linktree.
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