Editorials
[GDC 2013] First Impressions: ‘Pulse’
If you didn’t know, the annual Game Developers Conference took place recently in San Francisco and I was on-site for Bloody Disgusting (and for my own benefit, of course). This is the first of three features I’ll be writing on games I first played around with at GDC.
Written by Hayden Dingman, @haydencd
My initial thought when I walked past Pulse at the IGF Pavilion was “Wow, this game is beautiful.” I stood and watched as the person playing threw an object, resulting in a cascade of oranges and greens against a stark black background. I was immediately struck by the resemblance to the Black Velvetopia level of Psychonauts (the one with all the luchadores). I had no idea what the game was, how the mechanics functioned, or anything. I just knew I had to play it.
Luckily, this eye-catcher of a game ended up being something we should cover here anyways. It had just enough in common with horror that I think I can squeeze it in. I mean, if Dead Space 3 still counts as horror, surely we can let Pulse join the club.
Pulse is not a full-fledged game but a game prototype, created by a group of students (Team Pixel Pi) while they were part of the Vancouver Film School Game Design program. The entire project was made over the course of only three months, won Best Student Project at the 2012 Unity Awards, and was a finalist in this year’s IGF Awards.
Better yet, it’s free. You can download and play through the entire prototype here. It’s approximately an hour long.
Pulse is a first-person adventure game where you’re…blind. But not quite. You play a character who lost her sight early on in life, but still has vague memories of what her childhood looked like. She uses these memories to represent the environment as you move around.
As Leanne Roed, who worked on the games scripting and visual effects, told me, “You see what the protagonist assumes the world looks like based on the only information she has to go on, the memories of what the world looked like before she lost her sight. Everything that makes sound is a real object/creature in the world.”
In other words, what you see as a wooden bridge in the game might be something entirely different in the actual world, but she sees the wooden bridge because she remembers it from her childhood. The team was inspired by this short film entitled Out of Sight, which might help you understand the concept better.
You “see” the environment using something like echolocation, where sound functions as sight. Footfalls, a relatively quiet sound, make a small part of the world light up. Walking through crackling leaves makes a larger part of the world light up. Picking up and throwing one of the game’s creatures, called Mokos, causes light to radiate outward from each impact zone. Standing on a button reveals the gate clanking upwards in the distance. My personal favorite was when the wind blew and I could watch it swirl through the level.
And when the monster roars…
Well, you’ll see.
It’s a really unique system and, as I said, beautiful to see in action. You get really vibrant colors contrasting against the omnipresent blacks of the areas you haven’t revealed. The result is a rich and slightly-alien tableau that’s just as amazing during the highly cinematic ending as it is when the game starts up.
Pulse is more horror-lite than true horror, but there’s a real feeling of helplessness similar to Amnesia. You have no way to fight the monster in the game, so you’re forced to run and hide when it finds you. I definitely encountered some tense situations where I attempted to sneak past the monster and then accidentally kicked a pile of leaves, causing it to roar and chase after me. When you do screw up the blindness mechanic also presents a unique challenge, as you have to decide sometimes whether seeing where you’re running is worth updating the monster on your position.
The game as it stands right now is a bit light on gameplay, but that’s not really a surprise—it’s a prototype, after all, and you spend most of the game just figuring out how the blindness/echolocation mechanics work. As for real obstacles there’s the aforementioned monster, and the second half of the game starts to introduce some simple puzzles (hit the switches to open the gates, for instance) but you’re not going to get stuck anywhere. This is a proof-of-concept more than a fully-featured game.
It’s also, as with any prototype, a bit rough around the edges. I wouldn’t recommend pushing the graphics options too high, for instance. The differences in what you’ll see are pretty slight, and I experienced massive slowdown on one level in particular when I had the options turned up. In order to reset the graphics options you need to exit the program and then restart, which can be a hassle. Also, the sound design is serviceable but could be better for a game entirely dependent on audio. However, for a project that only took three months Pulse is a pretty amazing accomplishment.
The team graduated last year, but hopes to flesh the prototype out to a full game in the near future. They have a Kickstarter running right now, though they still need a lot of funding and it’s only up for a couple more days.
I personally hope they make it, as I’m already yearning for more Pulse.
The Pulse prototype is available for download on Mac and PC.
From child-eating witches to village-burning dragons, fairy tales have always had a foot in the horror genre. That’s why it makes sense that, for every The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia, there are also darker and more adult-oriented stories about magical worlds inhabited by ravenous monsters and cruel villains.
Funnily enough, these sinister tales were precisely the ones that I gravitated towards back when I was a kid, and I was reminded of this while watching Netflix’s recently released I Am Frankelda, Mexico’s first ever feature-length stop-motion animation and one hell of an entertaining parable about the intersection between fiction and reality.
In honor of this special kind of horror-adjacent fairy tale, today I’d like to share this list recommending six Dark Fantasy films that horror fans might enjoy.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be defining Dark Fantasy as fantastical stories that don’t shy away from the more macabre elements that fuel classic fairy tales. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own grim favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
I’m fascinated by bizarre attempts at blockbuster filmmaking – especially when the resulting movies are somehow still fun despite their corporate-mandated origins. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is precisely one of these strangely compelling studio projects, as this surprisingly successful action-thriller boasts a lot of heart (and tongue-in-cheek humor) for a CGI-heavy creature feature.
Directed by Dead Snow’s Tommy Wirkola, Witch Hunters re-frames the classic fairy tale as an origin story for a duo of badass monster-slayers. Of course, it’s the flick’s anachronistic aesthetic and overall visual flair that make it stand out from other action-horror endeavors from around the same time.
5. The Wolf House (2018)
Made in the tradition of faux cursed films in the same vein as Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made, the eerie backstory to 2018’s Chilean animated flick The Wolf House (La Casa Lobo in the original Spanish) already makes it a nightmarish experience before the flick even really begins.
After all, the movie is presented to us as a faux propaganda film produced by the leader of a death cult (heavily inspired by the real life Colonia Dignidad), with this hybrid animated feature using complex movie magic to simulate a single uninterrupted shot as it tells the story of a lazy young girl who runs away from an isolated colony and encounters a creepy old house in the woods.
4. The Brothers Grimm (2005)
Out of all the Monty Python alumni, Terry Gilliam has had the most interesting career outside of the original comedy group. From fascinating canceled projects (such as his scrapped adaptation of Watchmen) to dystopian parodies that feel more relevant by the minute (1985’s Brazil), even his “lesser” films are still intriguing in their own way.
2005’s The Brothers Grimm is one such project, with this peculiar movie attempting to combine the comedian-turned-filmmaker’s unique visual style with a more blockbuster-oriented plot reimagining the titular brothers as con-artists rather than mere writers. The end result isn’t exactly a masterpiece, but it’s still a legitimately fun ride with plenty of memorable monsters and wonderful performances by both the late, great Heath Ledger and Matt Damon.
3. Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010)
2010’s Dante’s Inferno game may have a reputation as something of an unapologetic God of War clone, but I’d argue that the now-obscure game was aesthetically unique enough to deserve a bigger fanbase. However, while the title remains trapped on the seventh console generation, its highly underrated anime adaptation is a lot easier to get a hold of!
Animated by 6 different studios in order to make the 9 circles of hell feel unique from each other, this may not be a completely faithful adaptation of Dante Alighieri’s poem, but it’s still one heck of a great (not to mention gory) time that I’d highly recommend to fans of Netflix’s take on Castlevania.
2. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)
My personal favorite entry in the Underworld franchise, Rise of the Lycans, is a highly ambitious prequel that actually works better if you haven’t had the story spoiled to you by the previous Underworld films.
While the rest of the series features plenty of urban fantasy elements as the movies combine machine guns and modern environments with gothic storytelling, Patrick Tatopoulos’ prequel fully embraces its fantastical origins and tells a classic tale about a doomed romance between a werewolf and a vampire amid a medieval uprising.
And the best part is that we get a lot more Michael Sheen as the fan-favorite Lucian.
1. Solomon Kane (2011)
One of my personal favorite movies on this list, MJ Basset’s criminally underseen adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s other iconic warrior is thoroughly steeped in horror ambience and features plenty of memorable monsters. However, it’s also a classic origin story for a swashbuckling hero that wouldn’t feel out of place in a tabletop RPG.
While I’ve already written about how the film deftly combines both horror and fantasy elements without breaking the bank, I’ll never pass up an opportunity to recommend the bizarre movie where James Purefoy expertly plays a puritan John Wick.
It’s just too bad that we never got the other films in this intended trilogy.
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