What do you get when two outside-the-box creative types come together to make an experimental game about sadness, isolation, and the impact a decidedly one-sided relationship can have on the mind of the abused? You get The Grandfather, an atmospheric point-and-click horror puzzler inspired, in part, by the personal life of one of its creators, Michael Patrick Rogers.
Rogers doesn’t make what one might refer to as “traditional” video games. I got to know him through The Lady, a similarly original game about a sickly woman with no arms who, if I’m remembering correctly, gets lost in a nightmarish world of psychedelic head monsters and raining glass. It plays like a dream, in that you won’t be able to make heads or tails of it, but you know you don’t want it to end because that’d mean it’s time to return to real life.
That’s but one-half of this strange and delicious Oreo. The other half belongs to Grandfather co-creator David Szymanski, the mind behind the quietly unnerving indie game Fingerbones.
Huge shout-out to the enormously talented comic book artist Stanislav Yakima, whose hand drawn art goes a long way in elevating this quirky tale of interpersonal devastation so it can be pleasing to the eyes while it methodically tears us apart from within.
I’ll share my impressions of The Grandfather as soon as I’m finished with it. But really, this is a game made by two inventive storytellers who build worlds and populate them with odd personalities that will either speak to you, or they won’t. Rogers and Szymanski are storytellers, and they’re doing some ridiculously cool — and so, so strange — things with this medium.
The Grandfather is more of this, though playing it can feel like you’re peering into the life of someone who has made art out of emotional trauma. There’s a message here that’s worth seeking out, because if you do, I think you’ll find value in what it has to say.
