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Halloween 2020 Double Feature: Ib and Alan Wake

Since we have literally nothing better to do for all of this year, I decided to basically spend all of October in Halloween mode. So we got the time to play two (wow two!) whole games.

First up, a game called Ib.

Ordinary, non-demonic looking child.

What were your expectations for Ib?

Personally I didn't really know anything about it, but I knew from looking at a screenshot that we were dealing with an RPG Maker situation. That kind of set my expectations of what would be possible, as I had quite a bit of experience with that particular engine. What about you? You were the person that put it on the docket.

W….was I? I don’t even remember hearing of it before seeing it on the list. *eerie noises* But yeah really I thought you put it on there. Looking at it reminded me of that Yume Nikki game though, which I still haven't played. It seemed like a game probably made by a female indie developer and I guess I was hoping for something suspenseful and bizarre.

So let me set Ib up for you fine folks. You're a young child called Ib, and your parents drag you on a trip to an exhibit of a famous, eccentric artist. Like all good Horror parents, they let you wander around by yourself, and before you know it, you've lost track of them and have no idea where they are any more. Not long after, it seems like the art's coming to life. (It did) 

Rude isn't that the Dragon Age: Origins logo?

Yeah so it’s the suspenseful game I hoped for, with an art gallery lending itself to a ton of weird variety and surreal imagery. Loud door clanging and footsteps were one of the major features of the game, as well as mannequins, dolls and things changing in rooms when you’d come and go. I was kinda glad to discover it was one of those no-combat RPGmaker games that are just made up of a lot of neat setpieces, some talking and items. What was your favourite “moment” from the game?

I don't want to give too much away, but I really liked how it played with paintings in particular. Their contents could change as you went along, and you could interact with some, depending on what you were carrying. We even had an instance where we thought two paintings on different floors looked like they could be thematically connected, and they were. It all ended up being pretty intuitive, but satisfying to piece together. What was yours?

Are the straights OK?

Same, there were lots of cool setups, some really simple but brilliant. Like the “guillotine” scene. Loved it. I also enjoyed when we walked into a room full of dolls and you just went “NOPE!” I think that summarised the mood of that game well.

All in all, Ib was dope, and given how short it was, I think it's a pretty easy game to recommend to people who are looking for a quick Halloween night trip. It's free too. Couldn't have asked for more. We had plenty of time in the month left though, so we did end up seeking more. How about you introduce our second game?

Alan: Isolation

It was a dark and stormy night…. Oh wait it kinda was. Anyway we played Alan Wake. It was a cinematic story driven game about a writer who was perhaps TOO GOOD at writing for his own good. So your idyllic trip to all-american spookyforest becomes a zomp-romp as you are pursued by ~dark forces~ who kidnap your lovely wife and send lots of fighty humanoids after you, that can only be defeated after being exposed to beams of light. What were your thoughts on Mary Su-er, Alan Wake?

Gotta be honest. He didn't really make the best impression on me. When you make stories about someone who is just so immensely amazing and talented in their field, you're just inevitably writing cheques you're going to be expected to cash in. Does Alan, writing rockstar, pull that off? Not really. He just comes off as very masturbatory, and this is only made worse by all the non-stop praise he gets from the characters around him. I don't even think the character changes at all throughout the story. He is exactly what your first impressions are of him, and remains that way 'til the very end. Most of the ideas were fairly generic in general, to be honest.

Heeeere's references!!!

Yeah I feel you. It didn’t help that they name dropped authors so often it became cringey, and they had so many references it kinda didn’t have much identity of its own to me. It was stephen-king-hp-lovecraft-twin-peaks-alfred-hitchcock the videogame a bit. I did love one aspect though: Barry. What a lad. Best boi.

Yeah, I did enjoy Barry. He was your publisher friend/comic relief guy. Cowardly, a little whiny, and basically just there to make Alan look good. Unfortunately for Mr Wake, Barry oozed with personality, and was super endearing to me. When I think of the best and most memorable moments in the game, Barry's in both of them. There are some other side-characters, like the cop lady, who I also thought was fun. All the others were just genre-tokens, or "homages".

Alan Fake

I guess we talked a lot about the story (as that did seem to be bigged up as the main feature) but besides that I did at least find the gameplay went down very smoothly for me. It was mostly stop and pop, a bit of dodging killer furniture and middle aged man parkour. You had to make sure to disarm things with your torch, making it your most valuable weapon of all. There’s journal entries and frivolous flasks of coffee scattered around to collect, which I got a bit obsessed with.

The spooky combat sections were unfortunately the part that didn't really do anything for me. The core gimmick of shining light on things was cute at first, and thematically worked fine, but I got pretty tired of it after the first couple of hours. Unfortunately that was the meat of the remainder of the game, which would last a dozen more hours. There were some neat set pieces to break up the monotony, but that monotony loomed over the entire thing like some kind of off-brand horror entity homage with the serial numbers filed off.

At least it had furries

Yeah, I definitely felt like the game peaked in the middle chapters where it introduced some strong locations and setups. Still, it managed to keep me motivated enough through the whole game. I guess one thing that surprised me… I didn’t find it that suspenseful and scary, really? Or like, not eerie. I don’t know. I felt like you could have just told me it was an action shooter game like Half Life 2 or Resident Evil. OK I guess those are technically horror games. It just wasn't going to haunt me afterwards the way games like Amnesia or NightCry did, you know?. Final thoughts on both games?

Ib was spooky and fun. Highly recommended from me. Alan Wake, is a little trickier. Didn't do much for me, but it wasn't really a genre I particularly liked in all fairness. It also didn't really feel super spooky, like you said. It just used the appearance of spookiness like a hat, much like it used ideas from more interesting stories as a sweater. What about you?

Yeah it definitely wasn’t a chore to play either of those games for me. But Ib was a much more excitingly bizarre and memorable journey, whereas Alan Wake was a competently made game of its time that I don’t feel did anything particularly exceptionally when you compare it to anything of similar genres and themes, such as Doom 3, Life is Strange, Deadly Premonition…? Maybe I'd feel differently if I played lots of indie RPGmaker horror games though, dunno. My advice? Check out whichever of the two games looks and sounds like your kinda thing! And decorate yourself like a christmas tree because you’re worth it baybeeee!

LIT UP LIKE A CRYSTAL BALL THATS COOL BABY SO IS U