You know how every ten years, somebody makes a game about being a spooky deceased so-and-so, frightening the bodily fluids out of a gaggle of would-be homemakers? Yeah. Knock-Knock isn’t that game. In Ice-Pick Lodge’s new thing, you’re the scaree.
Ice-Pick weave an origin story of a 2011 email stuffed with archive files – odd bits of text and video, a barely-there audio recording, accompanied by an oddly-phrased message. Its writer urged them to produce a game based on the attached scraps.
“The stranger begged them to complete the project he’d started, but also let them know that while it may explain the calamity that befell whoever compiled the ominous archive, the same fate might befall them,” reads the press release. “Yet he offered creative freedom and clearly believed in what he was saying.”
I don’t believe them. I don’t think the creators of Pathologic need any help in the inspiration department, nor with things that unsettle, unnerve or unerringly find their way into the back of your head and make a nest there.
In Knock-Knock, you live alone in a house in the forest. But tonight, you have guests. Visitors are working their way between the cracks. Some are already inside, in the kitchen, in the attic, in the cellar. You’ll need to dodge your newfound company, plug the holes in your defences, and make use of the randomised items in your five-slot inventory. Then, maybe, you’ll survive the night. Observe:
Brr. It’s the half-seen things, isn’t it, that scare the most?