John Mulcahey

Stepping away from Norco the game, here’s the slug line: “A sci-fi southern gothic adventure…” I stopped reading here. They had me within 5 words. It delivers on this basic sentiment with enthusiasm and then some; creating a swirl of decay,…

By Christ, this is a good one. I was more or less raised by Gothic literature, as a precocious/pretentious kid, from Poe to Shelley, to later works by Stephen King and Shirley Jackson. The haunted house story is practically engraved in my…

Sometimes you get to play a game so ostensibly intriguing, so fully singular in it’s identity and style you just have to sit back a bit and go “games really are amazing.” Cosmic Top Secret, a highly personal, autobiographical game where you…

Silt is a strange thing — written up as a surrealist adventure horror, where you’re tasked as a mysterious diver sent to uncover equally mysterious things in the depths of the ocean. It’s more or less a really bizarre version of Ecco The…

A bit of an odd one, Lacuna. On the one hand it's a classic slice of Noir played straight, with scifi flourishes. It plays simply, until you hit an investigative sequence. At this point it may well not be as twisting and winding as it seems…

Does Alan Wake Remastered count? Maybe not. If it does, it's that. >So... 2021 huh. Let's leave it at that for a yearly recap. We all know it sucked. Will next year be better... I'm not willing to tempt fate. At least, as ever, media…

Transient is one of those games that, on paper, that I should love. It’s an old-style adventure game; along the lines of Myst. You explore, poke around areas, and solve puzzles. It’s a synthesis of Lovecraft and Cyberpunk, both narratively…

To preface: I have very limited experience with Sherlock Holmes. I have seen BBC's modern series, and thought it was kind of terrible. Vague memories of Jeremy Brett's take on Holmes linger in my mind, as a whip smart, vaguely fading…

Backbone. Backbone, backbone, backbone. Alright. Basics first: this is, as described, a modern take on point and click games. It features detailed, sharply written dialogue and vividly drawn characters. It is rendered in a sort of 2D Pixel…

Once upon a time, I watched David Lynch’s 3-hour long nightmare Inland Empire while I was heavily sick, and actively hallucinating from an intense fever. While watching that movie, the faces appeared to shift away from the actual heads, and…