You see it very often now. An indie game is marketed on some sort of gameplay crux that you can tell your friends all about. “I’ve heard of that game! It’s the one that you only have one weapon in.” or “That’s the game that only uses 2 colors!”.

I don’t say this as an attack on independent game developers. It can be hard enough to create a fun experience to share with people, let alone one that is marketable enough for you to break even on the development costs. I am only exploring this observation to talk about how seldom it is that these games go beyond their gimmick and how remarkable it is when a game does.

Two recent examples of this are Minit and The Sexy Brutale. They both have a very similar hook: Your life is on a timer, when the timer is up you die and then re-explore the same space with the knowledge you gained from before. Or as many, many outlets put it “Groundhog day, the video game”. But one of the two really did something spectacular with that gimmick, intertwining it with the narrative to create a heartbreaking late game revelation.

Comparing the first hour or so of each of these games they both seemed like charming games. Minit’s Gameboy style pixel art gave me all sorts of nostalgia; I will always have a permanent Gameboy sized groove in my heart. And The Sexy Brutale has a very dry english sense of humor that comes out from the very beginning.

-Trying to survive through the slow-talking turtle

Getting further into each of the two games, they stay fun. The core loop of the game stays steady, the puzzles get a little tougher. You progressively start having to spin more and more plates  to achieve different goals before the timer runs up. Your standard difficulty curve for games of this ilk. But as I got further and further into The Sexy Brutale the tone and atmosphere began to change a bit. What began as a dark, swanky, burlesque mansion tour of debauchery turns into a surreal fever dream.

If you have not guessed now, Minit is not the game that stood out to me of the two. I had a very fun three hours or so with Minit, and I adored every moment. But it never really broke through the shackles of it’s core concept of replaying the same minute over and over, it was very much a short, fun experience.

Spoilers Ahead For The Sexy Brutale!

On the other hand The Sexy Brutale slogged for a bit, and honestly I don’t know if it needed to have as many puzzles as it did. But the late game really did make it worth the journey.

As I mentioned before, the game starts to take a turn towards the end. The first half or so is full of quirkiness and humor. The murders elevate in oddity as the game progresses; giant spiders, voodoo piranhas, and ghosts for example are all means of death for the mansion’s unlucky guests. And I did found the wackiness of it all very amusing, but it really did not seem to be anything more than that. After 20+ years of playing in this medium I am used to games being kinda goofy, I don’t expect there to be any more depth to it than that.

-Being eaten by a giant spider, not the way I would want to go.

But this oddity grew more and more, becoming eerily absurd. I entered one room to find that there was a literal black hole in it. And then the game drops the twist on you. Tells you that everything was being projected from the Lafcadio/Lucas, the protagonist’s, head. He was the real killer originally, all of his friends and family died from a foolish mistake he made.

-The bizarre hole into the unknown, completely unexplained in the game.

The ol’ fight club, Shamalayan, twist! This is usually not my cup of tea at all, but it makes the entire game make perfect sense. The absurdity of the murders were because he was trying so hard to imagine a way that the deaths could not have been his fault. And the whole loop and gimmick of the game is now given so much weight! You keep rewinding through the same day, trying desperately to save these people over and over again.

I cannot think of too many more games that accomplish this intertanglement of narrative theme and gameplay gimmick so well. At least nothing is coming to me right now.

If you’re looking for some more interesting bits about The Sexy Brutale, this dev diary video is pretty interesting and in some ways ties into the themes here.

 

Well, hope you enjoyed the post! If this made you think of any games then feel free to comment below or shoot me a message on twitter.