“I’m sorry, we don’t really do that”
Thoughts on Obsession
The 2025 horror film Obsession is intense. Really cool to see a new horror film playing on tropes and still bringing some fresh ideas to the scene. It’s a familiar premise: guy gets a monkey’s paw type wish and suffers for his thoughtless actions.
The writer and director, Curry Barker, also has a short horror film called The Chair on YouTube that shows off his style and sensibilities. The Chair is a bit more uneven than Obsession; clearly a director trying things out and seeing what sticks. Yet the short film still boasts an incredibly unnerving scene. Obsession feels a bit more polished and thought out.
The film is scary, funny, and sad. We can’t help but feel for Nicky’s character as she loses control of her body under the spell. Baron shows his immorality throughout, ignoring consent, resisting any pushback from concerned friends, and never really thinking about anyone other than himself. Despite the heavy topics, there are comedic moments that are expertly pulled off.
Video Game News
I don’t really keep up with video game news actively. Most of the stuff that I hear these days could be called “Internet word-of-mouth”. I’ll see people talk about things on Discord or Bluesky. Many of the gaming news websites that have been around forever haven’t aged well. I stopped reading Polygon and Kotaku ages ago, mainly due to hearing horror stories about how they treated their writers. Even in its hey-day, IGN was never my thing; too many of their news posts were so brief that they should have just been tweets. Or they made too much of their coverage in video format. Smaller sites, like Rock Paper Shotgun, seem to still be going strong.
With that preamble out of the way, here’s some stuff that’s coming down the pipe.
Tenebris Somnia is an upcoming horror game made by Andrés Borghi (an Argentine filmmaker) and Saibot Studios. It mixes live-action video cutscenes with a 2D pixel style reminiscent of old Sierra adventure games. The film footage looks pretty stylish.
Veritas Tales: Witch of the Dark Castle is a video game that looks like it will play like one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books. It features art made by Nishimura Yoshio, a developer who formerly worked at Vanillaware (a studio known for Odin Sphere and 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, to name just a few). It’s especially interesting to see a video game go all out to mimic the style of playing a solo paper-and-pencil tabletop role-playing game. Certainly not the first game to do it — the Sorcery series of CYOA books has already been ported to a digital format — but it makes me wonder whether this kind of game acts as a bridge to get more people interested in trying paper-and-pencil TRPGs.
Stellar Blade: Blood Rain looks visually impressive. I enjoyed the first title’s gameplay and setting. Its story was half-baked, unfortunately. It boiled down to characters without clear motivations, coupled with some “twists” that didn’t land since they didn’t develop the core plotline enough. Will they focus on the writing this time, or will it be more solid gameplay with a lacklustre plot? I don’t want to sound overly harsh, of course. In this first trailer we see that this new character eschews a blade for her fists. Will swordplay return at all, or will the title be irrelevant?
Valve’s Steam Frame and Steam Machine are apparently on track to release this summer, despite the hardware shortages caused by slop companies and their boosters. I was surprised that Valve didn’t use its Steam Deck ordering system when the new version of the Steam Controller released last month. They sold out within hours (minutes?) with many people complaining online that scalpers had bought a significant number of them. Valve has since implemented a waitlist for when the controller is back in stock. Hopefully they will not let scalpers run away with the Frame and Machine.
The Frame is intriguing for its ability to run some low-spec games without requiring a separate PC. I’m curious about it, but dreading the day when they announce its price.