Similar Games

Game #1 - The Rain Man

Why Does This Game Matter?

The Rain Man is a game about a young woman who works at an all american diner whilst a murder named (obviously) the rain man is killing people who match her exact description only whenever it's raining. On the day the game is set there is a massive storm about to hit but she still needs to work that day, she needs to think carefully about who she can trust and how to survive the Rain Man coming after her, all whilst trying to get the best of multiple endings. The game includes lots of features like choosing how to do things for different endings, hiding and dialogue, all whilst maintaining a sleek pixel vhs style with large black bezzles at the top and bottom to form the floor and ceiling. 

The game has 3 main genres, adventure, casual and indie, though personally I believe that the game should be tagged as a horror as it can be quite scary when the Rain Man is chasing or searching for you. I aim for my game to feature much more horror and much more suspense than this game, probably making better use of camera movements and sound effects than this game does. 

This game brought attention to short pixel games through the excessive amount of youtubers who played the game and gave it publicity such as Kubz Scouts and 8-Bit Ryan. The game currently has a 100% positive rating on steam with 28 reviews and unlike many games has no scandals with the developers or glaring issues with the game that people point out, making this game stand out as an indie success.

What Can I Take From This Game?

I really like the games inclusion of using a light source such as a lighter with a slight flicker to build horror and suspense, I feel like when mixed with sound effects like rain and wind that that the game will hopefully feature that the horror genre I'm aiming for with this game can become much more pronounced and obvious. Restricted viewing has always been used in gaming such as silent hill and the fog to add confusion, suspense and mystery, things that I feel all fit my game perfectly, the idea of using a power outage and a limited light source perhaps mixed with some sort of a mist from the storm outside could be a perfect mixture for any horror game, including mine.

Another thing I could take from this game would be the art style, I'm not a fan of the VHS overlay as I think it's become overused, but I do like the cohesive pixel art the game uses where the characters and the environment have pixels of the same size, meaning that everything goes well together and nothing stands out that isn't meant to stand out.

My Key Take-Aways

• Pixel Size and Art Style

• Ability To Use Own Light Source

• Different Endings

Game #2 - Lakeview Cabin

Why Does This Game Matter?

I watched someone play this game years ago, long before I discovered the world of game design, this meant I got to appreciate the game in all its glory without thinking about how it worked or what the bugs could be or what engine it was made in.

In this game you play as various characters in different mini-games all stored of different vhs tapes. This gives the game a massive amount of variety and story telling potential but also allows for different audiences to be pleased, if you don't like the gameplay of one section then you can just wait it out and try the next game in the series, something that might appeal to you more than the other you played did. The common theme amongst the game is that it features constant horrific gore and violence, of course with the game limited by the pixel art style in terms of the horrific depictions of death and injury.

Lakeview cabin claimed a 94% positive rating on its steam page, heavily fuelled by large youtubers such as Mattshea, Markiplier and Jacksepticeye, all that have massive audiences and so massive reach for the relatively small game. It's easy to assume that games like the above mentioned Rain Man and Dead Of Darkness took inspiration from this game. 

What Can I Take From This Game?

This game features many different things, some of which including many different stories in a single game, a variety of ways to kill your enemies and a variety of ways to fail and succeed. The game has a massive variety of environments and different objects within each, allowing you to choose your own story and solve what are almost puzzles in how to get things in the game done to progress, such as a chainsaw not having fuel and having to find said fuel before going on your killing spree. Furthermore, the game features things like funny animations that take away from any horror the game has but looks amazing when it comes to the games pixel style and hilarity.

My Key Take-Aways

• Variety Of Stories

• Variety Of Kill Methods

• Hilarious Pixel Animations

Game #3 - House

Why Does This Game Matter?

House is a game that found major success amongst mainly the youtube community, various major youtubers such as jacksepticeye and Kubz Scouts have played this game to their millions of followers, allowing for the game to spread far and wide due to this sort of free advertising. This spread of the game and the ensuing popularity lead to majorly positive reviews, with the reviews of recent playthroughs coming through as mostly positive whilst the reviews from the time around release and recently (all time) put the game as an overwhelmingly positive one. This of course serves to show just how good the game was when it released and how popular it continues to be despite the major hype dying down.

The game centres around a young girl we never seem to find out the name of, all we can really decipher is that her sister is in some sort of despressive state and her mother is continuing with life as usual. 

You must go through the game trying to save your family whilst also trying to keep yourself safe from the various threats around and inside the house, there are multiple endings to the game and you can use objects and items littered around the house at certain points in time to change the ending you eventually get. This makes the game insanely replayable as well as really fun as you try to find out all of the different possible ways to end the game.

These gameplay mechanics coupled with the bright and flavourful pixel art make the game aesthetically pleasing whilst also making the gameplay fun rather than tedious like some other games do when they focus too much on the style and not enough on the actual gameplay, the game is a perfect blend of these 2 parts of game development and serves as a very obvious successful indie title.

What Can I Take From This Game?

Similar to The Rain Man, this game has multiple endings as a central feature, suggesting to me that it's somewhat important for smaller less technical games to have different endings to keep the player coming back for more, the game also features a wonderful pixel aesthetic coupled with a strange way of movement where you can move up and down, left and right, all over the ingame pixel house. This sort of movement would be difficult to replicate and could be too time consuming to do, but it's worth looking into it at the very least. Another thing I noticed was how you can influence the fates of other characters, I really like this sort of gameplay aspect as it stops the player getting tunnel vision on their own character as well as implementing a sort of morality with regret and relief for when you either save a character or let them live. Finally, I could replicate how the player can use items in this game, this would be able to support the other feature of getting different endings as well as supporting other features such as being able to break objects around you by using particular items, it's possible that by using certain items you could get different dialogue options for the NPCs around you.

My Key Take-Aways

• Movement That Can Go 4 Directions

• Items To Find, Pickup And Use

• Dialogue For NPCs

• Multiple Endings

• Characters You Control The Fate Of

• A Fun, Vibrant Aesthetic