KRITIQAL

Silent Hill, Rule of Rose, and the aesthetics of nightmares

It's relatively easy to create monsters that horrify and unnerve, more difficult to create ones that get under your skin and linger, and harder still to effectively use unreality and uncanniness to build worlds that work like nightmares. Rule of Rose and Silent Hill demonstrate the power of this mode of horror.

EssayHyacinth NilNovember 27, 2022Silent Hill, Rule of Rose, Horror, Nightmares, Abyssal Uncreations

Hyacinth Nil explores morality systems at the end of the world

Indie game dev and co-found of Abyssal Uncreations, Hyacinth Nil (they/them) makes games about cosmic horror, broken technology, and how manufactured online identities. They took some time to walk me through their early efforts of longform LARPs as a kid, looking back on Transfer (Abyssal Uncreations, 2017), and the ways systematized morality reveals the empty politics of many games.

PodcastNathalieJanuary 23, 2021Abyssal Uncreations, Transfer, Killing Time at Lightspeed, Silent Hill, The Tower, Morality, Hyacinth Ramsay, Kritiqal Care