I DO love a good mystery-horror story, with bonus points for setting it in the past – which is why I was intrigued by Mothmen 1966 when the review opportunity e-mail arrived.
Developed by LCB Game Studio and published by Chorus Worldwide for PC, the game is a pixel art cross between a visual novel and a Choose Your Own Adventure-type story – described as a “Pulp Pixel Novel” and perfectly captures the style and atmosphere of Commodore 64/BBC Microcomputer/Acorn Archimedes-era PC games.
The official blurb sums the whole thing up pretty well:
Lead a pair of lovers, an investigator, and a gas station owner through a suspenseful night during the strange Leonid meteor shower of 1966. Navigate a dreadfully tense narrative paying homage to ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books of the ‘80s and investigate the red eyes piercing through the distant dark woods, stalking every movement.
Face devious brain-teasers and clever mini-games across eleven chapters drenched in atmosphere enhanced by ZX Spectrum-style 8-bit visuals and an ethereal lo-fi soundscape. Observe obscure cryptids with binoculars, and dive ever deeper into implausible mysteries blurring the line between scientific fact and science fiction.
Despite a limited colour palette (literally black, white, green, teal, and red) and pre-sound card era audio, the game is visually striking and the deliberately limited audio really does help recreate the experience of playing a computer game in the mid-1980s.
The thing is, this is basically a somewhat interactive visual novel rather than a game in the traditional sense. There are some mini-games (including Solitaire and fighting off some attackers) but mostly it’s just clicking through the text and making choices which, if they turn out to be wrong, you can go back and try again.
The actual story itself is quite good, but I found the pace uneven – there’s a slow buildup which establishes some of the mystery and introduces the character, but then the main focus of the events, including some pretty significant reveals, don’t get the explanation they need and I found myself saying “Wait, what?” a couple of times during the proceedings.
The action switches between the point of view of three characters over 10 chapters and they offer a different perspective on what’s going on.
The actual writing is a bit patchy in places too, which is disappointing. The second-person narrative style is a nice throwback to old text adventures, but it also results in some clunky transitions and segues.
The short length of the experience – maybe two hours – means the story doesn’t really get the room to breathe that it needs. I also didn’t get a “Pulp” vibe from it, but when I think “Pulp” I tend to be thinking 1930s/1940s rather than 1960s. The Mothmen thing is a good choice for a backdrop, though, and is definitely the stuff of good mystery fiction.
Overall this is an interesting experience and intriguing throwback to very early computer game adventures, but not long enough or engaging enough to be more than a nostalgia-inspired diversion for me.
