I purchased the full 10 Minute Game Collection and am going to play them in the order they appear in my library. That means this is #7 of 10.
Know in advance what you are getting. As the collection title suggests, a ten minute game is not a triple A title. It is a short game-jam-esque proof of concept / working prototype / execution of an idea. At least that's what I'm going to infer from first impressions.
SLASHER, Interrupted is a short narrative driven game about a spooky campfire tale being told to three very vocal listeners. This is the third game in the collection that is essentially a visual novel. Like the other two, I would describe it more as a visual tale, or a storybook with pictures, being as it is a short experience.
So the concept is simple. You play as the story's narrator, a girl with a name of your choosing. I think the default was Emily and that sounded like a nice name to me. Other acceptable names would be Prosperine, Lamashtu, Mara or Lilith. Lovely normal feminine names.
Regardless of name, we the narrator are on a camping trip with three girlfriends and it has come to that stage of the night when the fire is getting low, people are getting sleepy and a little edgy, and naturally the best method of entertainment is trying to scare the living daylights out of each other with terrifying tales.
The tale begins in a fairly standard horror trope fashion, but it's not very long into the set up of your slasher story before you are interrupted by the three other characters who all have their own idea on what direction the story is taking, or should be taking.
The three girls each have broad personalities and are not very subtle in their tastes:
Ellie is sweet and innocent. She wants everything to be about kittens and parties and fun or cute things. The slasher genre is not for her, and the story you are trying to tell is clearly making her a little uncomfortable.
Rosie is a stoner and she thinks everything should be somehow tied to the worldview of the stoned mind. Paranoia makes the innocuous threatening and the ordinary abnormal.
Caroline is a straight laced bona fide horror fan. She just wants you to tell the story of a slasher sneaking into your house and killing everyone. She knows the familiar beats of the standard horror story and just wishes the other two girls would let you kill them all off in the imagined world.
The fun comes from deciding whose story ideas you incorporate into your tale. You are free to mix and match the ideas of your friends, and so can recount a number of rather different and largely incongruous stories. The results can be quite funny, and even the most gruesome version is still pretty tame.
Each complete telling of the story, and all the dialogue between the telling will likely only take you five to ten minutes to get through. It is quite likely then that you will happily try other combinations of the narrative and try to get as many different endings as possible.
Graphically, the game is sparsely populated. There are cartoon representations of the four girls, each a different colour. Ellie, the sweet girl is pink. Our narrator is blue and so forth. Not really sure if the colour is in any way representative of personality type or if it's simply a way to distinguish between the characters easily. Regardless, the style is fine and would be no better or worse with photo realistic models or with crudely drawn stick people.
Likewise with sound and music, there is not much going on. The sound of a camp fire crackling and spitting in the background, a few various music tracks to act as cues for tone shifts. There is an ominous track when the slasher story is being told, which then becomes a rather jaunty little melody when the girls are all talking over each other back in the real world. The motifs allow you to quickly switch between the realities and personalities without requiring visual cues.
The game is made in the Ren'Py engine by a two woman team. Seemingly the engine has been used to make a couple of thousand such titles, and so if this turns out to be the kind of game you enjoy, you will likely be able to find something similar with a trawl through itch.io.
I personally enjoyed the game for what it was. It's not a genre I am particularly familiar with, or have any vested interest in, but I do appreciate the opportunity to try out a quick sample of what a fuller experience might be like. The tone is lighthearted even though the subject of the campfire story is trying to be scary. The characters while hardly deep or nuanced, are all largely likeable and relatable, and the interplay between them all is believable and clearly draws from the experience of the creators.
It was a refreshing breath of fresh air from the foul acrid murderous blood drenched toxic pools I normally paddle about in, and I believe anyone would enjoy a quick playthrough or two.
My only gripe was that there was no full screen option and so I was forced to play in a large window. While hardly relying on the visuals, I find the very act of playing a game within the confines of a window to somehow be immersion breaking and keeps me anchored to the dark ugly real world. A small detail, and possibly a limit of the engine which while in no way deal breaking is notable.
A nice experience and I would be interested in playing more titles from these creators.
