BLOODSPORT A terrifying minigame and prelude to the highly anticip...

9 years ago

BLOODSPORT

A terrifying minigame and prelude to the highly anticipated BADBLOOD

How scary can a horror game be if it keeps you rooted to the spot, with only a 360 degree view of your surroundings? And after you know what to expect, how replayable can it be?

Winnie Song’s BLOODSPORT answers both of those questions with a resounding “very”.

Song released BLOODSPORT as both a promotion and a prelude for her hotly anticipated, already-Greenlit BADBLOOD. It stands on its own, but it shares some stylistic and thematic elements with BADBLOOD.

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Despite the relationship between the two games, they play quite differently. BADBLOOD is a 2-player, 3rd-person, split-screen game of hide-and-seek-and-kill. BLOODSPORT is a single-player, 1st-person game of I-spy-or-I-die.

You’re lost in the woods at night—don’t ask why; it doesn’t matter. You have more important things to worry about right now, like surviving the night.

Your survival is made even more of an open question by the demon/creature/monster/Thing that’s decided to torment you for Its evening’s entertainment. Or dinner. Or both.

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You find yourself rooted to the spot (perhaps by fear, or by some dark magic). All you can do is look around—this includes being able to spin in a complete circle—and blink. In fact, you must blink every so often, and are forced to if you let your blink timer run down.

I can remember a couple of other horror games using a blink mechanic, but it feels fresh here. The vaguely eye-shaped, but actually diamond-shaped, aperture through which you view the gameworld adds to the feeling of confinement and claustrophobia.

The Thing in the woods tells you that It won’t kill you if you keep your eyes on either It or your trusty compass, which you’ve been clutching in your hands like the last remnant of sanity. Here’s how Its sick game works: It tells you in which direction, relative to you, It’ll next appear. Then It vanishes from sight and you twirl around, possibly looking down to quickly check your compass, until you are facing the place you expect it to materialize.

During this process, you’ll need to blink at some point. Just make sure that you do it before the Thing reappears. If It does, and you’re not looking right at him (or your compass), whether because your eyes are closed or because It’s just outside your field of vision, It will leap from the shadows and kill you.

Supposedly, you can survive until sunrise. In fact, the first 3 people to manage this feat of timing and orienteering will win prizes in real life. According to the developer, “First THREE people to send a screenshot of the SUN to [email protected] or @songfeuds will get a free code for BADBLOOD and a physical copy of BADLANDS PERIODICAL.”