It’s getting close to the Steam Next Fest, and with the best intentions, I tried to play as many demos as possible beforehand, such as Massacre At The Mirage. It’s not one that was on the radar, but the animated thumbnail looked alright, so here’s what I thought.
You play as cinema workers Nika and Ben during Halloween 1988. ‘Awakening’ in a car park foggier than when nursing a hangover on a crisp Tuesday morning in Silent Hill; you explore your place of work, taking out the trash and loading up the reel with a nod to Nosferatu—using reel (heh) footage from the film the same way Stone does at the cinema.
Back to the lobby, and it’s time to play a bit of roleplay as you switch between Nika and Ben by flicking a bell on the counter; one sells cinema tickets to awkward NPCs that wave each time you meet, the other serves up hotdogs, popcorn and rainbow candy. It’s… boring until some black and white Harley Quinn mofo shows up in an ice cream truck.
While the citizens of Massacre At The Mirage pay for their cinema experience with cash, this horror show of a customer pays in balloon animals and flesh. Bizarrely, that’s not what’s scary about the demo—it’s the voice acting. Seemingly performed by one voice, which wouldn’t be far off a Wish version of Bob’s Burgers, it pops any immersive bubble with its lack of authenticity. Well, the way the customers feel isn’t exactly natural, but it could be forgiven.
Now, we shift to a hobo. Man, this could be my lucky day – I’m now in a poorly designed public space that should never have passed the planning permission. Let’s walk around in a few counter-intuitive steps, head to this van blocking the alleyway with boxes of beer, and then BOOM! the 80s horror flick kicks in.
Granted, Tainted Pact delivers the gore, as anticipated, yet the steps it takes to get there, quite literally, seem quite cumbersome and irrelevant. The graphics in the Massacre At The Mirage demo are very good. Dark – both in terms of lighting and the ‘body art’ near the penultimate scene, though it’s somewhat muted by the voice acting and janky NPCs.
At the time of writing, Massacre At The Mirage is a playable demo on Steam, so if you like this sort of thing, give it a look.
