Indie Gaming Spotlight: The Chzo Mythos

Before Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw became an internet celebrity with his gaming review show, Zero Punctuation, he was an indie game designer. While he made several series during his bout as a game maker, his most famous and by far best was his quadrilogy known as The Chzo Mythos. These 2D point n’ click adventures showcase Ben’s incredible knack for story telling, atmosphere, and horror. Do not be fooled by his low-bit drawings, by the third game he masters the use of sound and timing to create a truly scary game with very limited resources.

5 Days A Stranger
The first game puts you as a thief who attempts to keep a sense of morals, Trilby. When a routine robbery of an abandoned mansion turns into a nightmare, he finds himself trapped in the mansion with four other unlucky people. To make matters worse, a killer is lurking the mansion killing off the group one by one. While the plot may seem like a stereotypical slasher flick, the game is anything but. Ben pays homage to the slasher genre at every turn, particularly to a certain Jason Voorhees, but his story telling never goes to that level;  his characters are interesting and rounded and the secrets surrounding the mansion are defiantly worth discovering. The puzzles aren’t very hard, so people looking for a challenge will go away disappointed but the richness of the story will keep most people’s interest tell the end.

7 Days A Skeptic
The second game takes a leap forward in the mytho’s time line, a big leap. For 400 years, the powerful evil of the killer’s soul has been kept contained, but when a star ship stumbles upon a casket in the middle of space, the whole nightmare starts again. You play as the ship’s psychologist, Johnathan Somerset, and his desperate struggle for survival. After taking a shot at slasher films, Ben moves on to make a game reminiscent of many sci-fi horror movies. The result is just as glorious. The narrow hallways of the ship make for a tense environment and you will quickly find out some members of the crew weren’t exactly mentally stable before the casket arrived.

Trilby’s Notes
The third game deviates from the rest of the series not only in title, but also in game play. While the other three have been standard point n’ clicks, this game features a type entry system that harkens back to the old King’s Quest games. Also while the first two games a relatively light on scares, I can genuinely say Trilby’s Note is one of the scariest games I have ever played. If you play this game with the lights on, your just doing yourself an injustice. This is also the point where the story takes a dramatic turn from being about a single stereotypical horror villain, into an epic tale that seems to be pulled straight from a Lovecraft novel. The music has been amped up too, instead of pulling tracks from RPG Maker like he did in previous games, the amazing Mark Lovegrove has composed a wonderfully haunting score that will give you the chills, so make sure you play with the volume up. Read more below.

6 Days A Sacrifice
200 years after 5 Days A Stranger and 200 years before 7 Days A Stranger  Theo DeCabe, a government worker, gets tangled up with a mysterious cult and is in line to be a sacrificed with two other people unless he can escape.
While this game takes place in the exact middle chronologically, this game is the one that ties up all the loose ends. The game play has moved back to standard point n’ click, but Lovegrove’s haunting score and Ben’s mastery of frights remain making this game just as scary as Notes. The fact that this game throws the whole concept of time out the window is a little disorienting and the ending can be very confusing, especially since most of it is up for interpretation. Overall, 6 Days is a very satisfying send off to a great series.

All 4 games can be downloaded FOR FREE from Ben’s website, http://www.fullyramblomatic.com. Special Editions are also available for $5, or $15 for all four as a bundle. The Special Editions include all sorts of extras such as the soundtracks, further reading material, and commentary from Ben. I highly recommend these games to everyone interested in a good story and being scared.