If you’re a video game developer looking to make waves this spring, there’s an easy way to do that: create a game that requires you to organize some kind of inventory while also ignoring The Horrors.
To waityou could say, that’s just… life? I do that every day in my closet!
A justified response! But consider: Have you ever had the pleasure of finding the best place to put an eldritch fish among your unused fabric, or a chicken egg next to your military-grade rocket launcher?
Examples of this format include some of the very best games of the first quarter of the year. There’s the Resident Evil 4 remake, which brings back the original game’s attache briefcase and grid-based inventory management. There is also the popular fish indie horror game Dredging, in which you search the depths of the ocean for unimaginable aquatic horrors and find space for them in your grid-based cargo hold. And then there’s the nightmarish survival game Sons of the Forestwhere you put your inventory on a tarp and hope nothing monstrous finds you while you rummage around for some mints or whatever.
This is currently my favorite gaming trend, coinciding with the celebrated remake of Resident Evil 4, a real trendsetter in this subgenre. Introduction to spatial reasoning Tetris as salve against the stress of zombie-like parasitic villagers, or the cosmic horror of hunting for ghostly fish, just makes for an infectious and amusing gameplay loop: John Carpenter horror followed by Marie Kondo cleanups.
The two things working together is where the magic is: I find every single aspect good enough, but what brings me back is the organization next to the nightmare. Perhaps this is the secret to a more organized life: letting a zombie loose in your house so you can finally clean out your closets.