I’ve come to the conclusion that it was a mistake to play the demo for cyber horror recreation Oneway.exe on my lunch break. I am not going to let you know what I had for lunch – I believe if I describe it in full, I’ll throw up. However I’ll say that it featured pink peppers and purple onions, and I now want by no means to see these colors ever once more.
Additionally, it is attainable that I am nonetheless enjoying the demo for Oneway.exe, as a result of the sport takes place inside an off-brand mock-up of a desktop working system. Sure, we’re in Every little thing Is Going To Be OK territory. Hypnospace Outlaw-ville. Pony Island, er, land. However you by no means noticed fairly such… sights in both of these video games, so far as I can bear in mind. You by no means noticed such reds and purples. You by no means noticed such pleasant little piggies.
There is just one strategy to inform if I’ve profitable exited Oneway.exe’s demo, and that’s to pull random photographs from my screenshots folder into the center of this display, and see if they’re eaten. Let’s strive that now. Oh thank god.
Now, let me flip round slowly, simply in case there’s a hideously disfigured catgirl leering behind me. Ah phew, we’re within the clear. All I can see is a few man having lunch in the home throughout the road. Argh, lunch. Let’s not dwell upon such issues. Let’s speak concerning the recreation, I suppose, now that I’ve decided past affordable doubt that I’ve ceased enjoying it.
Created by Disordered Media – who wholesomely describe themselves as “a husband and spouse duo with a small group of pals with the shared ardour of making” – Oneway.exe is about being caught inside one other, deserted recreation, Untitled.exe, and making an attempt to work out what occurred to its three builders, whose notes litter the desktop, and who’re hopefully fictional.
It combines snatches of first-person exploration and puzzling with a seeping collage of impressively parodied aesthetics from throughout the historical past of the web: gobbets of MySpace, video streams of a Minecraft-like recreation, discussions of “controversial indie video games” on “Glitch”, you get the concept. It is each a celebration of digital tradition, and a putrid palimpsest of “the worst elements of web nostalgia”, to quote a trailer blurb. It’s home windows upon home windows upon home windows, incoherent and hungry.
Whereas firing up the sport throughout the recreation, you are handled to some city legends a few lady who had her pores and skin peeled off. Then you definitely’re transported to a darkish hallway of locked, labelled doorways, plus one unlocked “Meaty” door resulting in a bed room. One wall of Meaty’s bed room is roofed by what appears like a personality editor from a noughties Barbie Flash recreation, which helps you to toggle between attire, hairdos and equipment in return for cake. The cake is used to feed a cheerful little mutilated piggy inside a digital pet recreation on one other wall.
A 3rd wall carries a projection of a weblog, the place an unknown poster gushes in curly fonts about creativity and dressing up and did you ever take into consideration how a weblog is sort of a physique with organs? (>ww
Oneway.exe’s physique horror metaphors aren’t precisely delicate, thus far. Typically, it simply seems like a gleeful B-movie atrocity – squirming, cackling pulp. I doubt it has the wit, eerieness and pathos of Nathalie Lawhead’s work. Nonetheless, there is a depth to its depthlessness. All of the bloody, bony objects you discover in Meaty’s room are additionally flat photographs, invisible from the aspect. The New Flesh remains to be determining its personal contours – there is a sense that every one it may be, in the meanwhile, is pores and skin. However maybe for those who preserve feeding it cake…
The sport’s first “module” is out now on Steam, and it nonetheless has a demo as of writing. In the event you’re within the demo, I strongly advise you look via the content material warnings within the readme file on the sport’s simulated desktop, earlier than enjoying Untitled.exe.
I additionally strongly advise that you simply think about the Steam opinions earlier than shopping for, and possibly await the primary patch – proper now, there’s speak of a glitch or two that blocks progress early on. As and when these technical issues are addressed, Oneway.exe has the makings of a memorable stomach-churner. In the event you just like the premise, however want extra intercourse in your cyborg horror, possibly take a look at Fucksweeper.
