PARATOPIC: An Experimental Horror Game about an Assassin, a VHS Smuggler and a Photographer
Paratopic is an experimental indie first-person horror adventure game produced by ArbitraryMetric, and published on March 15, 2018 on both the "itch.io" and Steam platforms. The Paratopic plot is apparently confusing; here you put yourself in the perspective of apparently three people: a murderer about to work, a photographer who discovers the remains of an illicit industry, and a VHS tape smuggler who works across borders. And that's it.
Paratopic's plot acts in a non-linear way, that is, it is as if they took the plot, cut it into pieces and structured them in an apparently disjointed way. It seems that the developer was inspired by some films of this style, where the characters, dialogues and the direction of the script occur in a disorderly way, requiring the interpretation of the spectator (or in this case, the player). In terms of graphics, the game takes its inspiration from the aesthetics of PSX gaming visuals, with well-crafted low-poly characters and low-res textures.
As for its soundtrack, Paratopic uses it in a peculiar way; it's a dark ambient composite with music snippets and radio interviews (this part only happens during the moments where you control the VHS smuggler when traveling across borders). The gameplay is very simple. You can use the same commands in all three perspectives: the Mouse you use as a camera is the same one you use to take pictures, interact and shoot someone, and the WASD you can use both to move the character and to drive the car.
Given all that was Paratopic, the feeling I have is that I've been playing a game that seems to be cult, since it was only acclaimed by a specific niche, in addition to review sites. In fact Paratopic reminds me quite a lot of those weirder movies, like the ones by David Lynch, with weird things happening all the time and everywhere, plus bizarre soundtracks and really weird dialogue.
You can check out Paratopic gameplay by clicking on this link here and, if you are interested, you can purchase the game at any of the links below:
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