Psychological horror PS1 horror Short horror

Paratopic

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Smuggle tapes, chase a bird, kill a man, and do not trust the road.

Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, Xbox, Switch
Price: Paid
Rated: Mostly Positive on Steam (73% of 2,202 reviews)
Length: about 45 minutes (developer)
Players: 1
Made by: Arbitrary Metric
Released: 2018

What frightens A short first-person trip through a grimy, low-poly world that feels like a bad dream. You smuggle VHS tapes over a border, hunt a rare bird with a camera and wait to kill a man in the back of a diner, as the game cuts between scenes and three lives without warning, and the strangers you talk to say things that are just wrong.
Content: violence.

Paratopic is a short, experimental first-person horror game from Arbitrary Metric. It cuts between three characters: a smuggler of contraband VHS tapes, a birdwatcher in the forest and a hired killer in a shady diner. The fear comes from its uneasy dream logic, its strange strangers and its low-poly grime.

About Paratopic

Paratopic is a first-person horror adventure by Arbitrary Metric, published by Serenity Forge in 2018. It came to Xbox and Nintendo Switch later, published there by Baltoro Games. It is short by design: the makers say a leisurely playthrough takes about forty-five minutes.

You are caught smuggling VHS tapes across a border, and there is hell to pay. You want to find a rare bird in the forest and photograph it. You have to kill a man in the back room of a diner. The game cuts between these scenes without warning, and the work is to piece together how the stories of three characters cross.

It is not a game of monsters and chases. The dread comes from how it is told: abrupt cuts, conversations with people who are slightly off, long drives through the night and grimy, low-polygon rooms that look like a half-remembered PC game from the late 1990s. An hour of dark ambient music, built to sound like a haunted memory of 90s game soundtracks, carries much of the mood.

Critics took notice: the store page quotes Waypoint and notes that Rock, Paper, Shotgun named it one of the best games of 2018. Players are more divided, and it sits at Mostly Positive on Steam, with some wanting a clearer story.

It suits players who like short, strange, art-house horror such as Mouthwashing or Psychopomp, and who are happy to be confused for a while. Those who want puzzles, combat or a plain plot may find it too oblique.

How to play Paratopic

Start a new game; the story begins at a border crossing.
Walk and look around in first person, and use the interact key on people and objects.
Answer when people talk to you by picking a reply from the choices on screen.
Drive, take photographs or use what you are handed when a scene asks for it.
Keep going as the game cuts to another character, and piece the three stories together.

Screenshots

A man with a pixelated face in a dark corridor saying: You have an enemy, friendo

Driving a car at dusk through an empty city street, seen from the driver's seat

Looking through a camera viewfinder at a red bird among dark pine trees

A green car lit by a single streetlight on an empty road at night

Tips

Play it in one sitting with headphones; the soundtrack and the sudden cuts work best uninterrupted.
Look around each scene before moving on; the makers say there is more to find in the detailed environments.
Do not expect every scene to be explained; a second play helps the pieces fit.
If you like it, its makers' later game is Roman Sands RE:Build.