The Last Door is a mashup of two genres I rarely play. I don't seek out horror games (I keep telling myself that), and I've never played a point-and-click adventure game before. But a few things grabbed my attention when this week's guest, Adelaide Lohkamp, asked if I'd be interested in playing this for the show.
- While I don't seek out horror games to play, I DO seek out Lovecraftian horror after Bloodborne hooked me on the main ideas.
- This game was made by The Game Kitchen, the Spanish game studio behind Blasphemous, one of my favorite metroidvanias ever made.
And so we were off! And if I take away anything from this game, it will be two things: Never assume that there is a minimum number of pixels that can make a game scary, and seek out Lovecraftian horror media that understands the secret sauce that makes Lovecraft's ideas so fascinating. For me, it was never the idea of Cthulhu attacking, or seeing a shambler that made me think about what I read. The simple idea that there are things out there that we cannot perceive, and even if we could, they would break our simple brains....that's the idea worth exploring, and The Last Door truly understands that.
Joining me to discuss The Last Door is the aforementioned Adelaide Lohkamp, a returning guest on the show. She was previously a guest on the Silent Hill 2 episode last year. This was a really great discussion, and I hope you enjoy the episode!
You can listen to episode 48 of Tales from the Backlog (The Last Door) of Tales from the Backlog in the player below, or you can follow the links to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or search "Tales from the Backlog" in your favorite podcast app!