I rejoined Twitter recently (I can’t recommend doing this). Despite the company’s semi-recent change of hands that resulted in it being increasingly overrun by bots and sock puppet accounts, it’s still the only social media platform I get any value from. Recently, the site’s algorithm has started suggesting I follow accounts for developers of unusual games, which I’m absolutely loving. Most of the ones I’m looking forward to are still in development, but out of the ones I’ve played so far, the most interesting I’ve come across is Basilisk 2000.
The concept of the game is akin to a found-footage movie; the actual developer states he found game files for a project abandoned by another unknown developer and restored them so that others can look through them. The game itself is primarily experienced through the tools used by the original developers, tasking you with piecing together what the game’s story might’ve been about and, more importantly, why the game was never finished. It’s effectively one big easter egg hunt that’s experienced through obtuse search methods with little handholding.The most interesting part of this to me is the community aspect of it. On the game’s store page, it explicitly states that it will be hard to find everything on your own and that information should be shared in the developer’s Discord server. There are references hidden within the game files themselves, something that most people (me included) wouldn’t have the know-how to comb through, ultimately making it a crowdsourced mystery. Lastly, I feel it’s worth mentioning that this is a horror game with some jump scares in it, so steer clear if that’s not your thing. If that’s not a problem, head over to itch.io and you can grab this for $2. It’s not for everyone, but worst-case scenario, you’re out $2.