Horror, Grief & Aliens

What's new on Savvy Gaming Network for the Month of November 2024

Its been a long month here at Savvy Gaming Network. We finished up a couple of horror games on the list from last month. Reading the Alien Isolation novelization for the book club, and sadly going through the loss of my dog. My dog was one of the inspirations behind the website fox mascot since she was a very foxy looking shepherd. This month she died suddenly at the young age of three of a blood clot. To try and cope with this I played some games about grief.

Lets start with the left overs from October -

The Quarry

I’m always a sucker for these games. There short and sweet and fun to play with friends. The Quarry is one of Supermassive best interactive movies, really giving the B movie slasher vibe that Until Down did. Although I royally messed up my first playthrough I still think this one is worth a try especially if the Dark Pictures wasn’t doing it for you. You can see my full thoughts over on SGN.

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Don’t Fret: The Audition

One of the demos I played this month was Don’t Fret, a mascot horror title taking place in a surreal music school. It peaked my interest when I heard that Rockit music was involved. Since two of my guilty pleasures are mascot horror games and nerd core I felt that this was a perfect fit for me. I was left very confused but the game mechanics and the vibe itself was enough to peak my interest. I’ll have to check it out when it launches next year. My full thoughts are, as you know, on SGN.

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Grief struck me mid November with the loss of my dog. I had a whole article about my trip to Goodsprings for the Fallout New Vegas event but right after that trip my dog was hospitalized for a blood clot. It felt wrong to write about the fun time I had in Vegas after all that so I played a couple games I had saved on my computer about grief. I had hoped it will help, but it feels strange to seek out games about grief when your grieving. Its like listening to sad songs when your already sad to what? Make you more sad? Should I be playing happier games like farming sims? For some reasons I sought these games out, here are my thoughts on them.

GRIS

I’ve been waiting to play GRIS until I was in grief. I heard this game uses the Kübler-Ross model of grief so I thought It would help me deal with mine when the time came. I realize now that is silly. GRIS is so ambiguous that it can be used for any woe. Its a beautiful game and should not be slept on for as long as I did. My full musings are on SGN, but just know that this game felt like a warm hug telling me its going to be okay.

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Tail & Trails

I peruse my Itch.io launcher quite often, saving games to my collection. I finally played one of these, a prototype named Tail & Trails. Its a cute little game about taking care of your grandma’s three headed-lizard after she passed away. On your way to watch the sunset you give the lizard items and see the preferences each head has. Depending how how many hearts each head has depends on the ending you get at Sunset peak. A short and sweet game about opening your heart and moving on is honestly just what I needed. You can play the prototype yourself on Itch.io and read my whole thoughts on SGN.

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Finally the Book Club, you may have read in our first newsletter that we have two reviews of Alien Isolation. One by my sister who didn’t like it very much and one by me who liked it a lot. For the SGN Video Game Book Club my sister picked the novelization of Alien Isolation for us to read and it was, in our opinion, not very good. Although what’s funny is she seems to like it much more then I did, I guess that’s what liking the source material more will do.