By Alec Meer on December 19th, 2011 at 10:17 pm.
It’s the season of goodwill. Thus there is no better time to play Terry Cavanagh and Increpare’s Flash game about a family who start off swearing at each other and wind up somewhere far, far darker. Unutterably bleak yet strangely moving with it, Oíche Mhaith is an emotionally brutal but deeply compelling and occasionally perversely funny few minutes.
It’s almost more a short story than a game, but the slight freedom of movement you do have succeeds in making you feel a part of the horror. As does the one moment of real choice also being the one glimmer of hope, but one that is ultimately dashed.
I will say no more as forewarning would reduce this vignette’s effectiveness, but must warn that you should not play it if you are easily offended or in the presence of those who are, or indeed are in an even faintly good mood and hope to remain so.
19/12/2011 at 22:44 Keymonk says:
I didn’t really play much of it, but I will say… the music and sounds made me uncomfortable for some reason.
19/12/2011 at 22:54 cptgone says:
pretty good.
also, today i learned… that mommy/mummy can be spelled “mammy” too. who’d have th*nk!
20/12/2011 at 05:11 Vandalbarg says:
The populations of Ireland and Northern England.
19/12/2011 at 22:53 Enzo says:
I don’t like it.
19/12/2011 at 22:56 Andy_Panthro says:
It is unpleasant in many ways, and there was a point where I thought I could get a “good” ending, but alas no.
I didn’t realise at first that it’s the character you’re controlling (Eimear) that’s talking to the doll, but after I realised, it made more sense (probably the saddest part for me).
19/12/2011 at 23:05 vecordae says:
Ha! Good times. Says a great deal about the nature of abuse.
19/12/2011 at 23:08 Lambchops says:
Bleak is the word. I’m sure Terry and Increpare are lovely folk but based on this and some of their other work I might just sidle away quitely if I ever saw them.
Though use of the word “wheesht” made me smile despite the context!
19/12/2011 at 23:13 Hoaxfish says:
All they need is Cactus, and nobody’s mind would get away unfucked.
20/12/2011 at 00:09 Shazbut says:
@Lambchops
The Terrible Whiteness of Appalachian Nights comes to mind. Although I kind of wish it didn’t.
19/12/2011 at 23:12 DeathHamsterDude says:
Oíche Mhaith means good night in Irish, just in case anyone was wondering.
20/12/2011 at 00:53 identiti_crisis says:
I though it looked funny; it’s similar to the Scottish Gaelic, spelled Oidhche mhath. No doubt the pronunciation is different…
20/12/2011 at 05:12 Vandalbarg says:
Ee-Ha Wah, basically. Dressed down, our language looks vaguely retarded.
20/12/2011 at 11:32 roryok says:
Nonsense.
Tour Dumb Un Caw Caw Millish.
20/12/2011 at 13:29 Donjo says:
CHUCKY AR LAW.
Yeah… …sorry.
20/12/2011 at 19:32 DeathHamsterDude says:
@identiti_crisis – There’s a wall in Edinburgh that has all these sayings and whatnot in Scots Gaelic, and as an Irishman, I could read every single one with only having to guess at a word or two. They’re very similar in a lot of ways.
@Vandalbarg – I say oíche mhaith whenever I’m going to bed, and I just so happened to say it while at a relative’s in America. She said it sounded like Native American! ;) Eh Ha Wah! Ever since then I can’t get it out of my head when I say it.
@roryok – ‘Caw Caw Millish’. That sounds like crow-speak to me. Is é an cáca milis bréag.
19/12/2011 at 23:12 bhlaab says:
These indie devs are really breaking new artistic ground by making games where you walk to where you are supposed to walk and then watch things happen.
Maybe if Homefront 2 has 2D sprites and music by Phillip Glass it can be just as artistic
19/12/2011 at 23:48 Ateius says:
Damn it, now there’s water all over my monitor. Thanks, bhlaab.
19/12/2011 at 23:57 randclovis says:
yep, removing any emotional reaction to what you experience sure does make the game seem stupid!
20/12/2011 at 00:30 Grape says:
yep, removing any emotional reaction to what you experience sure does make the game seem stupid!
…Which it is.
20/12/2011 at 00:38 lurkalisk says:
Emotional reaction? It was the tired “bad family situations are bad” scenario with unusually psychotic parents, and it went nowhere interesting (odd, not interesting). It garnered no emotional response from me.
20/12/2011 at 00:42 Buttless Boy says:
<3
20/12/2011 at 00:45 Bobby Oxygen says:
This didn’t do anything for me neither. The buildup was much too short and the storytelling was too clumsy for me to get even remotely emotionally invested.
20/12/2011 at 01:20 soldant says:
SPOILERS:
It’s another clumsy attempt at being “hard hitting” with all the subtly and delicacy of a sledgehammer to the face, or possibly a comically oversize codpiece. It’s almost as if they spend the whole time going “You get it, right? They hate the little girl! And they’re mean to her, right? Get it?!” only to then give you another sledgehammer hint that they hate her and preferred the son they lost.
Got no response from me at all because it’s just an overplayed, stereotyped case of emotional abuse taken to extremes, because apparently gamers are too dumb to figure it out otherwise. On the plus side, at least they’re not making people pay for it. Tale of Tales, I’m looking at you!
20/12/2011 at 02:20 Juan Carlo says:
Yeah, this was really dumb.
I agree about the “Sledgehammer” aspect. It’s like the video game equivalent of that movie “Precious” (which I hated for so many reasons that I won’t go into right now).
The dad fapping to super pixelated porn was kind of funny, though.
20/12/2011 at 04:26 Eukatheude says:
That pretty much sums it up.
And yes, the pixelated porn made me chuckle, too.
20/12/2011 at 04:54 bhlaab says:
I had no emotional reaction to it, but that’s beyond the point anyhow.
It’s like opening a book that’s full of nothing but blank pages but then defending it with “Yeah, but check out the smell of that paper! What a fantastic literature!”
20/12/2011 at 10:29 haowan says:
Wow. None of you, amazingly, seems to have grasped the point that the child still loves her parents despite the abuse, and has come to accept that reality so completely that any substitute, even of a better life with loving parents, would be uncomfortable for her.
20/12/2011 at 12:02 Bobby Oxygen says:
@haowan
Well, you can’t really fault us for that, it being delivered so subtly and with such finesse.
[This is where the world's largest rolleyes emoticon would go]
20/12/2011 at 14:21 lurkalisk says:
@haowan
(edited) I had a response, but decided to let this end with Bobby’s post. Nothing I could really add there…
19/12/2011 at 23:16 Jubaal says:
Very moving and disturbing.
19/12/2011 at 23:28 skinlo says:
Got stuck on the shape puzzle thing =/
19/12/2011 at 23:34 bhlaab says:
Each shape represents on family member’s personality. The only way to find out which is which is trial and error. You’d think this would empower the girl (and the player) to mix and match to create their preferred family but no the only correct answer is to return each person to their own clearly defunct personality even though that is counter intuitive. There’s a story to tell, don’t bother trying to get in the way of it– just keep pressing spacebar and take what you get.
19/12/2011 at 23:54 undead dolphin hacker says:
Ok, so the gunshots.
The first time you hear three (Mom, Dog, Dad suicides). The second time you hear two (Girl, ???).
What’s the second shot for?
19/12/2011 at 23:57 Hoaxfish says:
the doll?
20/12/2011 at 10:32 haowan says:
There are two gunshots both times. The first time, the wife hasn’t been shot, but is dead.
19/12/2011 at 23:56 DickSocrates says:
Filty is Irish for filthy, in case anyone wanted to know.
‘Look at dat filty little fecker.’ for example.
20/12/2011 at 04:53 roguewombat says:
Fecker is Irish English for thief.
‘Look at dat sneaky little fecker,’ for example.
20/12/2011 at 05:05 Chris D says:
@roguewombat
Are you sure about that? There’s a more obvious translation only a vowel away.
20/12/2011 at 15:21 roguewombat says:
Sure? Of course I’m sure… ; )
20/12/2011 at 00:08 Drake Sigar says:
Well this isn’t so ba-OH WRONG, SO SO WRONG!
20/12/2011 at 00:09 mickygor says:
Oh dear… what’s probably gonna be the only game to make me cry this year and it’s a 5 minute flash game on rails. I always was a sucker for kids with sob stories :’(
20/12/2011 at 00:46 Duke Nukem says:
I actually cried. Really well done, Cavanagh is a genius.
20/12/2011 at 00:46 Buttless Boy says:
Well, I enjoyed it but it’s not really a game, not by my definition. It’s a movie where for some reason I have to move one of the characters to the next scene.
By the theme I’m guessing it’s a Ludum Dare thing, so on that basis it’s fine. Still, Binding of Isaac did this theme far better.
20/12/2011 at 01:14 Burky says:
Exactly. The little re-programming section was kinda interesting, but otherwise it was just “press space to receive trite story”. Why do people waste their time making these, when they could be making interesting actual games instead?
20/12/2011 at 04:58 4xis.black says:
Go make an ‘actual game’ and let us know how it went. :P
20/12/2011 at 05:17 Coriform says:
I felt the same way about “To the Moon.” Not to say I didn’t enjoy it – I just felt it was a story that would be better expressed in writing or on film.
20/12/2011 at 06:39 Blackseraph says:
What do you consider interesting actual game out of curiosity?
I would throw a guess, that that would be one where you shoot people? Perhaps zombies? That’s at times only thing people who say such things consider as an actual game. Kinda sad!
20/12/2011 at 07:32 Dr I am a Doctor says:
Some gameplay in a game would definitely be nice.
20/12/2011 at 19:34 rayne117 says:
Somebody’s projecting, huh Blackseraph?
20/12/2011 at 02:02 Electricfox says:
Keeps crashing the browser for me…
20/12/2011 at 03:08 Chuck84 says:
Eh, I normally like this sort of thing, but it seemed clumsy to me. Abusive blah blah, catholic hypocrisy yada, this message has been put forward, and far more elegantly, in other media before.
Damning with faint praise it may be, but i must commend the hallway art for conveying well the dank scariness of the dark hall on a cold Irish night. It has to be kept off to save electricity and all that.
20/12/2011 at 05:03 Coriform says:
What a strange autobiography.
20/12/2011 at 06:59 Sutoi says:
That was stupid. It’s like it’s the new fad to make short, bad retro styled depression stories. It wasn’t emotionally engaging, interesting, or fun.
I will, however, concede that the audio was well done. The music was creepy, and the gunshot startled the shit out of me because it was loud with my headphones on.
20/12/2011 at 07:12 ScorpionWasp says:
I don’t understand all the hate for this. It’s a nice, short, entertaining piece
20/12/2011 at 10:11 MadMatty says:
Well, the wow factor definetly went down after seeing Mike Dianas work:
warning, its not for kids or offended people:
http://www.testicle.com/mikediana.htm
20/12/2011 at 12:48 Shazbut says:
Never heard of that guy until now, but what happened to him is an absolute crime.
20/12/2011 at 13:14 Dizzard says:
I didn’t feel particularly moved by the game to be honest. Although I did feel for Eimear a little, especially at the ending. Although I was probably more sad at the concept rather than this particular instance.