Create religion for animals in the grindark Agatha Knife
Coining it: grindark
A seven-year-old insomniac founds a new religion to convince animals that being eaten is the way to salvation and happiness in Agatha Knife [official site], an adventure game released yesterday. It's the follow-up to MechaNika, a 2015 game about a child building her own mech - which our John quite enjoyed until its anticlimatic ending. Agatha Knife is set in the same 'Psychotic Adventures' world as MechaNika, and Spanish studio Mango Protocol looks to be continuing with that same cheery grim tone. (Note: I hereby coin the term 'grindark'.) Peep this trailer:
The daughter of a butcher, Agatha struggles to reconcile her love of eating meat with her discomfort at slaughter. The answer is (might be) Carnivorism, a religion of her own to convince animals that dying is actually great for them, so they'll be glad to go.
A grindark tone can be difficult to pull off, but John quite liked it in MechaNika:
"Despite its extremely cute (slightly Adventure Time-esque) cartoon design, and a painstakingly patronising unskippable tutorial for how to play a point-and-click adventure at the start, this is obviously not a game intended for kids. There are a couple of moments in there so grim I'm not sure it's intended for adults, either. But it somehow, despite its crassness, manages to feel charming. A real highlight is when Nika bumps into the creators of the game, and discusses with them the consequences of her destroying the world they've made, all done without any awkward winking at the camera."
Agatha Knife is out for Windows, Mac, and Linux, with a small launch discount making it £8.09/10,79€/$10.79 on Steam.