Kitchen Nightmares: Carrots And Cream

Brendan mentioned Carrots And Cream [official site], but did you play it? No? Then I'll continue. It's a free game created during this month's Asylum Jam, a 48 hour game jam about making horror games free from negative mental health or medical stereotypes. By swapping the asylum for the garden and the kitchen, it offers creeping horror closer to home. It's deliberately tongue-in-check but is also really quite unsettling. Here's why.

If you've used social media in any capacity over the past five years or so, you'll no doubt have spotted at least one cringe-worthy, image-led fan site with 'Porn' indolently tacked on at the end. 'Earth porn', with photos of vistas and mountains; 'shoe porn', with pictures of footwear; and 'food porn', with snaps of cuisine are all top offenders you may have happened upon. What about food horror, though, is that a thing? It is now, courtesy of Carrots And Cream.

Layered with a grainy, Silent Hill-esque filter, Carrots And Cream kicks off with you digging up carrots in the garden. The screen shakes uncomfortably. You're then sat in the kitchen, rhythmically, systematically, grating carrots into a bowl of cream by clicking and dragging the veg across the serrated edge of the grater. Something's up, you're sure, but what? An interjected flashback returns you to the carrot patch from before, only this time you're in control of a hapless worm, burrowing through vegetable roots as you avoid the unrelenting swing of the gardener's (that's you, moments before) spade. You take refuge inside a carrot. You're back in the kitchen, again grating . You might've guessed where this is going. I'll leave the rest to you, but I now can't stop thinking of [DO NOT CLICK if you suffer from Arachnophobia or are easily freaked out by things living in things they normally wouldn't live inside!] this.

Unsettling. If you'd like to be unsettled too you can do so for free by downloading Carrots And Cream here.