Mystery Channel [the catamites]

Mystery Channel is a collection of minigames/stories by the catamites.

Opening the game throws the player into a screen filled with a screen; a static-filled television takes up the whole game window, and a remote control floats in front of it. Clicking the remote opens the frame narrative; a Vincent Price/Crypt Keeper style host greets the player, and gives short explanations of the various "films" that can be chosen. Clicking any of them causes your computer to open a prompt asking you to authorize a new executable to be opened; it's horribly unimmersive, which is great. Or, it's a form of immersion which leaks from "the text" into the operating system, which is also great.

The games range from clicking through dialogue to wandering abstract spaces with little signposting and fluid player-avatar relations. Often, the game will simply dump you into a screen, forcing you to press the arrow keys and hope for a response. Then you end up wandering toward the edges of the screen, hoping for a new screen. Sometimes your avatar just wanders off.

In one game, which consists entirely of a screen with a small, static-filled television and a(n umodified) Final Fantasy VII-style dialogue box, an reading of horror films is given; they are "the depiction of a world only a single failure of luck or attention away from becoming a screaming, nightmarishly stupid monster dimension." This, on the other hand, is a game where villains will menace, but can ultimately do no harm.

[10/29/2014]