Farewell ruins of the moon ❤

2022 03 14

we were telling a friend about how scary we found minecraft, and quickly remembered one of the scariest games we've ever played.

metroid dread fragile dreams. fragile dreams is a post apocolyptic adventure game for wii. it's not actually designed as a horror game, much like minecraft! it is one of the least scary "scariest games we've ever played," and we're able to play it it more accessibly than other scary games.

what's it all about?

you play as a person who adventures out into the world after losing their caretaker, in what (appears) to be a post apocalyptic tokyo. for the most part, this person, Seto, is just wandering around, slowly moving towards tokyo tower.
some orphaned spirits and robots appear to still be hanging around, as well as animals (lot, lots of cats).

a lot of the environments in the game are pretty urban. métro station, mall attached to that métro station, urban theme park, sewers, etcetera. everything is quite overgrown and in disrepair states, it's really pretty. long abandoned urban places are gorgeous! the level and environemnt design is so pretty.

exploration.

wandering about has us going through these environments, quite slowly. during our adventure, we'll find a lot of cats, drawings and text, and items that carry the memories of the people who are (presumably) dead. this game has full voice acting in english and japanese, and each of these items have their memories shared by the voices of the dead, and helps communicate their feelings.

the text and drawings are especially interesting. often scribbled onto the floor and walls of structures, they share (usually) vague things to us. sometimes these are terrified cries for help, sometimes they are playful drawings of a little's favourite things and friends. these are really special to us. we can zoom in to read just about any text or get context about certain things, and sometimes their information is added to the map.

THE MAP

"twilight is the time when the sun is below the horizon and..."

the map in fragile dreams is drawn by Seto, as we explore with them. They write little notes about things they find or learn, and sometimes make cute sketches of things they take interest in, sometimes as a way to pass time. The map and its notes and drawings are all trigger-specific, very few of of these trigger fills in large amounts of the map, and oftentimes, notes and drawings are context specific, like befriending cats or story progression.

the game encourages the player to make handmade notes, too. the manual, is contextualised as a sorted notebook, and we believe the game also comes with a separate booklet dedicated to writing. can't find our game case, so we can't check (finding anything specific about this game online is brutal).

we love the map so much. it updates regularly and has so many cute things on it!! so much in fragile dreams is so cute. the out-of-game art portrays Seto as angry and determined, but,, they're so gentle and soft in the actual game,,,. we love how much personality they have.

if you have time and the speed and freedom to look at large images, please look at this!

audio

a lot of the game has no music, full stop. the only non-seto sounds you here are caused by other things in the environment: crackling fireplaces, cats, voices, thought entities, etcetera. music plays in very hauntingly beautiful locations (thank you fragile dreams wiki!). characters' voices cleave total silences and normally quiet sounds are extremely easy to take notice of. most of the other sounds are related to creatures in the environment, as a gameplay way of indicating enemies precsense, or that kitties are near!

seto saying how comfy the fire feels, and listening to the crackles of that fire while the dead share their memories with you, is, pretty. the memories share so many stories that are important to the people, about their partners and friends and interests and items, and more. it talks about their feelings so, quietly and calmly; their dread, happiness, so much!

gameplay

we love slowly expoloring with our favourite flashlight (there are multiple) finding abandoned items full of memories, wall text and scribbles, and sometimes, new friends to make! the game enables us to do this with pretty good (and incredibly cute!) tutorials. doing urban exploration in abandoned sites.

sometimes, pointing around with our flashlight (which is mapped to the controller's infared pointer) uncovers enemies! the game has a very short enemy render distance, and we think this is intentional. in fact, we can only see enemies by shining our flashlight on them! combat is performed using weapon-like objects in the environment (the cover art has seto approaching with a golf club quite menacingly)

these weapons have slow, inflexible, uniterruptible animations, something we think is also a characteristic of survival-horror games. the combination of sluggish attacks and pointer camera controls in a 3rd person game is slightly haphazard! the game is also slightly difficult, and can be frusterating to play. since we explore areas so slowly, and sometimes struggle figuring out how to progress, enemies can become pretty frusterating.

a really cool part of the gameplay is the inventory system. the inventory is a grid, and each space on this grid is one inventory slot (totally: very little inventory slots). we think this is also a characteristic of survival-horror games! some items take up several grid spaces at once, often in unique shapes. as such, organising your inventory is like a puzzle! "what items do i need to bring?", "what spaces must we keep free to be able to pick up an item with these shapes?", "how i rotate and place my items to maximise useful space?"

finally gameplay point: the game has more than three save slots. it took us 11 hours of play time to learn this. wouldve liked to use those extra save slots.