The Safe Room

cw: suicide, bullying, animal/pet cruelty, animal/pet death

In this episode of The Safe Room, Grace and Rose discuss the cult classic 2006 survival horror game Rule of Rose. We talk about the game’s non-linear narrative, how it handles themes of bullying and abuse, and the legacy it leaves behind as a Silent Hill-inspired work. We also take listener questions and once again rank the games we have covered throughout the past few years!

cw: suicide, sexual assault, domestic abuse, alcoholism

It’s time. We delve into the Silent Hill 2 Remake and discuss its handling of the originial game’s themes, the new (and pretty good) combat system, and how it handles (and mishandles) key scenes from the original game. We top it all off with a flurry of listener questions, where we talk game preservation, that damn pizza, and more.

We talk the toy-like and immaculate Crow Country. We discuss the game's elegant take on survival horror, its consideration of childhood, nostalgia, and its characterful writing. After some listener questions, we get into a sprawling convo about Souls games, the Internet Archive, and our individual plans for October aka the season of Rose!

Content warning: general gore and violence, body horror and limb dismemberment, ableism, misogyny.

In this episode, we strategically dismember both versions of 2008 classic Dead Space. We talk about differences, downgrades, and improvements across versions, decide just how good the guns feel to fire, and work through the politics, and psychology, of having a dead wife™.

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell’s essay on Dead Space

Grace’s original review of Dead Space Remake

Content Warnings: general violence, suicide, discussion of abuse and child sexual assault from 59:00 to 1:06:00

Grace and Rose explore the at-once simplified and maximalist survival horror action of Killer7! We talk about the thematic power of its ~vibes~, its surprisingly sharp sense of humor, and how wonderful it feels to shoot an enemy in their weak spot. It’s good to be back.

We talk about the classic detective visual novel The Silver Case! We discuss police procedurals, visual novel aesthetics, mysticism vs. science fiction, and why games should be like television.

We talk about the “compilation” game Fatal Frame III: The Tormented which attempts to wrap its two prior games into an overarching narrative, with poignant and evocative results. We discuss its many annoyances, its ambitious structure, terrifying ghosts, and all-timer final cutscene.

Post mentioned: “Fatal Frame III: The Tormented Reemerges Today on PSN”

Grace’s “Killing Our Gods” Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ginalouisefowler/killing-our-gods

Next time: The Silver Case

Content Warnings: sexual assault, death by fire, suicide, self-harm

We discuss modern FMV games Her Story and Immortality. We discuss these cinematic narrative games, their sometimes dazzling, sometimes uneven structures, and have big thoughts about writing narratives games so concentrated on women on camera.

We talk about the unsurprisingly competent and surprisingly comprehensible The Evil Within 2. We discuss the game’s new “open level” structure, even while it imports most of what made The Evil Within so good, how (and whether) the conventional story landed for us, and our favorite bosses and characters.

Grace and Rose close out the year with the classic Resident Evil 2002 remake. We discuss the beauty of its fixed camera angles and pre-rendered backgrounds, the weirdly arbitary difference in difficulty between the two protagonists, and about how tank controls are good, actually. Towards the end of the episode, we rank all of the games we covered this year.

Next time: The Evil Within 2