trying to remember a creepy old side-scroller

December 5, 2022 8:22 PM

What was that creepy indie Windows game from several years back that started out as a sort of generic Super Mario style side-scroller but got weirder and more unhinged the further you got?

It was something someone was talking about here on MetaFilter or AskMe. It was a indie game for Windows that you installed. It started out fairly innocuously but as you got deeper there was like this creepy eldritch decay that seethed into the art and experience. I want to say it was somewhat Cthulhu/Old Ones/Unfathomable Alien Horror sort of thing. I want to say it subverted expectations but not in like an Eternal Darkness sort of way.

I'm sorry I cant remember more about it, I just know I never finished it.

posted by glonous keming to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

The experience sounds like Doki Doki Literature Club, but it's the wrong genre--it isn't a Mario knockoff, but an anime-styled dating sim that gradually reveals itself to be... something other than that.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 8:50 PM on December 5, 2022

Braid?
posted by evilmonk at 9:00 PM on December 5, 2022

Best answer: Eversion is like that. And even apparently cited by Doki Doki Literature Club.
posted by Snijglau at 9:02 PM on December 5, 2022 [2 favorites]

Ennuigi by MetaFilter’s own cortex? (Previously. More on Wikipedia.)
posted by mbrubeck at 9:04 PM on December 5, 2022

Response by poster: it was Eversion! Thank you thank you thank you.

i will also check out the others.
posted by glonous keming at 9:19 PM on December 5, 2022

You also have to check out Omegaland, which is this exactly. Generic Mario clone, until the mask comes off and everything gets weird. Still makes for a playable and fun game. (Small indie game by the writer of The Talos Principle.)
posted by snarfois at 9:27 AM on December 6, 2022

Pony Island does the same thing, starting as a cute side-scroller and getting progressively darker and weirder.
posted by Hogshead at 2:16 PM on December 6, 2022