The Horrors of Next Fest - Hellmart
A first person shop simulator game with a day-night cycle of running the store then keeping out monsters (possibly in humanoid form) with a side of clearing up an assortment of “anomalies”. It controls like most first person sims of its type and contains some of the charmingly janky visuals and physics weirdness of the genre. The idea is solid: running a store alone in the middle of a strange nowhere, with strange customers, a mysterious boss who is somehow watching you from afar and the looming threat of nighttime horrors.
There’s mechanical complexity too. There’s an increasingly-hectic juggling act of store duties; you need to clean, stock shelves, ring up customers, keep the generator running and more before you even get to dealing with anomalies and the creatures wanting to get inside. Keeping up with everything will clearly become a challenge and lead to inevitable mistakes, and inevitable dangers. Horror and tension through the pressure of management.
The issue for me personally is that it feels like inhabits The Backrooms/The Exit 8 horror arena. There’s nothing wrong with that, I don’t find that particularly compelling. I’ve given the genre a fair shake. I kept an open mind and dived in to watching Skinamarink, various Backrooms films and many other analog horrors, I tried out some of the games. Sadly none of it scared or unnerved me, and most of it wasn’t narratively compelling either. The only one that’s had any effect on me is Tim Oxton’s work with Flathead/Silk Bulb Test, which is due to his excellent art design and understanding of atmosphere. Sadly, Hellmart just fell alongside The Backrooms into my personal pit of disinterest.
That said, if you are into that genre then I’m sure Hellmart will work for you. The demo has great reviews on steam, so it’s definitely onto something good for fans and with some more polish I reckon it’ll be a solid entry for you folks.