How does one define “life-changing”? How can we track the impact that fiction can have on one’s life? It varies, of course, but I feel like if it inspires you to create something yourself, then it must be pretty damn good. Pathologic inspired me to create this whole enterprise. This game has inspired me to begin development in earnest on my own game next year, to channel my interests in horror into something productive and creative. Of course, that game is –

1) Fear and Hunger 2: Termina | Miro Haverinen
“But chaos itself is not something to be dreaded. Chaos is but a transitional phase. Where it leads determines whether that chaos is a negative force or not. I embraced the chaos and saw where it led me.”

I still think this is one of the best video games I have ever played. I know I’m not very good at it, nor is it very interesting to watch me play, but as an experience, this game to me remains almost unparalleled I think what it has done best, though, is inspire me to actually want to make something. When I look at Termina, I see a game that maybe I could actually make myself. Unlike the hyperrealism of Silent Hill 2 (2024) or even the tight, endlessly polished gunplay of Crow Country, I can see myself in the creativity of this apparently simple survival horror RPG. But looks can be deceiving.

Fear and Hunger 2 is elegant in its simplicity. A turned-based combat system built from the simple bones of the RPGMaker engine, but turned up to eleven. Every limb can be targeted. Even if you have four party members and are facing off against one abomination, that one abomination can kill you in a turn or two if you don’t play your cards right. The game is blatantly unfair at points, forcing you to think outside the box to survive against certain enemies. Is combat even necessary? No, not at all. But when you’re in combat, the bevy of options make you think hard about what the best course of action is. Can I blind this foe? Should I go for the arms, or do I go straight for a killing blow on the head? Do I whittle down the torso’s large HP pool, or do I just try to flee? Is this spell going to do the trick?

It is the space, though, that transforms Fear and Hunger 2 from a fun survival-RPG jaunt into a revolutionary horror experience. The town of Prehevil is a character of such staying power that I can’t help but admire it. The isometric horror RPG is set in a fictional 1930s setting, where the equivalent of Nazi Germany ended the war early after conquering Prehevil. The significance of this broken town becomes more and more apparent as you find out about its weird customs. The fusion of modernity (malls, shopping streets, consumerism, military bunkers) with dark and ancient things (cemeteries, ritual squares, churches, dilapidated outskirts and old houses) creates a setting that feels tangible. Prehevil has a history to it that you can see and feel as you explore. Each area of town is dominated by a different kind of enemy. The sewers are populated by diseased, insane survivors, or grotesque creatures that wander around on two legs but fight on all fours. The church contains snail-headed priests, gargantuan masked butchers, and ugly piles of muscle. The most viscerally frightening area in the game for me was a military bunker where dismembered limbs are scattered around. Everything is eerily silent. All you can hear are footsteps, and the occasional shrill song of metal crying out to be free from somewhere within these hallways. Somehow, without even the connotation of these hallways being ancient or unknowable, the fear it instilled was itself primal. When I finally encountered the thing that lived down here, I was jolted in my seat. It was not a jumpscare with any loud noise. There was zero “in-your-face” screaming or anything like that. It was just a figure appearing out of the darkness and closing in on me. When combat started, a shrill, stilted laugh was all that I needed to feel a chill run up my spine.

Fear & Hunger 2: Termina does so much with so little. It makes me realize that even though game development is big and intimidating no matter how I look at it, that it is achievable. That one person can make something inspiring, interesting, and frightening. I never would have thought that an RPG Maker game could still inspire feelings of dread or uncertainty. I was placed inside the game in a bodily sense, as my heart raced while I guided my character to flee from enemies, or was pitched into desperate battle, wanting nothing more than to win so two hours of progress wasn’t erased. The cruelty of the game dredges something deep from within my soul. It makes me want to win. Even if I have to sink into the muck to do it, even if I have to fight for every inch and for every bit of humanity, I’ll do it. Termina inspires these melodramatic thoughts in me. It is a rich game that deserves to be played for yourself. It is perhaps emblematic of my own struggles this year. Termina is a game that demands you dig deep, and a game that demands your time and your attention. To look away while playing Termina is to falter and to fail. You have to focus. You have to pay attention to everything you’re doing – even as you die and lose hours of progress thanks to the save system causing the passage of time. Oh, I think to myself every time I play it, I can do this dungeon before saving. That’ll mean I have more time to waste later on, during the really hard stuff. Inevitably that always bit me in the ass, but learning to put yourself back together is an important part of the process. Picking yourself up after failure is much more rewarding than never having failed at all.

Termina has positioned itself as one of my all-time favourite games not simply because it’s “good”, but because it has an attention to detail and theme that stands out. Grotesque monsters are not just grotesque for the sake of it; they are parodies of the self, reflections of how characters think, and what they fear. There are countless little narrative triggers dependent on who survives and who doesn’t that add to a feeling of immersion. Every playthrough is different. Every moral choice is complicated by unforeseen complications down the track. You are left struggling to survive in a town that doesn’t care about you, so you have to force it to care. You have to find a way to survive and damn anyone who doesn’t want you to. Even in the dark, there is a light – oh wait, that might just be a one-eyed doctor with a buzzsaw facing off against Hitler. But still, my point stands.

Video games are a portal to other places, but they’re also a portal to the self. I stand by what I’ve said previously, that play is intimate. Play reveals aspects of ourselves. I wonder what you think of watching my playthroughs. I might hide my face and not reveal too much about my personal life while playing, but I like to think that aspects of my personality shine through. While I play Termina, I feel furtive, uncertain, afraid. It is the creeping anxiety of time passing. This year I had to say goodbye to one of my closest friends, who I will no longer have the pleasure of living in the same town with. Termina was a comfort for me through the year. It let me work through feelings I wasn’t totally in tune with yet. It let me define myself as tough, as silly as that sounds. Maybe it’s a weird kind of power fantasy, where I have to feel like I’ve earned it. I have to crawl through glass-embedded mud before I get to feel accomplished. But I did it. And I’ll do it again.

–

Thanks to everyone who has supported me through this rough and uneven year. I hope you’ve been looking after yourselves, and I also hope that you have enjoyed reading through what I’ve been putting out. I know I haven’t been anywhere near as present as I wanted to be. I wanted to be producing stuff all year, and there’s so much I’ve wanted to do, I just haven’t had mental focus or energy to do so. To my patrons: I hope I’ve put out enough this year to justify your ongoing support. I feel pretty guilty about not doing what I set out to do at the start of the year. But I also know that as the year pressed on and my stress levels and mental health worsened, there’s no way I could have stuck to six videos. Not at the quality level I wanted to produce, anyway. So I really can’t thank people enough for sticking by. I do recognize that this isn’t the year I wanted to have in the one sense, but it’s the year I got. I’m looking and feeling stronger, but also looking to the future with uncertainty. How does my identity align with the global mood? It doesn’t. But I’ve come too far to stop now.

Next year I will produce more than I have this year – which won’t be a high bar to clear. But I thank you all the same for your kindness and your support. I want to be there to do the same for you. Will I ever make it big? Who knows. But I do know I want to try – and right now, that’s enough.

Merry Christmas everyone, look after yourselves.