New ideas and mechanics in games today are as valuable and rare as masks in pharmacies in many Russian cities. It’s all the more gratifying that it was our compatriot under the pseudonym ASH2 who invented and released the game Knock Harder, which, perhaps, had no analogues yet and which could well become an adaptation of one of the crazy novels Philip K. Dick (Philip K. Dick).
Cloudiness
So, imagine: you are attacked by a brain parasite (something like a headcrab), which plunges a person into a state on the border between sleep and reality – the author calls this multi-level sleep. It is unknown when it will end and you will wake up in reality. If within the allotted time you do not understand that you are in oblivion, then the parasite will finally subjugate your mind and kill the character in reality.
If you realize that this is a dream, then you need to either shoot yourself before the timer expires, or let yourself be killed by the zombies who constantly attack the hero. Then the character will survive, but will find himself in a borderline state, where his own mind, represented in the form of a green leprechaun, communicates with him. After listening to another portion of his caustic comments (“What to do, what to do? Don’t eat after six,” “Or maybe they’ll give you a cake after the time is up.”?"), we again find ourselves in a state of either sleep or reality.
And only if you determine that you are definitely in reality and hold out until time runs out, will the hero really survive. If you kill yourself, and it was not a dream, then, naturally, you will die and will have to start all over again.
The author himself calls all this the “gamification” of situations in which Dominic Cobb was in "In the Beginning" (and the film largely used ideas from “Ubik” Philip K. Dick), Doctor Who under the influence of snocrabs or, for example, Rick and Morty in a simulated reality chamber.
Groundhog Night
As you understand (if, of course, you understand anything at all), our main task in Knock Harder becomes making the right decision, where is the dream and where is reality?. This is despite the fact that we are having Groundhog Day here (or rather, it’s night – it’s very dark around) and everything is unfolding again and again in the same house, in the same scenery. Literally several rooms are available on easy difficulty. Then normal difficulty becomes available, where many (but not all) doors open. And only on the “hard” we have the whole house at our disposal.
To survive, you need, accordingly, not only https://bidbingocasinoonline.uk/mobile-app/ to shoot zombies and spiders but to search everything around in search of cartridges and first aid kits (you can also ask your comrades who hold the defense in different parts of the house to share them). This is exactly the simplest thing – although at a difficult level, in the dark, when the flashlight has already run out and new batteries have not been found, you have to desperately shoot back in the darkness, which also tickles your nerves.
But no, the main thing is to carefully study and remember everything around, trying to compare and notice something strange. There are, of course, obvious situations. For example, on the skin of a bear on the floor, instead of an animal’s head, there suddenly appears to be a human one. Not red, but green liquid drips from the monsters. Or the clock hands will start spinning madly, and the title inscription will appear on the wall: Knock Harder.
Glitch as a feature
However, there are often much more difficult to discern signs of sleep, especially at high difficulty levels. For example, you see how the character falls through the textures and even seems to move there. Or his body begins to move separately from his legs. Is this a glitch or just another of the many randomly generated sleep symptoms??
On the table in the living room there is a note in which the wife of our hero calls herself and him by different names. And at the same time he reports that the husband did the right thing by boarding up the windows in the bedroom. We run there, check if there are boards or bars there. Then we explore a few more rooms and in one of them we find another note or message on the monitor screen, where other names are mentioned. Or the same ones? Run to check, although time is running out? Or that’s how it should be?
Here it turns out that dreams in Knock Harder, it seems that they can penetrate each other, and one reality can be layered on top of another. And if in one you are Henry, then in the other Bill. If in one, when you see that in a family photo, instead of our hero, the man from the portrait in the living room is posing, this is a sign of sleep and you need to shoot yourself, then in the other it seems to be normal. Or did I miss something? Or is it something wrong with me?? As a result, it seems that you yourself are starting to slowly go crazy… By the way, sometimes even the main menu here, when you try to exit, supposedly starts to “glitch” – and it’s not immediately possible to understand this.
Why this way and not otherwise?
Here, in fact, the main and in fact the only problem appears Knock Harder (simple graphics and animation don’t count – this is an indie after all) – the difference between the player and the author is in the understanding of what should be considered a sign of a dream and how it can be justified or not.
ASH2 himself, in his post on DTF, acknowledged this problem and wrote this: “The fact is that with the very concept I climbed onto a rather slippery slope: giving the player something that he himself, with his cockroaches in his head, may consider “strange”, and leaving me with all the bumps, because “Why the hell did I die?”?“. It just so happens that the player is ready to justify absolutely any oddity in some fantastic way or to think up something and decide that the game hints to him about the need for suicide where this is not even close.”.
Further in this article, the author describes the same situations with the generation of character names in notes, with the association between a portrait on the wall and a family photograph: “At an easy level of difficulty, many players walked, saw a portrait, saw a photograph, thought that they clearly correlated, and killed themselves (although, it would seem, you never know what kind of portrait it is). The majority believed that the face in the portrait and the photograph should be the same, but there were those who thought the opposite.”. And even after the changes made, ASH2 admits that in these and other situations there are still “many semi-fantastic loopholes to justify losing”, that there is always room for “Maybe” and “Why should it be so”?».
In other words, in Knock Harder there is a very fine line between the perception of dream/reality signs by the player and the author. That is, the unusual concept itself in some places begins to work to its detriment, which periodically (especially on high difficulty) leads to exclamations like “Well, now why did I lose?!».
In any case, the game was a success. And to the author Knock Harder I just want to say thank you – it is on such enthusiasts (and I worked on my project ASH2 for more than three years) that if not the entire gaming industry, then certainly its desire to surprise us and give fresh emotions rests. Therefore, I want further development Knock Harder – the potential of this concept seems to have not yet been revealed. The author himself told me the following about this: “At the moment, the game is just being polished, but yes, there are plans to add new signs of sleep, and also, possibly (but not for sure), attach controls to the gamepad for transfer to consoles.”.
Pros: a unique and truly interesting, unusual concept; built on searching for signs of sleep in reality; tense, uncomfortable atmosphere; there are funny dialogues and situations; great soundtrack for the atmosphere.
Cons: There is only one location – I want variety; There may be an annoying dissonance between the logic of the player and the author, but this largely follows from the concept itself.