If you’ve spent your childhood or specifically, the 2000s hanging around the internet, you may have stumbled across freeware indie horror games. And one of the most popular games from that period was Mad Father.
These pixel bits of horror were mainly created on RPG Maker and the like and usually consists of players playing from a top-down perspective, moving the character across two-dimensional fields, and interacting with various objects. For those unfamiliar, you could imagine the gameplay being something like To the Moon but horror. Upon their release, many notable games gained a following of dedicated fans.
The games were further popularised by YouTuber PewDiePie and the free downloadable English translations made by vgperson. Notable games included IB, The Witch’s House, Yume Nikki, and The Crooked Man. Some, like IB, even broke 1,150,000 downloads in Japan itself back in 2014 and saw similar numbers from the English side.
Now, Playism has announced that the cult-classic horror adventure game, Mad Father, is getting its remake for Switch and PC via Steam. The remake will include fresh graphics and added events, maps and gamepad support.
A new “Blood Mode” included will be available for your second playthrough and added scenarios will alter the story. There will even be extra episodes to give a deeper backstory to the beloved characters. The list of improvements include:
- Updated graphics (characters, maps, some skills, etc.)
- New Events
- New maps
- Gamepad compatibility
- Additional Voices and Sounds (larger variation to the father’s laugh)
- Noise filter function (can be turned off in Settings)
- Added Mission, Help, and Option to the Menu screen
- Controller mapping
- Widened game screen
- Newly added/revamped systems
- Newly added second playthrough “Blood Mode” (greatly changes the main scenario)
- “Doll Maker” added to Museum
- Newly added controller button allocation feature
List of additional episode include:
- A recollection of the Blonde-haired Youth and the Drevis house.
- A secret about Aya’s mother and the Drevis house that is revealed in Blood Mode.
- Play as a new protagonist in Blood Mode, where you’ll follow the curse of the Drevis house.
Set in Northern Germany, the player takes on the role of Aya Drevis, a young girl who avoids getting too close to her father’s “work”. Even at a young age, Aya knows that her father’s research harbours many horrors from the human howling and screams she hears.
“On the eve of the anniversary of her mother’s death, Aya reflects on the past. Sad, lonely, and desperate for something to help her relive happier times, Aya asks her father if they can do something special in memory of her lost mother. Aya’s father agrees and puts her to bed, promising to make tomorrow a better day. But this fleeting glimpse of light is quickly extinguished when Aya is jolted from her slumber by the sound of her father screaming. She jumps out of bed and runs to find her father, only to find the once-peaceful and sombre home now littered with corpses and other horrors.”
As Aya, you must survive your exploration of the family’s manor, getting through the night, solving puzzles and using any means necessary to escape from the corpses and other nightmarish horrors. The game was originally developed by Sen (Miscreant’s Room) in Wolf RPG Editor, and like many of developers for these game, they remain largely anonymous online. Mad Father was first released in 2012.
The Mad Father remake will be available for PC via Steam and Nintendo Switch on 5 November 2020. The game currently goes for USD$4.99 (S$5.50) on Steam and is currently 50% off for a price of S$2.75 as a special promo leading up to the remake until 3 November. The price will go up from USD$4.99 to USD$9.99 (S$13.65) after the remake comes out.
Fumiko is an avid fan of spreading herself too thin and drowning in too many fandoms. She would love to spend all day reading fanfiction at home and crying.
Trinity Sun
