The Simplest of Scares

                When I was a small child, I used to check the site called Newgrounds.com religiously.  Everyday someone was uploading a new flash game or movie that was a visual marvel to behold.  Some of my fondest memories of the internet can be found on that website.  Newgrounds is a hub of great creativity and one day I stumbled across a wonderfully though out horror game called Exmortis.

The house in the woods.

                This game is a simple point and click adventure game.  You play as a man who has some form of amnesia.  He wakes up in a forest on a freezing cold night and can only see an ominous building a good distance away in the forest.  In order to not freeze to death, you lead the man to the building in order to take shelter.  As soon as he enters the house, it becomes drastically obvious as to why it is abandoned and this memory damaged man has the chance to change the world forever.

Just one of the creepy hallways in the house.

                The bulk of the game is pretty slow.  To play the game now takes a good deal of patience because of the point and click style of gameplay.  In order to investigate the house, I had to click in the exact spots I wished to explore so that my damaged protagonist could navigate down the hallway.  This style of gameplay works well enough, but it was maddening when I couldn’t find the right places to click in the room.  When everything did fall in place though, the game was surprisingly scary.

A kitchen with blood dripping from the microwave?

                It doesn’t take long for things to become creepy in that house.  Trails of blood can be found everywhere and slowly I began to find mutilated bodies throughout the house.  An arm in a library, a bath tub full of blood, a head in a microwave (points to the creator for that being the oddest place to find a severed head), all of these things are scattered about this creaking death hole of a house.  Eventually diaries in the house are found and this is when I began to feel truly creeped out.

I don't think that's where a severed head should go...

                The first diary is that of a man who finds this house at the edge of the forest.  He begins to investigate the house little by little even though he is terrified of it.  The house seems to call out to him, pulling him to return time and time again.  One night he becomes trapped in the house and must stay the night.  The house whispers to him and slowly unseen creatures in the dark begin to torment him.  The diary is a terrifying to read as I pictured this man’s slow decent in to madness.  The diary talks about a book called Exmortis (hey, that’s the name of the game) which is the book of an ancient being called Vlaew.

The book of Exmortis located next to a bleeding heart.

                Without revealing much more, I just have to say that the diaries in this game are terrifying.  I found three of them when I played it again recently and each one of them ends in such twisted ways.  The first ends with the explorer in the woods basically being a madman and succumbing to the voices in the house.  The next one is the actual book of Exmortis which talks about Vlaew’s conquest of the world and his brothers.  It speaks of a way for Vlaew to be brought back to the world of the living.  The last is by a man called Xavier Rehayem who used to live in the house.  He translated the Book of Exmortis and as soon as he finished it, the house started talking to him.  Demons began to torment him and his daughter.  Xavier watched as his daughter slowly deteriorated and he had to take her life.  When he stabs her, she regains control for a moment and thanks her father before she dies.

Just another blood stain found throughout the house.

                That part about his daughter being murdered in the house sets up a pretty terrifying moment.  There was one door in the house that just refused to open and after some triggered sequences, it eventually is left ajar with a moaning sound coming from beyond the threshold.  As I entered the room, a ghost of Xavier’s daughter, Gwen, is seen standing next to a bed.  The bed is covered in her blood.  Clicking on Gwen sets in motion the final moments of the game; she screams and causes the protagonist to pass out.

                I will not spoil the ending, but for the twenty minutes it takes to play this free flash game, it is completely worth it.  Ben Leffler created this game back in 2004 and its two sequels many years later.  With the lights off and volume cranked, Exmortis can offer some of the simplest scares possible for a flash game.  I thoroughly enjoy this game and hope anyone reading this will try it out at Newgrounds.com: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/189227.