"i am made of blood :>"
Kitty Horrorshow
is an indie horror developer who specializes in creating Psychological Horror games, specifically ones that look like they came out from the mid to late nineties. She avoids using cheap Jump Scares and instead settles for an atmospheric and Nothing Is Scarier approach to her games.
She has a Twitter page here, and a Patreon page here. Her itch.io page offers a few free bundles with a handful of games each, called Haunted Cities, for those who want to sample her work before deciding whether to become a supporter.
Works:
- 000000FF0000
- Actias
- Anatomy
- Chyrza
- Cyberskull
- Dust City
- Haunted Cities (includes Leechbowl, Grandmother, and Pente)
- Haunted Cities Volume 2 (includes Gloompuke, Monastery, Scarlet Bough, and Roads)
- Haunted Cities Volume 3 (includes Basements, Castle Wormclot, Ghost Lake, and Seven Days)
- Haunted Cities Volume 4 (includes Exclusion Zone, Grandmother's Garden, Tenement and Lethargy Hill)
- Here Is Where I Carve My Heart
- Hornets
- Rain, House, Eternity
- Sigil Valley
- Sunset Spirit Steel
- Wolfgirls In Love
Tropes applying to Kitty Horrorshow and her work include:
- After the End: Several of her games take place after apparent apocalyptic scenarios, though the cause is rarely apparent. The games that tie into Hate (see Shared Universe below) generally take place after her hornets have wiped out all life on Earth.
- Alliterative Title: Sunset Spirit Steel, anyone?
- Bizarrchitecture: Many of her games contain odd or impossible buildings.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: A very subtle but very effectively done case in 00000ff0000. The game comes in a nightmare of folder management, with dozens of redundant, nearly identically named folders until at long last you find the game. It boots up as normal, and appears to be a similarly unsettling game in a brown environment with static-y sound...until the game goes dark for a second... and finally decides to announce itself.The in-game text:I d o n't waant you h e rR e....B U T I N E E D Y O U HE ERE
- Game-Breaking Bug: Intentionally used for atmosphere. It's not uncommon for her games to crash at the end.
- Nothing Is Scarier:
- Kitty Horrorshow's specialty. The vast majority of her games involve looking through big empty rooms or worlds, trying to decipher what's going on and waiting for something to happen. Only some of those times actually lead into traditional scares; she's often content to just let the dread build.
- Leechbowl in particular has the player search through a city and finding hidden messages and propaganda with the threat of bloodsucking leeches watching from afar throughout. You don't see them until the end.
- Self-Parody: Gloompuke is done in the same style as her horror games, but is actually a brightly colored, dialogue-heavy comedy which occasionally pokes fun at Horrorshow's own writing and design quirks.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story:
- Hornets ends with you attempting to kill off the eponymous insects with the Fire Rune. Being of divine origin, the hornets are unaffected. The Runes are the gods' weapons, and cannot work against them. The Hornet Goddess, Hate, laughs at you. The End.
- During the course of Lethargy Hill, a story is told to the player about the nameless "mother" living in the house on the hill, and her attempts at creating a family. Though, as the story progresses, the mother realises that she just can't stand her creations and their flaws, and she destroys them, reducing them back to the lifeless matter they were made from. Having decisively gone mad from her resultant loneliness, the mother decides to start creating again, leading the player character into her domain to be torn to bits for raw materials.
- Shared Universe:
- Several of her games are connected through the shared mythos of Hate, a terrifying goddess who unleashes her gigantic hornet children to wipe out humanity. A deep red sky is usually an indicator that she's present. It's heavily implied that you're actually playing as Hate in Monastery.
- In Grandmother, you can find a book filled with disturbing and surreal passages in the grandmother's farmhouse. The same book can be found in the library in Monastery, with an accompanying note stating that it was recovered from a ruined farmhouse.
- SkeleBot 9000: The eponymous Cyberskull, a large floating skull that spins around and plays a distorted version of the "Spooky Scary Skeletons" song when approached.TALK SHIT GET BIT... BY THE CYBERSKULL!!!
- Smash to Black: Or smash to desktop. Most of her games end rather abruptly, sometimes with one last message.
- Surreal Horror: All of her horror works apply. Sometimes you might at least find out the source of whatever horror is happening, but even then it's not likely to be anything easily imagined.
- Trans Tribulations: The protagonist of Seven Days is a trans woman, and several of her diary entries reflect her struggles with dysphoria, transphobia, and other issues.
