Once they started calling me that, I figured if I owned the podcast, they couldn’t use it against me.
Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket! It’s the middle of October which means we are right in the middle of horror season, and so today we’re talking about Sally Face. Sally Face is a horror adventure game made by a single person that mashes together so many elements of horror that you might find it surprising that the game actually manages to be surprisingly sentimental. While the game begins with a combination of real world horror and a couple of ghosts, it quickly spirals out of control and adds more and more elements, potentially as a consequence of its episodic release structure, or maybe a desire to fit all the developers ideas into the game, but whether you find this disarming or charming is going to come down to personal preference. It’s a game that has a certain edge to it from its lo-fi production and subject matter, but in the end, if you stick with it, you will become strangely endeared to the characters. We’re going to talk about how tone and atmosphere fit around overall aesthetics, having a mix of different mechanics thrown in for variety and how well it was pulled off, and we discuss this games meets meets meets between Nickelodeon cartoons, video games and collectible cards from the 80s.
Thank you for joining us again this week! This game comes from a recommendation from an IRL friend (thanks, btw, if you’re reading this), and we were pretty surprised by how positive we came off on it. Which is a spoiler for the episode, I guess. If you played along, let us know how you felt about it down in the comments or over on Discord! I would imagine for people less entrenched in adventure games this may feel a little mechanics-light, but it hits a sweet spot I think for most audiences with a tolerance for the kind of game this is. We’re going to be wrapping up Halloween on another pocket episode, so be sure to join us while you’re carving your jack-o’-lanterns or eating candy corn or whatever you do for the season as we discuss Carrion next time!