My 2012 belonged to Slender Man. I was easily terrified by creepy, early 2010s computer games like Slender: The Eight Pages, but I couldn’t resist their special blend of unicorn blood and twee. Recently, I’ve been missing the pink bittersweetness of the Tim Burton-style horror games made in those years, like Fran Bow and Alice: Madness Returns, so the inaugural Cozy After Dark Showcase has arrived with a new trailer for Hell Is Other People at just the right time.
The teaser from indie developer Miss Self Destruct describes Hell Is Other People–named for the famous Jean-Paul Sartre quote about being trapped in other people’s perceptions of you–as “a psychological horror about social anxiety.”
Its little girl protagonist has onyx eyes and hair that goes nearly down to her fingertips, so she looks a bit overgrown, like she might have washed up on some riverbank. Otherwise, she seems normal, with a thin mattress to curl on top of every night like any other lonely child. But that’s not what her mother thinks.
https://youtu.be/7VJ07UqoUyI?si=UM_03yezg2sQ1YA-&t=3530
“See what I have to deal with?” Mother says as our little girl stares politely at a party tray of frosted cupcakes.
