Puppet Combo's Games |OT| PS1-Styled Grindhouse Horror Extravaganza

[Dusk Golem]

Puppet Combo's Website

WARNING: These games include violent, disturbing and cruel content that may not be suitable for all audiences.

I've been meaning to make a thread on this dude for a while, he's maybe one of the most consistent and yet ambitious indie horror game developers out there right now. He makes 80s-themed grindhouse and explicit horror games with a PS1 and VHS graphical style.




I was inspired to finally make this thread as I'm very interested in his current project, "The Glass Staircase", which is a game pulling inspiration from Italian Giallo Horror as well as the older Resident Evil games:




He's kinda' been a cult hit in the indie horror game scene for the last few years. He first hit the scene a few years ago with "Power Drill Massacre" and "Babysitter Bloodbath", but has since taken to Patreon and made a goal to release updates to his various projects at least once a month in return for people's monthly input, and to allow all people who pay him on Patreon to have full access to his past game's library and his current projects.

His game's are certainly not for everyone, they're all kinda' rough around the edges, they're very difficult games usually, a number of them do include jumpscares (and I am not kidding when I say I think Puppet Combo knows how to produce some of the scariest jumpscares I've ever experienced in a game), and some of his games have various disturbing themes that may make some uncomfortable, tapping into religious abuse, sexual abuse, unrelenting violence, and dealing with concepts that can be unnerving like an unkept catholic church building, a deep web torture porn website game, a killer offing teens to sacrifice to a God who may be real or in his imagination, and such things.

I find myself very endeared to his work though, and know his reputation has been on the upswing among genre enthusiasts who don't mind a bit of depravity for his specific style of horror.

Though he releases all of his games to Patreon Backers, he's taking a few of his more polished games and releasing them soon onto Steam, starting with Stay Out Of The House:


And released a few onto itch.io, such as Nun Massacre:


https://puppetcombo.itch.io/nun-massacre

Since he's such a busybody, I thought I might just make a topic to write down what he's been up to, and see if anyone else on ResetEra either already is or might potentially be interested in his games. He's been a very interesting developer to follow.

 

[litebrite]

Yeah, I've been keeping track of his games because I'm a huge fan of his aesthetic choices. Good thread.

 

[Dusk Golem]

Yeah, I've been keeping track of his games because I'm a huge fan of his aesthetic choices. Good thread.

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I think the PS1-esque style he goes for is the initial point of interest for many. Some may be turned off by the fact most of his games are legitimately quite difficult (a mixture of the fact that whenever threats pop up in these games, they're often startling and can make you panic/freeze up, matched that those with puzzles often can be a bit cryptic at times, though I find his puzzles very thematically interesting!), matched with their unforgiving nature sometimes. But I've come to even like those aspects of these games, and think they do enough interesting and unique things to keep what he cooks up interesting.

Also speaking of his aesthetic choices, I really appreciate the pseudo box art he does for his games, and was reminded of the physical disk he made for a few of his games a couple months back:

Definitely can dig it.

 

[The Silver]

I really like the PS1 aesthetic for horror, it's so dirty and grimy and it leaves more room for your imagination to fill in the blanks.

 

[Deleted member 5549]

power drill massacre is so good! I thought the other ones (haven't seen them all) were either too ambitious or too complicated. but they clearly have good ideas and am interested in what they come up with next.

 

[litebrite]

I think the PS1-esque style he goes for is the initial point of interest for many. Some may be turned off by the fact most of his games are legitimately quite difficult (a mixture of the fact that whenever threats pop up in these games, they're often startling and can make you panic/freeze up, matched that those with puzzles often can be a bit cryptic at times, though I find his puzzles very thematically interesting!), matched with their unforgiving nature sometimes. But I've come to even like those aspects of these games, and think they do enough interesting and unique things to keep what he cooks up interesting.

Also speaking of his aesthetic choices, I really appreciate the pseudo box art he does for his games, and was reminded of the physical disk he made for a few of his games a couple months back:

Definitely can dig it.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I would love to see how how some of his games would look with higher production values. However he does quite well gettting the most out of very little.

 

[Nax]

Ha, this shit is awesome. As a big fan of horror movies/games/etc, I would love to check these out. Hopefully he gets 'em out on console some day.

 

[Garmonbozia]

I've kept up with him ever since I found out about Babysitter Bloodbath (when it still was a Halloween fangame) through a podcaster that I used to listen that did voice work on the game.

Always liked the PSX aesthetics and his references to Giallo.

 

[SofNascimento]

Which game would you say is the most accessible?

Also, I was waiting for the right monetary situation to get Devotion but now that game is gone? Any word on that?

 

[Aaron D.]

Nice.

Any ETA on Staircase?

Will it be on Steam or just itch?

 

[Aaron D.]

Which game would you say is the most accessible?

Also, I was waiting for the right monetary situation to get Devotion but now that game is gone? Any word on that?

Click to shrink...

Devotion is coming back to Steam at some point according to the devs.

No idea when.

 

[AllThingsPurple]

Cool trailers. Colour me interested.

 

[Dusk Golem]

power drill massacre is so good! I thought the other ones (haven't seen them all) were either too ambitious or too complicated. but they clearly have good ideas and am interested in what they come up with next.

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I can definitely understand that viewpoint. A few of his games I think appeal more in this direction, like Night Shift, Spiders, Feed Me Billy, etc., but his more mainstay games can be complicated. Like I kinda' adore Nun Massacre, but I'd say it's one of his harder games in many ways.

Ha, this shit is awesome. As a big fan of horror movies/games/etc, I would love to check these out. Hopefully he gets 'em out on console some day.

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To see if anything might ever come there, these works are about as indie as indie can get, but with his rising reputation and interest in his games, who knows? I imagine if they ever went to console it'd be a collection of a few of his games though as none of his games are entirely too long (most are somewhere between 30-180 minutes long).

I've kept up with him ever since I found out about Babysitter Bloodbath (when it still was a Halloween fangame) through a podcaster that I used to listen that did voice work on the game.

Always liked the PSX aesthetics and his references to Giallo.

Click to shrink...

That's an interesting way to stumble onto them, I think a lot of the spread has been that a number of streamers/podcasters and people involved in the horror scene are endeared towards his works, which is definitely slowly getting him more andm ore out there.

Which game would you say is the most accessible?

Also, I was waiting for the right monetary situation to get Devotion but now that game is gone? Any word on that?

Click to shrink...

So this is a bit hard to answer since some of his games are no longer freely available like they used to be, like Night Shift I think is an easier to digest game by him, but that's a prologue chapter for Stay Out Of The House, was a demo of sorts, so it's no longer available. I think once Stay Out Of The House is fully available it'll probably be the best game by him to start with as it's the most polished and eases you into it a bit more than his other games, and I think why he's making that one the first one he releases on Steam, but it's not out yet (though there is a fairly detailed build you can download from his Patreon.

So don't expect to complete the game, but I think many discovered him through Power Drill Massacre, which was one of his first games. It's good at what it is, but expect to never beat it as it's a really hard game.

Personally out of his publicly available and finished games, Nun Massacre is my current favorite, but that game can be really cryptic sometimes. It's a finished game, you don't get thrown into the deep end immediately, and I think has more interesting story and environmental story telling than most of his games. However, the puzzles can be cryptic and it's not forgiving in the sense that if you die, outside of the prologue which you can skip you do kinda' have to start all over. I'm very endeared to that one though.

Nice.

Any ETA on Staircase?

Will it be on Steam or just itch?

Click to shrink...

He released a demo for Staircase a week ago, and this week released a further updated demo to his Patreon backers. I think Glass Staircase stands a chance to be one of the game's he puts to other platforms, but right now it's Patreon only as he's working on it.

 

[Dusk Golem]

Just released the full version of The Glass Staircase, the game can be picked up for non-patreons from itch.io for $6: https://puppetcombo.itch.io/glass-staircase

 

[hypodrmage]

Thanks for this thread - love the 80s horror aesthetic. Reminds me a bit of the original Manhunt, with the grainy and gruesome footage.

There is some great indie horror is out there, so I'm excited when I learn more.

 

[Magyscar]

I played through The Glass Staircase yesterday. I really enjoyed the tension building throughout the first half but the second half was a bit of a letdown. This is mostly due to an absolutely terrible aiming system combined with some not so great camera angles.

I died a couple of times towards the end because I would get stuck somewhere during a fight and be completely unable to see my character or know what I was stuck on due to poor camera placement. The autosaves are pretty stingy as well. Having to redo the basement section multiple times was a real tension killer.

Really makes me appreciate how much effort Capcom must have put into camera placement back in the day.

I wish it had the classic RE aim lockon instead of the terrible crosshair also. Even when it looked like it was placed on an enemy I was apparently aiming off to the side or my bullets just weren't registering. This combined with the painfully slow reload made certain parts frustrating.

Some really cool stuff in there though, like most Puppet Combo games. Loved the hedge maze especially.

 

[Deleted member 5549]

I played through The Glass Staircase yesterday. I really enjoyed the tension building throughout the first half but the second half was a bit of a letdown. This is mostly due to an absolutely terrible aiming system combined with some not so great camera angles.

I died a couple of times towards the end because I would get stuck somewhere during a fight and be completely unable to see my character or know what I was stuck on due to poor camera placement. The autosaves are pretty stingy as well. Having to redo the basement section multiple times was a real tension killer.

Really makes me appreciate how much effort Capcom must have put into camera placement back in the day.

I wish it had the classic RE aim lockon instead of the terrible crosshair also. Even when it looked like it was placed on an enemy I was apparently aiming off to the side or my bullets just weren't registering. This combined with the painfully slow reload made certain parts frustrating.

Some really cool stuff in there though, like most Puppet Combo games. Loved the hedge maze especially.

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I've read they're working on a patch to fix that or it's even already out.

 

[Magyscar]

I've read they're working on a patch to fix that or it's even already out.

Click to shrink...

The "aim assist" option was already in when I played. It makes it easier but doesn't really fix the core issue with the aiming, which is the crosshair being unreliable even when it looks like it is focused on an enemy.

 

[Lone]

Nun Massacre and Stay Out Of The House made me shit myself about seven times last night.

 

[litebrite]

Looks like we may start seeing Puppet Combo games on Xbox.

 

[Hilbert]

Looks like we may start seeing Puppet Combo games on Xbox.

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Thats exciting! I just bought a pack of their games, was looking forward to diving into them soon.