Operation Backlog Completion 2025
Oct 092024
 

The next spooky game I decided to play is a short horror game called Marginalia, and after my mixed feelings about Monday’s game you can imagine my horror when the game began by a parked car on a desolate road.

But despite that immediate sense of similarity, it doesn’t have much in common with Desolate Roads at all.

Marginalia is walking sim in its purest form. Although I’ve tagged it as an adventure game here, there are no puzzles or items you need to interact with, nothing but walking in search of the next landmark. Moreover, the story is narrated to you, which makes it feel more like a short story using a game format to build atmosphere.

Fortunately, the story is interesting enough that it works. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it has enough of a hook – a man vanishing in search of a mysterious place called Kestlebrook, and the narrator’s search for him while learning about Kestlebrook from his notes – that I wanted to continue on to hear each new part.

Unfortunately, the world is too big for this sort of experience to feel rewarding. Everything more or less looks the same, so if you get off track, it’s difficult to orient yourself. The major landmarks are lampposts that you can see from a distance, but once you reach one, it can be a while before you see the next – enough that if you get going in the wrong direction by mistake, you could be wandering for a long time.

(It happened to me. I missed the direction I was supposed to head in and walked for about ten minutes with nothing happening before I decided to restart. This is another one of those games with no saves.)

There are also secret landmarks that add an additional layer to the story, but the nature of the map makes exploration feel so unrewarding that I didn’t feel it was worth seeking them out, as much as I would have wanted to.

Marginalia is a short game that takes under an hour to complete, and even if there isn’t much interaction, it’s a nice little horror story that I enjoyed. However, a smaller game world with clearer landmarks would have gone a long way toward making it a more enjoyable experience.

  9 Responses to “Celebrating All Things Spooky: Marginalia”

  1. you can imagine my horror
    Yes isn’t that the whole point of playing horror games? 😂
    Another short game with no saves, but at least this one felt more worthy of the month to you!

  2. The lesson I’m learning from indie horror games is to never park your car on the side of a desolate road. I guess? XD

    So, is it just a spooky story? Does anything actually happen in the game besides walking? Makes me wonder if it would have done better as prose instead of a video game…

  3. This one sounds like the perfect game to just turn off your brain and spend a nice hour or so before bed just to play something.
    I always hear walking sim used in a negative way, but I certainly don’t mind the atmosphere and storytelling alot of these games offer.

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