Frontiers Of The Mind is cursed, meaning 7-Zip turns red when extracting the file. What ugly encounter deep inside my download caused this temporary anomaly? There's no time to think about it. After playing this horror game, I'm not going to other Questions.
Presented as an interactive CD-ROM experience (awesome!) documenting the history of a fictional children's show inspired by Knightmare, Frontiers Of The Mind builds increasing unease with each click as you explore its archives.
Between 1987 and 1994, the British channel Network7 broadcast 112 episodes of the TV game show Maze Masters, an interactive adventure aimed at younger audiences. Only some parts of the show were broadcast.
The different sections of this CD-ROM explore the format and backstage of the show, with the aim of shedding new light on the strange events that followed.
It oozes a kind of Hitchcockian dread. You know when you walk in that terrifying revelation awaits you—the tension is in slowly unraveling the details as you pore over folders, discovering more about the show’s history. Ganzfeld tests. Post-show paraphysical cleansing. A dungeon master with a migraine-inducing gaze. “Bertram left his mark on an entire generation of viewers.” I, uh. Yeah. I bet he did.
All of this is brought to life through highly evocative yet appropriately disjointed documentary-style prose storytelling, and snapshots of 'footage' that are both compelling given the circumstances and deeply disturbing if you consider what you're actually looking at. Both the muddy, alien soundtrack and the image editing work are particularly gorgeous – somewhere between an SCP and that questionable VHS that came with the DragonStrike board game.
Masterpiece: nostalgic, creative, scary, and delicious. Find it here on Itch.io.