“It’s the year 1963 in a world that replaced computers with human brains,” is how horror game Brainshell describes its setup. “The nuclear arms race has led to a point of no return. Your government uses propaganda, brainwashing and body modifications to create the ultimate weapon: a conscious nuclear missile.” I checked BBC News, looked outside at the gloom, and decided that, sure, I could do with a nice break today. Brainshell’s demo it is.
The game’s development is simply credited to Brainshell Team, which says it’s “4 Finnish game devs making weird and experimental games.” I usually try to describe games with better words than ‘weird’, since it makes deliberate choices sound like a bunch of visionary drunkards threw paint at the wall until it started resembling an aesthetic and decided, yep, we’re definitely geniuses. But sure, Brainshell Team. It is weird.
It’s also incredibly intriguing. The intro cuts between skeuomorphic lever yanking and ominous warnings related to your chance of survival (low). The various gizmos you play with feel nicely reactive as you’re gradually indoctrinated into your new role as a human nuke, and what seems like a simple tutorial immediately turns up the pressure as you try to keep calm, despite screeching sirens and murder disco lights.
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You’ll click through a pulsating flesh maze as your character recounts the events that led them here, and then enter the operation room. I found out here that our protagonist has learned to hate the taste of clean water, a simple detail I found chilling. The soundtrack adds to all this: The Steam page carries a suitably florid description of “a custom microphone made to capture the voice of being born from madness”. It’s all warped brass instruments, and sounds how I imagine it’d be to listen to a swing band play a dirge for your dead dog. I quite like it.
It’s about this point that the game makes you saw your own limbs off by dragging the mouse back and forth. Welp, I said to myself. That’s enough mutilation for me on a weekday. I am certain I’ll be back, though. I obviously need to know how far a game that forces you to remove your arm with a rusty hacksaw in the first ten minutes will go.