When and where did the Steam demo for horror game New Life first find its way to me? When did its non-descript, black hooded protagonist first wriggle, with the transgressive delight of an unbidden slug between naked toes embarking on a 2am fridge odyssey, into the as yet uncolonised crevices of my ‘demos’ library?
The specifics, I fear, are but the fumes of memories, lingering like armies of mice in trenchcoats at supermarket cheese sample platters, at once painfully obvious and immune to detection in their uncanny shroud of stifling human decorum. "For who is madder?!" I shout, in a normal and cool manner. "The mice - so very mad for cheese - or the madmen who screams ‘Mice!
Mice!’ in the middle of the cheese aisle?!" And if I can’t remember how it got here, how can I make it go away? I no longer wish to play the demo for New Life, if indeed I ever did.
I find its presence ugly in ways that transcend how naturally ugly it is, which is the very thing I think made me want to play it in the first place.
I find its description deeply unnerving in its unadorned simplicity. "A creepy story about a guy," it begins. Immediately, I am beset by visions of Poe.