Future Racer 2000 is some great shortform horror if you can somehow avoid the bugs

destructoid.com:

The octopus gets a bad rap. It’s a perfectly awesome creature with brains to spare, but it often is treated in media like a horror of the ocean. Listen, there are much more horrific things down there, not least of which are the Old Ones that slumber in the corpse city of R’yleh. Also moray eels. Also anglerfish.

However, catching a virus from an octopus isn’t great. Future Racer 2000 begins with you quarantined in your apartment due to such an affliction. One thing leads to another, and you find yourself in possession of a game console that suspiciously resembles our cephalopod friends. Just what are those little sea puddings up to?

You can find out in Future Racer 2000 on PC, if you’re lucky enough to not have it bug out on you.

At about 15-30 minutes long, it doesn’t hurt to try. However, on my first playthrough, everything started off unintentionally in medias res. Events overlapped each other, played out of order, and I couldn’t even unbox my octo-console. I played the entire game without the meta game even being present.

I somehow managed to complete it in that state, then started fresh. Things went in a much more logical order, but everything locked up very close to the end, and I had to force-shut the game. Yeesh.

It’s unfortunate because Future Racer 2000 does a lot of things right. It’s largely a walking simulator with small hints of gameplay beyond exploration. Its strength is, perhaps, rooted in the fact that it doesn’t take itself very seriously. The protagonist is largely blase about the horror going on around them, which leads to some humorous moments. Despite this, it doesn’t completely undermine its atmosphere or narrative.

It’s a very minimalistic experience, never leaving the apartment bloc in which the