The Terrors of itch.io is a new monthly series for Bloody Disgusting dedicated to highlighting some of the most noteworthy – popular or under the radar – horror games to grace the ever-expanding site of itch.io, one of the internet’s leading sources for small and independent games. Horror has consistently thrived under the video game art form, allowing for creators to tap into their morbid creativity and itch.io provides video game horror at its rawest form without filter. See the likes of Paratopic, September 1999, and the works of Puppet Combo as great examples of this in recent times.

A common trait to be found in many games on itch.io is a sense of homeliness, meaning that the usual amount of pandering and studio-based decisions are much harder to come by. Itch.io is home to some of the most passionate, talented, and occasionally hopeless, creators throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, which makes for a lot of rough and unpolished titles to wade through. You could use this to describe Steam or other gaming sites, but it feels most appropriate with itch.io and its focus on shoestring budget gaming.

As a result, it’s both a huge relief and heartwarming to see a hidden gem pop out from the sea of DIY horror games on the site and Grotesque Beauty, from Digital Bento aka freelance artist Ben Ho, is the first that I’d like to talk about in this new series. Released in late 2019, Grotesque Beauty has made its way onto both itch.io and Steam, advertising itself as a multi-branched visual novel with elements of Junji Ito-inspired horror and around 30 different endings to choose from.

Visual novels sometimes get a bad reputation thanks to a perceived lack of experimentation with the style. Doki Doki Literature Club and The Letter aside, horror visual novels don’t dominate the horror game market the way that first-person chillers tend to do, which opens up the opportunity for creators to test out their writing skills and potentially gruesome ideas in a sub-genre that’s a bit more open to creative storytelling. Nothing against other areas of horror games, but with a visual novel, there’s almost a laser-like focus on the storytelling itself over atmosphere and gore.

Grotesque Beauty, as its name suggests, contains plenty for gore aficionados to latch onto with its unnerving story that quickly turns grim with each new path you take. But above all else, Ben Ho’s short, but sweet tale is one that relies on a healthy mixture of story and atmosphere, focusing on two main characters: Anita, our vessel for this story, has a troubled past, and has been experiencing nightmares more frequently than normal lately, and Rachel, her best friend who offers Anita to stay over at her place one night to calm her nerves from the nightmares.

The story’s set-up is clear, effective, and easy to follow as the night begins to plunge into insanity at a brisk, yet perfectly measured pace. Though it’s a fairly short game on the first playthrough, the revelation of the game having 30 different endings allows for longevity and an incentive to explore the game’s surprisingly detailed word and characters. Longevity also allows for the game’s horrific secrets to be unearthed in an appropriately grotesque manner.

Without spoiling too much of what this game has to offer (I myself have not yet played through all of the endings), Grotesque Beauty rides the line between rational and surreal, introducing situations that stretch human logic past its limits, similar to a Junji Ito tale, though still unique enough to be its own thing. From the threat of another force possibly being present in Rachel’s house to an odd living room decoration that may be more than meets the eye, nothing is truly right in this game, refusing to give the player a moment of ease.

Even calmer moments between Anita and Rachel are often rooted in something darker and unsaid, hinting at something fractured at the core, which develops over the course of the night as the horrors become clearer. Best of all, it’s not overly long a la Doki Doki, so the story can be replayed over and over without the feeling of having to slog through something again. Each new playthrough opens the possibilities for how differently the night can go, making it something that could go over particularly well for Let’s Plays on YouTube.

Grotesque Beauty has been out for a little bit now and it’s had some minor traction from what I’ve seen, but for what it’s going for and the creative ways the storytelling evolves, I think Ben Ho has struck something valuable here for horror. Though it can be classified as a small game of sorts, its scope reaches far and wide beyond its budget and length and it can serve as a rewarding experience for players eager to try out this choose-your-own-adventure title.

As of this writing, the game is still for sale on itch.io and Steam, but it’s a small price to pay for a worthwhile experience and that’s a theme I hope to tackle with each new game for each month. Because a low bank account shouldn’t have to prevent us from enjoying the world of video games, right?

Grotesque Beauty is out now on PC via itch.io and Steam.