Have you seen Salvador Dalí and director Luis Buñuel’s surrealist film Un Chien Andalou? You might know it as “that weird film where a load of seemingly unconnected things happen oh yeah and that dude slices that woman’s eye open with a razor right?” This is relevant: The Tender Cut [official site] is a free short game inspired by that film. I think you might enjoy its moodiness, unsettling with odd visions and bloody holes and genital hallucinations and razor-sharpening.

The Tender Cut visits the small apartment from the film’s opening scene, a stark place with a balcony and a few objects to jab at. Say, why are insects emerging from behind that painting? Why does it make me choose a distinctly geniticular image at the start? Why is sharpening this razor so hypnotic? Oh no why did I jab that squishy hole? Oh god why is the Moon doing that?

It’s all very dreamy, drawn in quiet monochrome with a soundtrack similar in tone to the film’s. Explore, poke at stuff, and see what happens. At the end, it’ll show you which scenes you found and missed, and I was certainly surprised on my first play by how much I hadn’t found.

The Tender Cut is the work of a Russian team calling themselves ‘No, thanks’, which is both difficult for our comma-divided tagging system and for me trying to convey the name of the studio without looking like I’m talking to myself, politely declining an unheard request.

You can download The Tender Cut free for Windows and Mac from its site or Itch or other places.