gretel and hansel (flashpoint retrospective #1)
content warning: mentions of child death, child abuse/abandonment
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right after posting my first ever blog post i started working on this one :P i'm just way too excited! kicking us off with our First Ever Real Blog Post is the inaugural installment of FLASHPOINT RETROSPECTIVE.
adobe flash was a kind of software used for viewing all sorts of multimedia content (like this) (or this) (or this). it was through flash-heavy sites like newgrounds, kongregate, jayisgames and armor games that i first fell in love with A. animations and B. video games. when the official discontinuation of flash was announced in july 2017, it devastated a massive online ecosystem. the death of flash was seen as one of the biggest blows against an equitable, accessible internet. flash allowed ppl to make what they want and share what they want, how they wanted it, without having to worry about aspect ratio standardisation, media mogul censorship or being able to reach wide audiences without selling off their data.
through a lot of blood, sweat, tears, fierce collaboration born of archival passion, and longggg long long dubiously legal hours, efforts have been made to archive these flash creations - and moreover, to disseminate them in playable states effectively identical to how they were originally posted. internet archives are one of my greatest loves1, and flashpoint archive has rapidly become my absolute top fave of them all. i didn't even KNOW about the archive until a few weeks ago, rewatching a skurry video where they play old team cherry games2.
the first game i booted up on the archive, and therefore the first one i'll be talking about today, is GRETEL AND HANSEL by Makopudding. it's got a superior sequel, but i'll save that for another post (look at me, being coy!). it's also important not to downplay the fun of the first Gretel and Hansel, and how it set up a gripping setting for a wide eyed seven-year-old obsessed with fantastical horror.
the game opens up with gretel (that's you) eavesdropping on a bedtime conversation between her parents. her Wicked (presumed Step)mother™ is complaining about not having enough food to eat, which leads to her suggesting that she and gretel's dad leave the kids in the woods to starve. suitably horrified and unable to resist your mother's ultimatum, you set to work point-and-click puzzling your way through a handful of screens, in search of glinting stones that you will drop along the woodsbound journey to point the way home. in many ways, G+H feels like a precursor to the lucrative genre of modern horror puzzle games about children (see: limbo, inside, little nightmares, little misfortune, sally face), because a lot of the things you have to do as gretel are both gruesome and finnicky. the game even boasts an achievement system based on how many unique deaths you unlocked, which fascinated me as a young child whose sense of death was still abstracted enough from my own inevitable end.
all the assets are handpainted watercolours, which is another trend with me - to this day i am still enamoured with handdrawn assets in any medium. hollow knight my beloved! as far as i can gather it is voice-acted by friends of the developer (or maybe even just the developer themself?), little more than emotive grunts and whines. the controls are as janky as they are charming; i remember watching pewdiepie complain about the still-sorta-frustrating interaction system, where a bubble pops up over gretel's head that you need to drag the relevant item to in order to accomplish the illustrated action. a bit more unnecessarily involved than your typical point-and-click adventure affair, though hilariously i remember feeling lofty and accomplished that i understood the game controls perfectly, far better than this foolish adult man. cut to me replaying the game in adulthood and struggling with the controls as well!! lol. the eternal project of humbling yourself...
i loved gruesome stories about other kids. it felt (even if it were not necessarily) respectful and real, like horror was one of the few ways that kids' internal experiences could be honoured, because all the others felt like flat cliché. i was never a horror aficionado, but it felt important to me somehow that gretel could die from poison gas or get eaten up by a massive spider. and it was important too that her parents didn't care, or couldn't do anything to show they cared; her mum was a murderous asshole, and her dad couldn't get over his own cowardice to help you and hansel. it was a story about the uselessness of adults and the bravery and resourcefulness of kids. and it was a tragedy that gretel had to fend for herself so effectively, because by all accounts it ought to have been her parents doing that work for her.
that's it for flashpoint retrospective 1! im excited to dig into the G+H sequel (watch this space) as well as some other standalone games that i've been dying to revisit. likely candidates include: you have to burn the rope (a silly joke game with an ending credits song that imprinted on my consciousness), the majesty of colors (where you play as a sea monster falling in love with the colours of the above-sea world), and one chance (a game where you get one chance to save the world). i'm so excited to get this journey started!!! i keep saying it, and i'm vaguely worried about sounding like a broken record, but it remains true.
see y'all next time! thanks for tuning in B^)
-aries
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