Geek Culture Reviews

It has been over a decade since Five Nights at Freddy’s first flickered onto our screens, quietly released on August 8, 2014, by a relatively unknown indie developer named Scott Cawthon. At the time, it seemed like just another quirky horror game in the ever-growing pile of let’s play bait on Steam. A game where you sit still in a security office and monitor malfunctioning animatronics through grainy security feeds? Sounds niche, right? Yet here we are, several games, books, and a big-screen adaptation later, and FNaF (as it’s now colloquially known) is no longer just a one-hit wonder. It is a full-blown pop culture phenomenon, having influenced the indie horror space more than perhaps any other series in recent memory. Looking back now, it is easy to forget just how strange and refreshing the original game was when it first released — and how much of its DNA can still be felt in the genre today. The Horror of Helplessness What made the original Five Nights at Freddy’s so different fro...

Karma: The Dark World is not a game that tries to entertain with fast action or familiar horror tropes. Instead, it quietly unsettles you, pulling you into a slow descent through memory, guilt, and psychological decay. It is a disturbing, visually intense experience that trades jump scares for emotional tension and abstract storytelling. If you come into it expecting combat or traditional survival elements, you may be surprised by just how different it is from most horror titles. Story & Atmosphere - A Deep Dive Taking place in a dystopian version of East Germany in the year 1984, under the control of a shadowy corporate regime known as Leviathan The narrative places you into the shoes of Daniel McGovern, a special investigator with the strange ability to enter the minds of others. These so-called memory dives are where most of the game happens. You are not just reviewing crime scenes or solving clear mysteries. Instead, you are exploring fractured memories filled with hidden meani...

There are stories that feel like they were made for comics, and  Hawkmoon: The Black Jewel (adapted from Michael Moorcock ’s original Runestaff novels), is one of those stories. Full of strange science, dark sorcery, and bleak, imaginative landscapes, Hawkmoon plunges readers into a post-apocalyptic Europe that has more in common with the myth’s of old than with the modern day. It’s violent, romantic, philosophical, and sometimes absurd, but above all it  always remains captivating. For those unfamiliar with the source material, Hawkmoon belongs to Moorcock’s sprawling “ Eternal Champion ” multiverse. Where Elric of Melniboné dealt with personal doom and metaphysical warfare, Hawkmoon is closer to a political rebel. The setting is a shattered Europe ruled by the tyrannical Granbretan Empire, whose rulers don grotesque animal masks and wield a terrifying mix of magic and science. Into this comes Dorian Hawkmoon, a brooding, reluctant hero from the occupied land of Köln, who is ...

In the golden age of PlayStation horror when fixed camera angles and clunky controls were just part of the charm, Parasite Eve II stood out as something… stranger. It wasn’t just horror. It wasn’t just an RPG. It wasn’t even a clean sequel, it was a pivot - an evolution in more ways than one. Released in 1999 in Japan and 2000 elsewhere, Parasite Eve II followed up Square’s first attempt at fusing a horror-RPG hybrid. While the original blended cinematic storytelling with turn-based combat inspired by JRPGs, the sequel leaned heavily into real-time action and survival horror. Think Resident Evil, but with psychic powers, genetic horror, and a protagonist who could light enemies on fire with her mind. The World After Manhattan If you never played the first Parasite Eve, here’s the short version: mitochondria - energy-producing organelles in your cells are sentient, mutating, and really mad at humans. Aya Brea, a young New York cop with her own mysterious cellular gifts, ends up at the...