“The end of history” was a phrase thrown around a lot in the ‘90s—or so I’ve heard, I was born in ‘99. With it came the argument that all other systems had fallen and proven themselves untenable, and that only liberal democracies, market economies married with parliamentary democracy, would prevail and spread throughout the globe. For many this phrase was celebratory—after all, the West had won over the Eastern Bloc. But it also carries with it a kind of terror that has only become more evident in the new millennium. This is the horror of stagnancy, a horror of abandoned malls and droves of cheaply built For Lease developments, of rote and purposeless labor, of everyday brutality we’re bombarded with information about that we accept as an unavoidable part of “the best the world has ever been.” It’s that history still haunts us, and we’re all terrified of it creeping up on us and throwing this stillness into chaos.
Come the tagline of Anthology of the Killer, “History is a nightmare—and loving it!!”
Anthology of the Killer is an episodic series of horror-comedy indie games by solo developer thecatamites released from 2020 to 2024, which was then packaged into one bundle this May. The series follows BB, a girl who writes a zine about the odd occurrences in her city. A city crawling with over-the-top serial killers—such as the crooning musician The Weepster who feels ooohhh so bad about killing you—and many other bouts of casual violence. However, these killings are often the most grounded and least absurd ordeals in a city with a labyrinthian waterpark haunted by a vengeful spirit who traps people in her domain until they are pruned by their stay their bodies can no longer function, a resort used to collect advertising data on how people would most like to die, and other such grim oddities.
It also drips with the horrors of the “end of the history.” BB works at an insurance call center and receives out-of-touch call scripts and impossible to meet quotas from supervisors who she’s never met in-person, and alongside co-workers who drape themselves in white sheets for “confidentiality.” She scours the abandoned innards of her apartment complex for the cultural wreckage which fetches a high price on the internet to make rent, because nostalgia sells. She becomes part of an underground music scene of serial killers (not consciously, though, she’s possessed) only to find that the scene is a rehashed movement of earlier horror-themed musical acts, and that there is no such thing as a “new wave.” On the television in her insurance company break room, she passes by without comment the announcement of countless slaughtered bodies being found on the shores of the beach—just a part of everyday life.
And these concepts are barely even spoilers. The rabbit hole goes deeper, and its best jokes rely on the wittiness of its writing alongside the absurdity of its situations. The gameplay consists solely of walking from dialogue bubble to dialogue bubble as the story unravels before BB as she commentates with both a sense of humor and an ever-prevalent anxiety towards the world and the smallness of her place in it. You’ll wander through crudely drawn but charmingly crafted corridors and seedy city streets, and hopefully come to appreciate, as I did, how its choppy cartoon art style lends itself to both the series’ humor and its horror. It makes its most horrific characters more endearing and likable, while making its environments feel unsettlingly empty and surreal.
If you have an interest in story-based games, horror, absurdist social commentary, or even weird and experimental webcomics and cartoons, you should undoubtedly give this anthology a try.
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