LET'S STREAM PARANORMAL - Are you afraid of the art?

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen. Welcome to Let's Stream Paranormal.

Paranormal is a indy horror game developed by Matt Cohen. He worked on it in his free time before setting up a kickstarter with the intention of hiring some help in order to polish up the game for an official release in the hopes of making actual real-world dollars. His donation goal was set at a very modest $800 so I'm assuming he was quite happy when the project raised $8,135! A true internet success story! With that kind of support I'm sure he created a modern indie masterpiece, right?!

Haha

No.

Paranormal sucks. Its controls suck. Its graphics suck. Its atmosphere sucks. Its attempts to be frightening suck. Its sound design sucks. It sucks entirely and wholly.

This Halloween, Magflare of @TakeThatDarwin fame gifted me this game, so that I could stream it. The knowledge that this is how magflare treats his friends is by far the most frightening aspect of this entire ordeal.

Let's go.

STREAM 01 - 01

DON'T MIND THE MANNEQUINS
BEAT - Nodal - Patito - Smiler - FanBoyMaster

GENERAL

• THE STARTUP MENUS IN THIS GAME ARE HOT GARBAGE. They don't seem to respond to anything, and they're frustrating as all hell to work with.
• WHAT THE FUCK FILM GRAIN. I'm not sure where our protagonist managed to buy a camera that shitty, but god damn. I missed the option to turn it off in the settings so we're stuck with it for at least one more video.
• I HOPE YOU'RE AFRAID OF THOSE POSEABLE WOODEN MANNEQUINS ARTISTS USE. Because that's seriously all that's in this game. Which is weird since those things are for sketching and this guy is a scuplter. He says they help him "Visualize 3D space", which... well I mean, you're working in 3D space already and whatever fuck it just roll with it.
• AFTER ABOUT 5 MINUTES YOUR CAMERA BATTERY IS ALMOST DYING AND YOUR SPOOKY TIME IS OVER. I dunno what happens when you run it down to nothing, I haven't tried that yet.
• WHEN YOU GO TO SLEEP YOU GET ONE OF THE HOUSE CAMS SHOWING SOMETHING SPOOKY. I think a grainy as shit ghost showed up and just sort of stood there for a moment. MENACING.

HIGHLIGHTS

• 03:25 - MENU FRUSTRATION HITS FEVER PITCH
  BEAT: Take that Darwin, Magflare, you fucked up. you fucked up real bad and this is all your fuckin fault.
  FanboyMaster: How is this his fault?
  BEAT: LOOK AT THIS FUCKING SHIT! HOW IS THIS NOT HIS FAULT?!
• 04:20 - THE GAME ACTUALLY STARTS
  The introductory monolog actually contains the words "lately thing have been going bump in the night a lot", and "I'm only trying to show this is real, I'm not trying to get famous on the internet".
• 05:44 - CLANG BANG CLANG BANG
  This game has exactly two ideas of what is "Scary" one of them is "Way loud noises in whatever room you're not in." The other one is, of course, poseable art mannequins.
• 06:30 - TO DO LIST
  What kind of moron has to write "watch TV" and "take a bath" on his list of chores? Aren't those things you just do?
• 07:30 - REAL TIME TRIPPING
  Smash Bros is ruined.
• 08:20 - MY HOUSE IS ACTUALLY ON FIRE
  But not the kind of fire that actually matters or needs to be put out or anything. Just you know, the kind of fiire that nobody gives a shit about. The cool kind.
• 09:20 - TOO MUCH DOG FOOD
  You don't even have a dog you idiot.
• 10:05 - LEAVE
  Fuck you. It's my house. You leave.
• 10:50 - KING OF POP SIGHTED.
  BEAT: He's a famous pedophile.
• 11:36 - CLOSING COMMENTS
  BEAT: I really hope the ghost eats me. Sexually.
  FanboyMaster: Ghosts don't have mouths!

i dunno, i gift all my friends Bad Rats on every sale occasion, so im sure that Magflare looks like an angel in comparrison.

Yeah, I don't have any copies of Bad Rats to give away.

Not anymore.

I wasn't sure what I was gonna get when you told me about paranormal but it definitely wasn't this.

The Second Video is now processing. If I can wrangle it, I'd like to try and take on the SECOND SCYNARIO tonight! I will announce in all the usual places when I start streaming, if in fact I am able to wrangle it.

Wow. I just... I didn't get to catch much of the stream while it was occurring, and now that I'm watching the YouTube videos it is clear to me that if anything this game has become worse as development has continued. I mean, back when I played it, I was at least able to get into the game and move around and look at non-scary wooden dolls without having to battle the interface.

STREAM 01 - 02

WE GOT THE NEWEST HAUNTINGS
BEAT - Nodal - Patito - Smiler - FanBoyMaster - Kayin

GENERAL

• SHOUT OUTS TO MAGFLARE... I GUESS. Thanks for giving me this awful game and then showing up in the chat and oh my god why do you do this to me what's wrong with you?!
• I BELIEVE THE HAUNTINGS ARE JUST RANDOM. Like, every in game day you'll get a few of the random pre-set hauntings to be mad spooked by. I don't plan on re-playing the first scenario to confirm this but if someone can chime in and confirm that would be rad.
• THE MENU OPTIONS ARE SERIOUSLY WEIRD. You thought the startup menu was bad, but the in game menu lets you control things like the brightness, but not things like turning off the horrible film grain filter.
• OPENING THE MENU RESIZED AND RE-POSITIONED MY GAME WINDOW. My streaming setup is a pretty simple two monitor deal: Game window goes on the massive HD monitor on the left, while OBS and Skype sits on my considerably smaller laptop monitor on the right. For some reason the act of clicking "Options" on the menu made the game window jump from my big monitor to my laptop and resized the window horizontally. OBS window capture was like woah what the fuck, hence you suddenly see a little chunk of my desktop background, namely my folder for Charles Barkley Shut up and Jam. Because I suddenly couldn't see my OBS preview, I didn't realize the issue for a few minutes. Sorry about that.
• THE SOUND IS JUST AWFUL. Whether or not you can hear the fire alarm seems largely arbitrary and the garage is full of SPOOKY STATIC & MAYBE MUMBLING. Also the sound effects volumes are always annoyingly loud. I guess that's to make them more shocking or something? Whatever it's horrible.
• ASSUMING THIS WAS PLAYED UNDER ABRIDGED MODE, IT LOOKS LIKE A SCENARIO IS TWO GAME DAYS AND A DREAM SEQUENCE. Or at least this one lasted two days. Maybe the others are different? I dunno I haven't tried them yet!
• THIS GAME IS NOT SCARY. Sorry to break it to you.

HIGHLIGHTS

• 00:45 - SCREEN AREA FUCKUP HAPPENS HERE
  It's a minute or two before I fix it. Sorry guys.
• 02:35 - FIRST OBVIOUS CHANGE BETWEEN THE TWO NIGHTS.
  That stupid drawing next to my bedroom door now has a mannequin on it. What the fuck is with this game and poseable sketch figures?
• 02:50 - BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEE
  It's a fire alarm downstairs. You think it's bad in the video you should have heard it in my headset during the recording.
• 03:40 - SCREEN AREA FIXED
  Spooky freeze frame bonus added in post.
• 04:05 - SKETCH FIGURINE FLOAT PARTY SUICIDE PACT
  They study the magazine, float up like two feet, then fall into the magazine. When I look back at them a second later, they've become a pile of rock textures.
• 05:37 - SUDDENLY CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM.
  One of the sketch figurines put itself on a cross and popped up in front of me. This stunning critique of modern religion rocked me to my very core. My atheist baptism is on Friday.
• 06:05 - MANNEQUIN DOORMAN
  BEAT: He won't let me leave! Even though the house tells me to leave! You don't want me to leave, but you want me to leave! MAKE UP YOUR FUCKIN MIND!
  FanboyMaster: One of them is the roomate that likes you and the other is the one that doesn't.
  Smiler: I really wanna see the horror movie where BEAT's the protagonist yelling at his house. He's not even very scared.
  FanboyMaster: Give me a camera and a ticket to Florida and I will film this.
• 07:15 - FIRE ALARM FINALLY GOES AWAY
  BEAT: Now when my house burns down I'll just die.
• 07:52 - BACK TO BED
  I'm not even sure if a SPOOKY THING happened on the house cam, I was too into counting.
• 08:24 - DREAM TIME
  The only spooky thing here is Kayin shows up and says some words for the first time all stream. Oh also the film grain went away for a little bit. Thank god.
• 09:55 - THE FINAL SCARENING
  I celebrate the 4th of July by getting out of bed real slowly, then just falling back down while a mannequin looks at me. How terrifying.

On the first day, I wandered around the entire house and got exactly zero hauntings. Like, maybe there was a sound at one point? But nothing else.

Then, while I slept, a wastebasket slid across my countertop. Gross. Gonna have to bleach that now.



The following day, a metal sculpture poked me.



Then I walked into the kitchen, listened to a cassette tape, read a note, got alarmed by a crucified mannequin (although this happened too quickly to take a screenshot of), and got stabbed to death by a floating knife.



It's really hard to see there, but that's totally what's happening. It's worth pointing out that this only happened after I let my battery drain, so maybe the ghosts are just waiting until I turn off my garbage camcorder so they can murder me.

Also, yeah, I'm having trouble with the mouse cursor freezing up in the menu, too. I have no idea why this game is as bad as it is. Also, there are collectibles? Like, I clicked a beer bottle, and it made a sound, and the bottle disappeared. I have no idea what they do.

I'm tempted to believe that my experiences with the HAUNTED AS FUCK HOUSE were because I managed to blunder into abridged mode. Which I'm guessing just throws the SPOOKY STUFF at you as hard and fast as it can, ignoring anything like "Building tension" crap you hear people talk about.

So of course I'm gonna do everything in abridged mode because why the hell would I want a long boring trip instead of an insane desperate one.

Thanks a bunch for the info magflare! You're a king of fife!

Oh, yeah. I wasn't playing abridged mode. Did the version you were playing even have the cassette tapes and notes? Because I get the impression that, at least in the mode I was playing, there's actually meant to be some sort of story developing here.

If there were i didnt see em

Tried to do more paranormal tonight!

And it crashed my entire computer seconds after the stream started.

Fuck this I'm getting a new pc tomorrow. We are at the point where i can no longer put it off.

I OWN A NEW PC!

PARANORMO IS BACK ON!
GOAT SIMULORDER IS BACK ON.
SAMURAI WESTERN?!

YEAH MOTHERFUCKER BACK THE FUCK ON!

STREAM 02 - 01

ANCIENT STREAM I NEVER POSTED TILL NOW!
BEAT - Smiler - FanBoyMaster - MagFlare

When I first got my new computer, I wanted to test my streaming setup with a game that overheated my old computer! And what better game than Paranormal!

Well, uh, any game would have been better.

Any game at all.

But that fact quickly became a distant second to the fact that I needed to completely re-learn how to use open broadcaster on the new machine. This first, faltering step into that learning process was this video, which dropped frames like a motherfucker.

Still, Magflare is on it, and that guy is rad, and I don't have any Sonic Classic Heroes Videos to put up today, so up it goes!

STREAM 02 - 02

RIP IN PEACE OBS
BEAT - Smiler - FanBoyMaster - MagFlare

SCREW IT HAVE THE WHOLE DARN THING TODAY.

Rest in peace OBS, I'm gonna go make out with ghost wife.