SSR Wives: The Murder Of My Winter Crush is Silent Hill 3 for people who like the chibi proportions of Final Fantasy 9 and also, people who hoot in adoration when they see a low-poly model of an iMac. I am both of these people. Created by Hen Studios with a demo on Steam, it’s a sour and sugary blend of survival horror and romantic visual novel. You play one of several anime characters with names such as Tradgirl and Chudboy, all trapped in The Town That Time Forgot.
Those mouth-wateringly chubby iMacs? They are save points, the local equivalent for Resident Evil’s typewriters. Excellent work, game. You have reminded me of my advancing age in a way I actually enjoy.
The Town That Time Forgot probably should have been named The Town That Time Deliberately Crossed Off The Xmas Card List Because It’s An Absolute Shithole. Here you will find “liminal labyrinths”, an abandoned missile silo, and a “clown carnival”. Also an “antiquated bakery”, in fairness, but I wouldn’t touch the bread. It’s doubtless liminal bread, which always angries up my guts. The Steam demo offers up a bunch of rusty tunnels and toilets where you will encounter hungry giant rats. Later, there are gnashing pumpkin monsters and assorted mutant clogboggoes with guillotine arms.
Where does the romance component fit in? Well, if you get to know and carry out quests for the locals you might be able to date them, presumably paving the way for one of multiple endings. Beware, however, that the town’s residents are “inflicted with disorder”, that the game’s terrors are projections of their sins, and that you must “balance their emotional connections with the need to survive”. To which end, SSR Wives harbours a sizeable assortment of shiny, real-world guns, which look almost cute in each character’s mitts until you fire one and turn a rodent into a casserole.
I worry SSR Wives might be throwback to the point of being obnoxious. This is a game that describes non-tank controls as for “cowards”, which I would deem “feisty” if the controls worked perfectly: instead, I got chewed apart by a rat because my character refused to strike downward. The Steam page lists “classic door scene transitions” as a feature, which feels like pandering and makes the game sound like a jigsaw of references.
Still, this is a potent demo, and perhaps not as straightforwardly “retro” as billed: there’s something going on here with the intersection of fourth-wall-nibbling anime puppetry and cathode-ray Konami squalor I’m still deciphering. The full game is out this year.
