Halberd Studios 9 Years of Shadow is coming next year! This beautiful pixel art game will certainly look gorgeous when done.
Halberd Studios is a Mexico-based development team that emphasizes the power of the narrative in games and they have a beautiful looking product that’ll be available next year for the Nintendo Switch and PC (Steam). 9 Years of Shadows promises to bring retrogaming goodness and a style to those who love the anime Saint Seiya, and much more. It’s a side scrolling videogame with a pixel art landscape looks absolutely radient, and it’s been tested at events like PAX and Steam Next Fest.
“We have gotten some immensely valuable feedback and really excited sentiments”, said Miguel Hasson, Creative Director of Halberd Studios. He also added, “We want to make sure we live up to those expectations and over-deliver on the Metroidvania experience. We thank you all for the support.”
Even though Halloween is over, Summer Ghost (サマーゴースト) is here to stay. The home video release the day after feels appropriate to show how those emotions can linger on. This Japanese animated short film is about what it means to be alive instead of the opposite. Each of the heroes here are seeking the spirit of a girl and hope to “get advice” on how to carry on.
This short animated film produced by Flat Studio and directed by loundraw is wonderful. The home video release has two documentaries included which look behind the scenes of this anime, and an interview with the director himself. They help expand what’s already known, assuming viewers watched the film first, and perhaps learn something more. It’s terrific to revisit this anime I saw during Fantasia, and to see how close I was to understanding this director’s vision. That review can be read here.
The former focuses on the team discussing how they look up to the loundraw. They often say he’s like a big brother, which is a touching gesture. This individual made his debut as an illustrator for Gara Nagata’s Hoshi no Nemuru Mizuumi e -Ai wo Sagashi ni- before spreading his wings and now becoming a director. If the dialogue is any sign, there’ll be more stories to come.
With the second piece, loundraw reveals where his idea came from, the type of colour template used and much more. It’s definitely worth the watch after the film, and it certainly made me appreciate Summer Ghost a lot more. Despite the title of this work and when it’s been released to home video (and theatrical), it’s quite the post-Halloween treat. In fact, this work is very appropriate to release during the week when Día de Muertos takes place! Both this anime and celebration honours the afterlife, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the reason why this release was timed for this week.
I provide my list of favourite We Want to Believe episodes about the various hauntings going on around the interior of British Columbia!
Twenty episodes and about nine different locations later, The Paranormal Network’s (formerly JoBlo Horror Network) We Want to Believe is showing it has staying power. Even after a hiatus due to the pandemic, this short form version of many paranormal reality television shows has resumed. Since mid 2022, the team have been visiting places off the beaten track in the heartland of British Columbia. After approximately nine cases, this group continues to show how dedicated they truly are!
This homegrown program follows the Canadian Paranormal Society in Kamloops. What they’ve done is more than just providing peace of mind for some. There are supernatural forces at work up in them thar hills. In some instances, it’s to also solve a mystery of why they caught an EVP in the middle of nowhere! I need to rewatch those episodes and the follow-up they’ve done all in one night. I’ve put together the playlist to watch on All Hallow’s Eve to truly appreciate how the veil is thinner in the woods. The Irish believe that once when you step into the forest, you’re in faerie territory!
Apparently, what I wrote (that the producers read) made them decide to figure out where that voice came from.
Paper Ghost Stories 7PM is certainly worth playing on All Hallows’s Eve for the essential experience.
Available for Xbox and Steam (PC) * 50% discount this Halloween
The clock is ticking in Paper Ghost Stories 7PM, a short playable visual novel by Cellar Vault Games. At the time of this posting, it’s 7AM, and will you have time to try this game before it runs out? This teaser to a larger product scheduled to release next year reveals a very promising product, and I’ll be keeping my sights on news for when Third Eye Open has a street date.
As its name implies, paper theatre it played sometimes on stage with a huge extravgent set, and a varient also includes shadow puppet, where paper cutouts with clear colour transparent bits are projected upon a large screen. When pared with a supernatural tale, the scarier moments have an unprecedented aesthetic which genuinely throws itself at you!
What makes these games unique are its approach to rendering its characters. They’re two dimensional images where you see the front and back, and they’re animated in a three dimensional space. The artistic style is very appropriate to the world it’s emulating, and if that isn’t terrific enough, the soft scares are perfect for today. This early release for Halloween weekend nicely plays with that concept. Here, you play three characters (Wen, Lun and Ming) who’ll have to figure out what the new tenants are up to! Most of the interaction is through making conversation, and choosing how you want to respond. Plus, there’s also a bit of running around.
Anyone who bought a costume or decoration from the Spirit Halloween store will get a chuckle out of the fact this company wanted to produce one big commercial. It’s appropriately titled, Spirit Halloween The Movie. If that idea isn’t scary enough to convince people to shop at their stores, then I don’t know what will.
This work may get viewers wanting to look for those costumes and items seen in the motion picture to wear or place in their front yard. As much as I love the season and looking at what others can set up, there’s a difference between comic versus supernatural frights; the only way to understand this film is to accept that they’re venturing into one of those carnival style haunted houses often set up for this season, and it has every trick in the book to disorient you.
During the Silent Film era, Crane Wilbur was well known for his wide variety of works, namely The Perils of Pauline. But for horror enthusiasts, he’ll always be remembered for House of Wax. Before this film was ever made, he worked with Vincent Prince on The Bat, a crime-thriller.
The mini-documentary included in this release is a love letter to the auteur, and his relationship with this actor. After viewing the featurette that explains his influence on scary cinema, I think I’ll have to start looking at those films rarely spoken of today. Ballyhoo Motion Pictures presented a very convincing argument in why we must respect this filmmaker’s other works.
is a Mexico-based development team that emphasizes the power of the narrative in games and they have a beautiful looking product that’ll be available next year for the Nintendo Switch and PC (Steam). 9 Years of Shadows promises to bring retrogaming goodness and a style to those who love the anime Saint Seiya, and much more. It’s a side scrolling videogame with a pixel art landscape looks absolutely radient, and it’s been tested at events like PAX and Steam Next Fest.
Twenty episodes and about nine different locations later, 
Available for 
