Gaming
'Hyper P.T.' is a remake of Hideo Kojima's 'P.T.' in HyperCard
The 'Silent Hill' that was never made comes to life again thanks to developer Ryan Trawick. And it's spectacular.
Once upon a time, a man named Hideo Kojima was slated to take on one of the most important franchises in the survival horror canon: Silent Hill. The all-around genius, and brains behind Snatcher, and Metal Gear creator, teased out a daring new vision for the game (then dubbed Silent Hills) in August of 2014 in a historic demo known only as P.T. (playable teaser). The demo — originally released on the PS4 — gave gamers a glimpse into a horrific, heart-pounding, and psychedelic world that was unforgettable. And then, calamity befell the project. The game was shelved, the demo was pulled from the PlayStation Store, and Kojima left Konami to forge his own path. But the demo was so good that it made a huge impact. Just look at how Polygon gushed over it when it included it in its 10 best games of the year in 2014:
So for the incredible price of $0.00, players can download something that feels entirely new. This isn't a mobile game. This isn't a free-to-play game. But it's also not AAA. It's experimental. Avant-garde, even. It's accessible, while being really difficult to play alone. That's not only because, again, it's really scary (pro tip: play in the middle of the afternoon), but because it's really difficult. Good luck unraveling P.T.'s bizarre logic alone. Even with a solution mostly agreed upon, months later we still can't explain some things.
Sure, the killing of P.T. eventually gave us Death Stranding, but many people have never been able to let go of P.T. (I'm one of those people — I bought a PS4 with the game installed just to play it). Ryan Trawick is also one of those people.
The developer has painstakingly created a version of P.T. called Hyper P.T. using the legendary HyperCard software — a kind of interactive slideshow / micro app generator originally available on pre-OS X Macintosh computers. HyperCard was originally released in 1987, and allowed users even with no coding experience to create fairly sophisticated experiences (for the time). According to Trawick on the version of P.T. he's made, "Some stuff is stripped back, some stuff is added; you'll just have to play to find out." The donation-supported game is available on itch.io (one of our favorites), and you can go download it right now.
Needless to say, this is one of the coolest things that's ever been made. So, what are you waiting for?
(h/t to Warpdoor for spotting this)