noPeople with horse heads on their heads. Surreal nightmares so vivid they blend with reality. Until now Enter the room. The title might feel like you’re trying to describe an as-yet-unreleased A24 movie, but that’s because Horses often feels that way. Like most of the games in Italian developer Santa Ragione’s experimental catalog, it defies easy categorization.
Horses was born from an image that came to director Andrea Lucco Borella’s mind while he was studying film at the University of Rome Tri-University, he says: “I had this image of naked people wearing horse masks on their heads, acting on impulse like animals.” At first it felt like a film idea inspired by Jan Švankmajer’s fantastical 1968 film The Garden, but instead the first-time developer has crafted a game that’s unlike anything else you’ll play this year.
You’re greeted at the start by an enigmatic farmer who agrees to hire the young man in his early twenties for 14 days, initially tending his garden and sharing meals with him. True to the silent film spirit, every line in Horses appears on a title card. Play is interwoven with live-action clips filmed and edited by Borlera himself. “It started out as a solution to a technical problem, but I’m pretty happy with the result because it’s much more original now.”
Soon you’re tasked with a more unpleasant task: keeping an eye on the farm’s male horsemen, Primo and Jolly Jumper, to make sure they don’t get too excited in front of the mares. But things quickly take a dark turn when you discover one of them hanging from a tree. “Oh noooo… Also” is the farmer’s response. And it’s only day one. Borella says this surreal situation will intensify over the remaining two weeks, becoming “more problematic and tense.” The game’s heavy content warning (“depicts physical violence, emotional abuse, brutal imagery, slavery, torture, domestic violence, sexual assault and drug abuse”) would make Gaspar Noe proud.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Horses seemed like an unlikely project for Borlera, as it was a hobbyist’s quirky proposal from an inexperienced game director. It was rejected by publishers time and time again, until he chanced upon Santa Ragione co-founder and director Pietro Righi Riva, who also happened to be Borlera’s game design lecturer at Milan’s IULM University (alumni of the course include Lorenzo Redaelli, author of Santa Ragione’s critically acclaimed visual novel Mediterranea Inferno).
“I had almost given up, but then I met Pietro,” Borella recalls. “I explained what I did, and he invited me into his studio, and we talked about Horses.” The meeting was a success, as Riva had loved his game back when it was still a barely playable course project. “He basically said, ‘I don’t know if it will sell, but it has to exist. Let’s make it happen.'”
Now playing demoIt’s easy to see why Horses was a tough proposition, but also why Santa Ragione saw something promising in Borlera’s vision: Horses is unpredictable and jagged, and plays like a haunted arthouse farming sim. I’m grateful Horses exists; without projects like this, games would be a lot more boring.
Source: www.theguardian.com
