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Welcome to this issue of the game more than that, I'm Joey.
The game I'm going to introduce to you in this issue is another game that makes me feel extremely weird and uncomfortable since I walked out of the Dark Forest last year.
The story begins in 1929, before World War II had even broken out. Our protagonist is a little girl named Julia. This was perhaps the best childhood time of her life, and in the crook of her mother's arm, Julia begged her mother to tell her the story of "Lady in White".
The "Lady in White" is a painful and tragic legend that this lady in white often haunts nearby lakes, but she is unfortunately killed by the man she loves. With great pain, her soul is trapped in the lake, and after that, she kills the girl near the lake to alleviate her pain. Although the story is absurd and strange, it has an inexplicable attraction in the heart of young Julia.
In this way, under the careful care of the nurse, she spent a happy time. After the outbreak of World War II, she returned to her sister "Martha", whose parents and appearance were very similar, but deaf and mute. By 1944, World War II was nearing its end. Julia's father was a high-ranking officer in the German army, and the war was becoming increasingly unfavorable to Germany, so the family moved to the Italian countryside to escape the war.
Untouched by war, Julia lives here day in and day out, her only hobby being taking pictures of her father's double-reflex camera in the forest of lakes. My father also made changes to the camera, taking a picture of himself every certain amount of time after setting it up. Influenced by the stories told to her by her childhood nurse, Julia ghostly sent a camera to the lake to see if she could capture something.
Until one morning, she vaguely spotted a man dressed in white floating on the surface of the lake. It didn't remind her of the story of the lady in white. An inexplicable thought made her rush into the lake and drag up the lifeless corpse.
When he swam to the shore, he found that it was his twin sister "Martha". For some reason, Martha drowned in the lake dressed in her own white clothes. She pulled down the pendant engraved with her sister's name, and at this moment her parents found that their two daughters were missing, and hurried to the lake to look for it.
The panicked mother rushed over, and when she saw this, she suddenly hugged Julia, but her mouth comforted: "Martha, are you okay?" Speaking slowly, as if to get us to read her meaning out of her mouth, she thought that the daughter who was still alive in her arms was her sister Martha.
My mother has always liked my sister, but she hates our protagonist sister very much. The girl in her mother's arms felt a maternal love she had never felt before. An evil thought suddenly arose in her heart, and she nodded meekly, since my mother liked Martha so much, I would live instead of Martha, at least I could feel my mother's warmth and love for her sister.
The plot of "Martha Is Dead" begins here, and the game is a main perspective story exploration game. It tells the story of the protagonist who, after the inexplicable murder of her sister, disguises herself as deaf and mute to continue to live, on the one hand, dealing with the complicated relationship with her parents, on the other hand, looking for the truth of the matter in the Italian countryside where the war is spreading.
The game's scene atmosphere is very well rendered, the lazy and idyllic afternoon undercurrents, the ghostly forest in the dark forest at night, with the rendering of the sound effect and environmental atmosphere, and the portrayal of the protagonist's distorted spiritual world, I often shudder when playing. This game is about a "psychological horror" game, and there will not be a lot of "Jump scare" in the whole process like other horror games. There are only a few sudden scare scenes, and if you've seen our "Counter Terrorism Guide" show before, the games are all very low-level routines, not only will we not be frightened, but even we are prepared to fight back.
The whole flow and scenes of the game are not large, basically the story of her home and the nearby forest lake. The gameplay is to explore freely in a small game scene, and promote the development of the plot by constantly investigating and collecting various materials. Even when you play it, sometimes you don't feel that this is a horror game, but a story exploration game like "Eddie Finch's Memory". Players only need to investigate according to the current mission and the markers on the map.
There are two designs of the game that are very eye-catching, and this gameplay design can make people shine. The first is the gameplay of the camera in the game. In the whole process, we need to use our father's camera to complete various investigations and explorations, and the use of the camera is not as good as other games. It's really like operating a camera, adjusting the aperture and focus according to the current scene and the environment you are in. in order to take a suitable photo.
In the subsequent development of the game, we can get the different light-sensitive films left by our father, as well as filters suitable for various lighting environments. There are also IR filters for shooting objects that are invisible to the naked eye. Even in order to shoot some special scenes, some photographic equipment such as flashes and tripods are also required. It's hard to believe that this horror game actually makes the details of a camera's gameplay so detailed. Using different lenses, players can take many beautiful and age-related photos. Even if you know a lot about cameras, you can always be moved by the camera gameplay of this game.
And what's even more interesting is that after we took the photos, we needed to wash them out in the darkroom in the basement of our home. The game also has a bit of the meaning of "more than the game", and will even tell you that this wash photo of the game is just to let everyone experience the game better, speed up some of the progress, and will also give you a simple science real wash photo is not like this.
These washing photos are also very ritualistic, the use of the magnifier to image the negative image zoom focus, exposed on the photosensitive photo paper, in reality this process generally lasts a few seconds to tens of seconds, and then the photosensitive paper into the developer to rinse, here and the reality of the operation is similar, you need to take out the photo paper from the developer at a specific time, if the timing is not right will lead to damage to the photo.
As we explore, we'll also be able to unlock a variety of camera skins. In addition to the role of the camera gameplay to advance the mission, the scenery under the sun in the game is also worth recording.
Since the game is based on the background of World War II at that time, in the middle of the game we will receive some special missions, but also lead to another interesting gameplay of the game, the interaction of encrypted telegraph machines.
Players need to check the cipher table and spell out their letter combinations through Morse code to send encrypted telegrams to each other.
When sending a telegram, first add a "joint code" in front of it, piece together the sentences you want to reflect, and convert them into Morse code through the cipher table. Then combine according to the dot line of the code, and finally click the length of the mouse to send the report as if pressing the transmitter. Add "Finished" to the end to show the end. This gameplay design does have the smell of radio telegraphy after the experience.
After that, we receive a telegram from the other party, and then decipher it in combination with the codebook, such as "dot dot line dot" corresponding to the letter "SN", and then corresponding to the codebook, which translates to "received". A long string of codes is then translated and combined to form a complete sentence. I don't know if I can explain it to you, interested friends can try to translate this sentence:
In addition to these, the subconscious expression in the game is also very interesting, such as divination through tarot cards, summoning ghosts, or exploring the inner world in some strange dreams, and in the later stages, we can also use puppet play to gain a deeper understanding of the protagonist's past and events. In addition, the game can also help players understand the plot through radio broadcasts, newspapers and many small objects with a sense of age, and can also lead players to see the family of a senior German officer, who is in a bad life situation in Italy, which is unfavorable. The game supports multiple languages and dubbing, including Chinese, and supports the localization of some scene elements, but Chinese dubbing is slightly contrary to the sense of harmony, it is recommended that everyone play in Italian dubbing, so that there can be a better sense of substitution. There are some selective events in the game, but after many weeks of exploration, these options will not have a decisive impact on the ending.
On the day of her sister's murder, Martha was wearing Julia's clothes, which led everyone to think that "Julia" had been killed. The day after Martha's death, Julia stood in the chapel, praying for her sister, but across the door she heard her parents arguing, and her mother did not seem to care about Julia's death, but instead thought that Julia had left her sister. Mother loves "Martha" more. Just like in childhood, blame all the mistakes on Julia. And the father deeply blamed himself, he loved "Julia", believing that her death was because he was a German officer, and the hatred of others for him in the war was diverted to his beloved daughter.
From that day on, Julia had nightmares about the lady in white, of herself peeling off Martha's face, of stealing Martha's identity. Julia, who woke up from her nightmare, picked up the picture of Martha and the diary, which were happy memories of the sisters, and now she was alone. The quarrel, as always, only the father cares about the dead "Julia", he left the camera, and hopes that "Martha" can inherit the love of her sister and take more beautiful pictures of her deceased soul.
Although Martha was dead, Julia decided to do one last thing for her sister to find out who had murdered her, so she decided to retrieve a few cameras by the lake that were still filming at the time, and to find out from the film what had happened to her sister. Is Martha's death really just a political conspiracy, as the newspapers say, or is there something else hidden in it, and as the investigation deepens, we will slowly realize that the truth is often more terrible than we think.
Maybe some viewers here think this game seems to be very interesting. I'm going to try it, but I need to remind you that the game is relatively weak in addition to these two eye-catching gameplay. The whole process is basically a visit, listening to the protagonist's inner words and investigating various objects, wandering around like a walking simulator, and the pace of the game is relatively slow.
Then there's another more troublesome thing, this game is currently optimized with big problems, if your configuration is lower, there will be more stuttering, making the game experience worse.
Then neither of these is the key, the most critical thing is that the game is always a "psychological horror" game. There are several bridges in the process that are not scary, but extremely inappropriate to watch and display. Even I can tell you about the "Anti-Horror Game Guide" program, when I saw the few scenes in the game, I was really stunned, there was a feeling of "shocking my mother for a whole year". It is several times more shocking than the scene of "Dead Space 2" drilling the eye that year, and may leave a big shadow on some viewers with poor psychological endurance.
For this reason, my advice to you is that if you are interested in radio and camera, you can try this game, the general game lasts about 5 hours. If you are not interested or have a poor psychological endurance audience, it is best to watch the video, do not try to die.
- The following contains endings and spoilers, please read with caution -
If you can see this, you've made the right decision. I will briefly tell you the stranger story of this game.
In order to find out the truth of the matter, Julia remembered that there had been not only one camera placed by the lake, but three. These cameras follow the settings to take pictures at regular intervals. In other words, it is possible to photograph Martha's murder. So at night Julia carried a kerosene lamp to the lake where the murder had taken place, and from time to time in the darkness there were broken branches and strange whispers, and on the way we found a red cloth hanging from a branch, the owner of which may have been related to the murder.
It may be that Julia was too frightened, and in a trance we actually saw the ghost of the lady in white. Julia rushed to the lake, took three cameras in different positions, and prepared to go home and wash out the pictures. The ghost reappeared, and even grabbed our arm, and after struggling to break free, Julia began to run wildly in the woods, and it was difficult to return home, but the atmosphere of the spirit hall was extremely strange, and even saw her sister pregnant.
The sun shines in front of the bed, it turns out to be a nightmare, but we have forgotten the dream from when we entered, does the lady in white really exist? None of this is known. What's even more bizarre is that when we woke up, we found a large pool of blood on the bed. The phone rings, and through the upstairs tandem we can overhear the mother and priest talking, the mother guessing that it was "Julia's" boyfriend, and the guerrilla Lapo killed her daughter, but it was just some speculation without evidence.
Julia, who had cleaned up her body, went to the dark room and took the photos she had taken last night to rinse. The three photos only record Julia rushing to the lake to rescue Martha, but unfortunately there is no clue to the murderer. Just when we were at a loss, we stumbled upon a note from Martha in our parents' room that said Julia was pregnant and told her that if julia went to the lake to bathe in the morning, she would be able to see her bulging belly, and that day was the day Martha was killed. The contents of the note made us wonder why my sister would say that we were pregnant and tell my mother?
In order to find out the truth, we decided to go to the lake to look for clues. However, while passing through the forest, witnessing a battle between the Germans and the Italian partisans, explosions and screams broke through the silence of the forest, following the sound we found the body of the partisan Rapo, the boyfriend of our protagonist Julia, and from the red ties on his arm we found the letter he wanted to bring to Julia, but not carefully examined. Shot and fell to the ground by the captured German soldiers, gradually losing consciousness in the noise of these soldiers, followed by a nightmare in which Julia removed Martha's mask.
Fortunately, the bullet shot in from behind us and did not injure important organs. Even more fortunately, the mother who was walking in the forest at that time happened to find her daughter and saved her in time, and Julia retrieved a life.
We recall Paula's letter, in which he asked Julia to meet in the barn, but unfortunately the two were separated by yin and yang, and the letter left an emergency number. Call, the person over there is an Italian guerrilla, hoping that Julia can secretly help the guerrillas and continue to complete the mission of her boyfriend Rapo. If you help your loving boyfriend fulfill his last wishes, he will betray his father, who is a German officer. With love on one side and affection on the other, Julia was caught in a dilemma.
Just when julia was at a loss, she found a red cloth as she explored the house, and she realized that it was obviously her mother's object, and it belonged to the same piece of red cloth that she had photographed the night before. This discovery made Julia suspicious of her mother, whether it was possible that Martha's letter to her mother made her mother extremely angry, and she did not like Julia very much, and it turned out that Julia was pregnant without chastity, and then mistakenly killed Martha who was wearing Julia's clothes that day.
This inference made Julia herself even more frightened, but we have no evidence. After Martha's funeral. We came to the cemetery. In addition to Martha's tomb here, there is also the tomb of boyfriend Labo, we found a kettle, ready to water the flowers in front of the boyfriend's tomb, oh sleeper, on the wrong grave.
After commemorating the two, Julia suddenly has an irrepressible urge to play, and Martha, who she plays, does not play the piano, recalling the previous dream of removing the mask and using her own eyes to find out the truth, which is very risky, but if you reveal your identity, you can get some clues according to your mother's reaction.
When the mother saw Julia playing, she suddenly understood that it was her favorite daughter Martha who died, and that it was her hated Julia who lived in the world, and the mother's words immediately became as sharp as a blade, beating Julia with anything that could be touched by her hand, and these acts confirmed our speculations about her murder and the mother's hatred for us.
Things finally progressed, and in the midst of the ghost's messenger, she remembered the story that her childhood nurse had told her. So she decided to ask the lady in white for help. On the morning of the fifth day after Martha's death, Julia walked again toward the lake and summoned the Lady in White. After listening to her explanation of the tarot cards, a pale hand pulled us toward the lake. Dreamily, we got the key to Open Martha's storage box from the lady in white. It was only now that we had rushed out of the bathtub, as if everything had just been an illusion, and as Julia took a big breath of air, the touch of the key in her hand once again blurred the line between illusion and reality. Opening the storage box with the key, the letter Martha left for us brought the truth one step closer to us.
Her mother, Irene, had long relied heavily on deoxyephedrine, the main ingredient in the drug methamphetamine, which was widely used as a stimulant in the German army during World War II. As a high-ranking official, my father had the means to get this drug. Drug-addicted mothers have a changeable temperament and often abuse their children. In the letter, Martha tells us that in fact, she has never been deaf, when she was a child, her mother frightened her, she decided to pretend to be deaf and dumb, which really worked, and her mother began to love her, and even found a "scientific basis" for her deafness, which was a nerve damage caused by the compression of her sister Julia during the pregnancy of their two twins. The mother also blamed Julia for her sister's disability, so much so that Julia continued to be treated unfairly by her mother. To this end, Martha decided to correct this mistake and left a tape in the darkroom to explain the incident.
It turned out that Martha was pregnant and pregnant with her sister's boyfriend Rapo's child. Disgusted with herself and guilty of her sister, she wrote the letter to her mother, and then made an appointment with her sister to change clothes and go to the lake early in the morning of the murder. Except that these were all part of Martha's plan, and she knew that the snoozing Julia would certainly not get up early. She came to the lake alone, waiting for her angry mother to arrive.
Martha wants to end her life by her mother's hand, and from then on, let her sister take her own identity to get her mother's love, both to repay her sister and to punish her mother, and finally Martha died in the lake "as she wished".
On the sixth day after Martha's death, because of the music played before, our mother already knew our identity and planned to send Julia to the shelter, and the frightened Julia secretly took her father's pistol to protect herself, but only the recording could not prove her mother's crime, and he hoped that his father, who still loved him, would protect himself. However, the war situation became more and more anxious, and my father had no time to take care of this matter.
It seemed that we were on our own, and then she suddenly remembered that when we first went to touch the camera by the lake, we first took a film out. Maybe the film may have filmed the mother's violence, so we went to the dark room again, and the mother was unconscious in the chair for some reason, and Julia turned on the tape recorder first, and she pulled out a pistol and pointed it at her mother. Ready to confront her, threatening her mother to tell her crime, the conversation between the mother and daughter in the middle we do not know, only to hear the next second the gun rang out, the mother crawled on the ground in pain, pleading, the second shot and the third shot. Until the body lying on the ground was lifeless. Suddenly, a shell landed around the house, and a loud explosion drowned out everything.
When Julia returned to God, she found that the house had lost power due to the explosion, and the most important film could not be flushed. Confused, Julia arrives in her secret little room, where she helps her think by playing a puppet show whenever she can't figure it out. Julia played the role of her sister pretending to go to the lake and being killed by her mother. As Julia removes the doll's limbs one by one, the puppet show demonstrates Julia's process of cleaning up the crime scene, mutilating and dumping the body. When we return to reality from the puppet show, the fear spreads in an instant, and it is the mutilated body of our mother. Julia killed her mother, but as if she didn't care, on the way home she saw a call from the house, and the film that hid all the mysteries was finally about to appear to us in this bloody light.
The image in the photo slowly emerged, and she thought that the film could capture evidence of her mother's murder. However, the murderer that the film shows is Julia herself!
It turned out that she was jealous of her sister's love for Rapo, jealous of her mother's love for her sister, so she killed Martha and wanted to replace her. In order to cover up her crime, she killed her mother again, and Julia caused the tragedy herself, and in her utter disgust for herself, she raised her gun to herself. At this time, an Italian guerrilla broke through the door, and Julia subconsciously raised a shot and hit it in the head. The other soldiers broke in and would soon be subdued.
When Julia woke up, she found her father tied to a stool, and under the torture of the guerrillas, she was forced to confess to her father's activities within the German army. When the guerrilla officers got the answers they wanted, they executed their father. And ordered a soldier to execute Julia. Perhaps out of pity, the soldier deliberately removed the gun and fired a shot in the air, loudly reporting that the girl was dead. At this point, Julia passed out again.
When she woke up again, she only felt severe pain and her brain went blank. Everyone died, leaving her alone in the world, eager to hear her family's voices again, so she turned on the tape recorder, which was the conversation between the two before Julia killed her mother. The mother tried to tell her daughter the truth of the incident: on the day of the murder, when the couple found Julia by the lake, they saw her muttering incessantly, and for the next few days, they also had mental problems. But the paranoid Julia didn't want to listen to her mother's explanation and pulled the trigger. Julia, jealous of her mother's love for her sister, killed her siblings. In order to cover up the truth, he shot his mother, and the only father who loved him died at the gunpoint of the guerrillas.
It seems that there is an audience saying that this Nyima is what a sand sculpture story. How can it be as selective amnesia as "Gone With The Light 2"? If the story is read from here alone, it will be very bloody. But if we look back at the whole story from a different perspective at this moment, is it possible that the person "Martha" does not exist at all?
In the mother's dying words, it seems that there was never a martha person, or julia and Martha were originally the same person's dual personality, because the father was a soldier, so little was known about the daughter's situation, and when the mother received the note about the pregnancy, she realized that her daughter may have schizophrenia, and one person played two roles. Out of concern, she and her husband went to the lake early that morning to see what was happening, only to see their daughter sitting by the lake in her underwear muttering to herself. For the next few days, Julia didn't speak again. On the day of the piano, her mother did not beat Julia, but she was self-harming.
Julia, once again in confusion, fiddled with her puppet show. As a result of domestic violence as a child, the young protagonist forms a protective personality, Julia, who is dedicated to the wrath of her capricious mother due to drug use. The other person, Gemasa, enjoys the love of her mother. The contradiction between the two personalities takes root in the daily destruction. Until one day, Julia's personality killed her master, Gemasa, out of jealousy. This tragedy ended up.
Confused, Julia came to the church, into the deepest part of her mind, and the large and small dolls were scattered in a blank dead silence.
Sitting in front of the mirror, the mirror herself seems to be a puppet without a soul, she constantly asks herself, who is Martha, where are her parents, the game leaves a blank space for the player, whether Martha really exists or is another personality of Julia, but now the girl in the mirror has long been unable to distinguish between illusion and reality, as the mirror rotates again and again, her body and mind are also disintegrating piece by piece, leaving only a broken and soulless shell.
Ultimately, the game does not give the next conclusive evidence for any one inference, but gives an open-ended ending. Here, some viewers said that your other explanation also feels that the game plot is not bad, there is a feeling of god nagging.
Yes, the game is actually a deeper performance is not here, at this moment I say so, if you see here now, think that the game plot is outrageous, feel that the protagonist's spiritual problems can not be understood. You can't say how happy you are now, but it's not bad.
Human sorrow and joy are not the same, and as people who have not suffered great trauma, it is sometimes impossible to understand those who are deeply trapped in spiritual difficulties. Words like depression are now known to be abused by some people. It also attracts other people's various ridicules of "jade disease". But for people who really suffer from depression, they may feel no worse than the protagonist of our game, and the darkness and difficulties they encounter may be innocent and moaning in the eyes of normal people, and even sneer and do not understand it. Not being able to get help from the outside world puts them in a worse situation.
Many people have suffered psychological injuries for various reasons, whether from family, campus, work or society, physical trauma can be recovered, but mental trauma is difficult to repair. What the game wants to express is to use such a strange story to awaken people and society to pay attention to mental harm and to take care of people in trouble.
Even at the beginning and end of the game, a URL is provided. Inside, you can get some outside help based on alcoholism, insomnia, feeling lonely, etc. If you look at the gameplay and plot alone, "Death to Martha" is not a good work, and even a little bad. But at least on another level, it's a good game. Trying to help people with mental illness and minorities through the gaming industry.
As the game says at the end of the game, the good thing is that today we can seek and get help, even if we are just alone, even if we are in trouble, even if we feel that life is meaningless. If it feels hopeless, the only thing that may be that we haven't seen it yet. There are always important things in life, maybe somewhere. So don't be afraid to ask for help, because the people who are willing to help you are always here.
For people who are still in the dark, it will be fine, it will be.
Thanks for watching this issue of the game more than enough, like the audience friends can pay attention to the like collection forward, I am Joey, we will see you in the next issue.