Having now played through all three of Stranga Games' short-form horror adventures Just Ignore Them, My Big Sister and Red Bow (writeup on the former coming next week) — I have to say I feel quite inspired. These are clearly one-man passion projects where Stranga (or "Nathan", apparently) had a vision for what he wanted to achieve, didn't let his ambitions run away with him, and successfully accomplished what he wanted.
There's a clear progression from Just Ignore Them to My Big Sister and onwards to Red Bow; of the three, I think My Big Sister is probably my personal favourite, but it's obvious that he spent time refining his craft and taking on board feedback between each of the three games.
I'll talk more about Just Ignore Them in my full write-up next week, but oddly enough, this is probably the most inspiring of the three in that Stranga freely admits he was mostly "winging it" when writing it — something I know I certainly do a whole lot with both fiction and non-fiction pieces! It's the most clunky, cumbersome and full of holes of the three, but in some respects that makes it feel like the most charming and soulful of them all; a guy decided he wanted to make a horror game that paid homage to some of his favourite games of all time, and he successfully did that.
And these games may be short, but the dude made them by himself — and they're available on pretty much every modern platform now. That's pretty cool, and proof that if you really set your mind to something, you can achieve pretty sweet things.
He's never going to make a million from any of these games — but I bet he can sit back, look at them and feel a great sense of satisfaction with what he's achieved. And I have to respect that.
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