Every month, card-carrying Hand Eye members get a free videogame, if you’re into that sort of thing I guess. This month’s spotlight and accompanying essay is on Spooky Squid Games’ They Bleed Pixels, available to yank on Steam.

They Bleed Pixels and the Art of Blood

As all good boarding school stories go, They Bleed Pixels (TBP) starts with you finding a blood-soaked grimoire that compels you to transform into a purple claw child.

What can be said about Lovecraftian-inspired They Bleed Pixels that hasn’t already? Over the years it’s gained a cult following bordering on actual cult. It’s spawned fanwork, let’s plays, mind-boggling speedruns, and cosplays. (Fun fact: the protagonist’s claws aren’t covered in blood. lore says they’re actually red!) It’s got a lovely TV Tropes page, and a strange Your Mileage May Vary page with someone wondering about “oriental” motifs. Um okay.

Then there’s the local love in They Bleed Pixels, which is astounding. Not only does the art gallery feature homegrown talent, the bonus levels revamp Toronto games Ryan Creighton’s: Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure (which comes with a banger remix) and Golden Gear’s Seraph, as well as adapts journalist Matthew Kumar’s exp zine.

For a game so beloved, it’s kind of ironic that Lovecraft himself hated games. The side-scrolling nightmarish gorefest has been called “Lovecraft Lite,” but the nickname downplays how every death damages your psyche. Personally, I delighted in how futile my existence was, as I struggled to murder bomb imps and avoid spinning saw blades. I marvelled at how I could leap onto the same damn spike 20 times in a row. I considered how my mind must have transcended human reasoning and was astral projecting into Hell, because surely that was why I was fool enough to torture myself on the same level for a week.

It’s all the game’s fault for making one of the most satisfying killscreens to watch. Blood oozes the landscape, you shriek, and nearby wraiths keep clawing at your carcass, long after you’ve died — which isn’t long, since continuing from a savepoint takes an almost instantaneous restart. Replaying is so easy when the dread that chaperones typical game over pop-up messages never comes.The checkpoint system works better than a power-up, giving incentive to survive to kill another day. It only rewards saves based on creative murder. Without it, gameplay on your last heart would be a lot less desperate and players might be more likely to off themselves on traps.

Which you will do. In spite of the simple two-button commands of jumping and attacking, buttonmashing will get you nowhere.The game demands precision, making you master each pixel and memorize every sprite. It asks you to master pacing and premeditate every strategy against enemies and traps, changing your movement patterns to beat absurd ascents. (Which is a very telling direction. If this game wanted you to feel doom and destruction was imminent, you wouldn’t spend most of your time scaling walls and double-jumping upwards — you’d be diving into the depths, fisticuffing with the Old Ones in an ill-fated cosmic throwdown.)

Precision may be They Bleed Pixels’ lesson for successful runs, but the game’s depiction of blood, the free-flowing variable players can’t control that coats every visual, adds an element of predictable volatility and unadulterated glee.

We think we know blood. We have bloodlines, bad blood, blood ties, blood brothers; we sweat blood to make blood money and have a bloody fine time. We’re bloodthirsty for gore, for great globs and raging rivers and spurting aortas. Televised murder mysteries are #1, because if it bleeds it leads.

We crave carnage, but as long as it’s trapped. We saturate the red runny stuff pumping through our flesh vessels with definitions and symbolisms and allusions.

They Bleed Pixels eschews all of that and lets blood be blood. Gameplay wants you to enjoy bloodbaths, whether you playing badly or well. Your beheadings are just as gloriously gushing as a Shambler. If you die before hitting the spear-covered ground, the camera follows your corpse, knowing this will give you something to avenge. It boasts to you how many pints you spilled at the end of levels, and rattles off a blood or Lovecraft-relate. Blood isn’t a sign of weakness or prevailing over the enemy or any profound statement on humanity — blood bleeds and it’s fun to watch.  Even a certain enemy epitomizes the blood and gives you a just reward for beating them.

Sometimes, games get heavy-handed with references instead of focusing on what it feels like to play. Games can choose to rigidly adhere to source material or inspired idols, which if They Bleed Pixels chose to do with Lovecraft, might have meant no game at all. So kill your darlings and your authors. Or at least, let them bleed a little.