| Anthology of the Killer | |
| Developer: | Stephen Gillmurphy |
| Composer: | Tommy Tone |
| Engine: | Unity |
| Released: | 28 May 2024 |
Anthology of the Killer is a series of comedy-horror video games developed by Irish independent developer Stephen Gillmurphy under the pseudonym "garmentdistrict". The games were released for free on Game Jolt between 4 December 2020 and 5 March 2024; a paid compilation, including all nine games and bonus content, was released on Game Jolt and itch.io on 28 May 2024.
The games are primarily walking simulators; the player moves main character BB around environments and reads her thoughts on the current events. Interspersed are chase sequences where the player must escape from pursuing killers, though there is no penalty for failure.
The games follow BB, a college student living in an apartment in XX City with her older sister ZZ, as she investigates various strange events for her zine. XX City has an extremely high murder rate, and foremost among its many serial murderers is a supernatural bird-headed figure known only as "the Killer".
BB gets a job as a cold caller at the insurance company Life Contracts, where she notices several strange occurrences, such as all the employees being covered in sheets, a heavy police presence, and a welcoming party for the Killer. That night, BB has a surreal dream and wakes up to a message on her phone telling her the Life Contracts office has burnt down.
ZZ sends BB to explore the depths of their apartment building to find things to sell online. While doing so, BB stumbles into a night college devoted to creating a new world via murder, led by the elderly Professor Zoo. Though the faculty and students consider real murder kitsch, they mistake BB for a "My First Strangle Victim" doll. While escaping, BB accidentally disables the college's security system, allowing the Killer to enter and murder everyone as BB escapes.
BB investigates a mysterious bus service that takes her to a swimming centre known as Tammy. BB discovers that Tammy is actually the ghost of a schoolgirl who was drowned by the Killer, who since her death has been transforming buildings into water parks to fulfil her vision of the new economy. Outraged that Tammy's water is unchlorinated, BB apparently kills Tammy by knocking over a bottle of chlorine onto her.
BB is conscripted into the city's immersive theater production of "Melmo the Wanderer", where she plays "Potsy the Mop Girl", a character who has one line before being killed. Annoyed by her inability to discover more about the plot, as the stage manager believes the actors should know no more than their characters, BB abandons her role and explores backstage to try and find out the identity of her character's murderer. Following a man in a bear costume, BB falls through a trapdoor and discovers the police, dressed in bear costumes, dismembering the corpses of audience members. Escaping, BB tries to inform the theater's director, Bosso, about this, but discovers she is a member of the same cult that the night college belonged to. Bosso explains that BB did the cult a favour by allowing the college to be wiped out, as the college had diluted the cult's message and the CCTV footage of the massacre made money for the cult when they released it as direct-to-video horror film Bloody Night IV. Bosso reveals that the wealthy owners of the city fund the immersive theater and the murder of its audience to satisfy their desire for bloodshed. After a climatic scene in the play, where a character resembling the Killer murders characters representing the Sun and Moon, BB is dismissed from the theater with a twenty-dollar paycheck.
BB and three fellow college students (Max, Claude, and Ray) investigate the Museum of Moral Art, a secret museum built in a freeport. The museum prominently features the works of M.T. Lott, who revitalised the genre of moral art before being arrested for cannibalism. Venturing deeper into the museum, they discover that M.T. Lott, believing morality too important to leave to humans, created a robot called the Morality Animal. However, incapable of understanding morality outside of its depiction in art, the robot went berserk and now attempts to trap all life within paintings. After the robot traps them in a painting together, the group distracts the robot with a morality-themed play before attacking and destroying it.
BB is sent to investigate why a zine distro established in the nearby River Town stopped sending messages. River Town brands itself "the home of the drinky bird", as there used to be a major drinky bird factory in the town before it burnt down. BB travels to the home of her contact, Clarice, only to find it burnt to the ground. BB then encounters XX city serial killer Murderer X, who mistaking BB for a fellow murderer tells her to check out a list of places before being killed by a woman wearing a metal bird mask. Lacking other leads, BB checks out the various locations in the list, only to discover that most of them have burnt down. BB gives up and tries to return to XX City, but is kidnapped and taken to the heir of the drinky bird factory, who styles himself "Concerned Citizen". BB discovers that the women in the bird mask is Clarice; Concerned Citizen, believing in a vast conspiracy to pervert recorded history, converted her into a cyborg under his control to kill those who he believes are connected with the conspiracy. He plans to do the same to BB, but the Killer burns down Concerned Citizen's house and kills him, while Clarice, seemingly free of Concerned Citizen's mind control, helps BB escape in the confusion.
Annoyed by loud music being played in her apartment building, BB goes to confront the source in their apartment, but finds nothing but fleshlike sludge and a 1960s surf record by "Blue D Hans". After a surreal sequence where the walls of the apartment fall away and the Killer places a bird made of the same sludge down BB's throat, BB awakes to find herself on stage - while unconscious, she has become an up-and-coming star in the new music scene of "Crime Wave". Trying to find answers, BB visits Blue D Hans' old record company, but finds it has closed down and the offices are now used by a company using washed-up corpses to create music.
Meanwhile, ZZ gets a job at the beachfront headquarters of cult Positive Way LLC. After being sent into the bowels of the complex to find old stock to sell online, ZZ discovers records by Blue D Hans and then finds the cult's leader dead, seemingly murdered by Blue D Hans. BB goes to a retro convention after learning that the record company's remaining assets are being sold off there, and stumbles upon the Weepster, a Crime Wave artist who murders his competing scene rivals. The Weepster attempts to kill BB, but the bird in her throat reasserts control.
Waking up on the beach with the Weepster's clothes lying abandoned next to her, BB reunites with ZZ, who is selling the Blue D Hans records to a buyer who wants to meet them in person. The buyer turns out to be Blue D Hans himself, who explains his philosophy of the "counterworld", a negative of the regular world, to BB, before forcing her and ZZ to perform a beachfront concert with him. BB destroys the bird inside her, Blue D Hans is drowned by a giant wave, and the Crime Wave splinters into endless subfactions.
BB, working as a mystery shopper, is sent to the Dream Resort, a vast complex seemingly empty of other guests. At the Resort, BB is presented with endless surveys and participates in focus testing where she is asked for her opinions on various bizarre products. Also present in the Resort is the Dial-A-Boy, a toy phone that connects to the attractive young men presented as the Resort's executives, which BB refuses to use. In a bathroom, BB encounters fellow zine author CC, who tells her to meet at the same place the next day to learn what's actually going on. The next day, the bathroom is empty but BB discovers a secret passage behind a mirror, which leads to a surveillance room containing a dossier on government agent "The Spook", as well as instructions on how to escape the Resort.
That night, BB attempts to escape, but the instructions were a setup to get her to use the Dial-A-Boy, which BB still refuses to use. The Resort's manager, frustrated by BB's non-compliance, has the Spook trap her in a fantasy world named Pumpkin Summer. BB rejects the fantasy's proposed love interest, and back in the real world finds a flyer for an investment meeting, revealing the Dream Resort's real purpose: studying its residents to collect behavioural insights into modern youth fantasies. BB discovers that the Resort's manager is Marcie, formerly famous for a zine she made in the 90s. After her second zine was a critical and financial flop, Marcie went into consultancy work. BB and Marcie are swallowed by the Spook, and Marcie explains that she became a consultant to find out what people liked, after she had a crisis of faith when her second zine failed. Marcie is consumed by the Spook, seeking validation and identity from its collected data; BB refuses to follow and wakes up as the Resort collapses.
BB, Max, Claude, and Ray graduate from college and, while collecting their diplomas, watch a horror film featuring a fictionalised version of BB. After the release of Bloody Night IV other studios made their own films featuring the BB character, who gradually morphed into a murderous villain. Ray convinces the others to go with him to a graduation night costume party in an upper-class neighbourhood. After a reactionary speech by an immersive theater actor in character as Mappy, the party's guests - dressed as serial killers - start murdering people. BB attempts to escape but is captured by Bosso.
Bosso explains that the immersive theater is staging a fictitious coup for an audience of the city's owners. The Mappy actor accidentally shoots himself with a prop gun, believing it to be unloaded, causing Bosso to blame BB for the theater's troubles and attack her. BB escapes Bosso, but is captured by the police, whose leader, Cool Policeman, explains that they loaded the immersive theater's prop guns to create a pretext for attacking it and seizing control. He forces BB to travel with him deep into the city's bowels in hopes of finding its owners. BB slips away while Cool Policeman is confronted by the corpse of Professor Zoo. Professor Zoo discusses Hobbes' Leviathan and its argument for the necessity of the state, stating that it created two realms - one of politics and legitimate, directed violence, the other of horror and illegitimate, undirected violence. Zoo's corpse says that it's time for the latter to have its turn in power, but is riddled with bullets by Cool Policeman. The Killer emerges from behind Zoo's corpse and drags BB and Cool Policeman into its world. BB meets the bird from Ears while Cool Policeman is murdered by the Killer. The bird urges BB to shoot the Killer; BB accidentally fires a shot, which ricochets and hits the Killer. The Killer's clothes and head collapse on the floor and BB returns to the real world. The ghosts of Blue D Hans and Professor Zoo explain that BB has created the counterworld, though BB perceives no difference from the previous world besides the colour scheme.
In an epilogue, BB, staying with family after the chaos of recent events, writes to ZZ, who is away at a convention. No one aside from BB has noticed that anything has changed, and BB herself can only note a few minor changes, the colours having faded back to normal. Standing in the street, BB signs off by telling ZZ not to worry about her as the murderous BB character from the film stands behind her.
The games were developed in Unity, with the graphics produced in the Doodle Studio 95 plugin. Gillmurphy wanted to make a serialised narrative because he was interested in how "doing something over and over [makes] the edges blur and it becomes gradually more strange". The decision to make a horror game from reading Junji Ito's Uzumaki and playing the Haunted PS1 demo collection.[1]
Brendan Caldwell, writing for Rock Paper Shotgun, praised the series' "combination of DIY MS Paint visuals and a surreal comic voice" and said that "I could basically pick any dialogue box that appears in any of these games and it would have something worth smiling at, or frowning at, or feeling something at".[2] Zoey Handley, in her Destructoid review of the compiled release, praised the game's writing but had issues with the camera and stated that the first couple of entries in the series were weaker than the rest, ultimately giving the game 8 out of 10.[3] Lewis Gordon in The Guardian called it "a stunning horror game of uneasy, deliberate flatness".[4] The series won the Nuovo Award and was nominated for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the 2024 Independent Games Festival.[5] [6]