Retro Pulp-Style Pixel Horror – Mothmen 1966 Review

If you’re old like some of us, you might remember growing up with an Apple IIe, a Commodore 64, or even an old 386.  Those early games were rudimentary, leaving the player’s imagination to do some of the heavy lifting.  But with all the complexity that modern games have, there’s really very little left to the player these days in terms of conceptualizing the storyline and in a way, that’s a negative.  Sometimes giving a story some openness makes it more powerful than a highly detailed one and that’s doubly so with horror.

Mothmen 1966 is the first entry in a new series of ‘Pixel Pulps’ from developer LCB Game Studio and publisher Chorus Worldwide.  Mothmen 1966 tells a rapid-fire contained story with only a handful of participants.  It’s told from the perspective of a gas station attendant named Holt and a college couple, Lee and Victoria.  Each character has their own section of the story and the game switch between them, always taking a first person perspective.

While Mothmen is sold as a ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ style experience, the truth is that this is more of a short visual novel with limited options and some interactivity and light puzzles.  As you work your way through the story, you are given a variety of options but survival to the end is never really in question.  If you choose poorly and die, you just restart at the last decision point with no penalties, heavily mitigating the consequences of your actions.

Lee and Victoria end up in the woods near Holt’s station to watch a meteor shower.  There are a few weird things going on and some rather strange people show up throughout the beginning but let’s be clear, this is a very short (maybe 1-2 hour) visual novel with a tight storyline so ruining the plot would be a waste.   You’ll get to play a challenging game of solitaire if you’d like, and you might have to fight off some critters, but by and large most of what you’re doing is reading.  There’s a convenient text log if you happen to miss anything, pretty standard for VNs.  The script incorporates a fair amount of mythology, conspiracy theories and a few other neat ideas too, so it’s definitely worth reading everything.

Eventually, you’ll get to the meat of the story.  There are quite a few chapters but they’re fairly short and manage to add a decent amount of depth to the characters, especially Lee and Victoria.  While there could be more character development here and a bit more backstory and text, the whole point of the Pixel Pulp style is to mimic 80s computer games and honestly, Mothmen 1966 feels like something you could have loaded from a 5 ¼ floppy disk in 1986.  That’s kind of awesome because it leaves a bit of wiggle room for player visualization.  Of course back then, there was definitely no swearing or detailed blood in video games and Mothmen has a fair bit.  This certainly isn’t a kids’ game even if it isn’t outrageously violent.

The pixel art in the game looks suitably vintage to appeal to both old fogeys and pixel art aficionados.  Mothmen 1966 definitely pulls off the ‘80s computer era vibe in every single bit of artwork and it’s glorious.  The detail level is quite good and the pixel artists should definitely be congratulated here.  It’s unfortunate that the color palette isn’t a bit wider though, because you’ll likely get kind of tired of green and teal before things are through.

Sadly, the music does not manage to match the pixel art or the short but interesting script.  Music in Mothmen is relegated to key moments to add a bit of punch to events and a few subtle background noises to add tension.  There’s essentially no soundtrack and the lack of real music is a noticeable detractor from an otherwise perfectly serviceable game.  Even in the ‘80s, computers were capable of more detailed soundtracks than this, so there’s really no excuse for the weak audio in Mothmen.

Once you make your way through the story, you’ll find there’s some decent world-building that’s been established and that you can also go back and play the solitaire game anytime you want.  There’s also a gallery of unlockable pixel art still images based on your playthrough.  Completists might try to get all the gallery images and beat solitaire, but for the vast majority of players, an hour or two with Mothmen will be just about right.

For a budget price of $9, you’re not getting a deep game with Mothmen 1966.  However, you are getting a decent game that holds its pace throughout play, tells a decent story with some interesting background, and leaves you feeling like there’s a successful resolution at the end.  It’s not a great game, but it’s a fun game and if you love pixel art, horror, and supernatural stuff, you’re likely to enjoy it.  If you’ve made it this far, Mothmen 1966 is probably worth a couple hours of your time and a couple bucks from your pocket!  Next it’ll be time to see where the Pixel Pulps series goes from here!

This review is based on a digital copy of Mothmen 1966 provided by the publisher.  It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well on both.  Mothmen 1966 is also available for PS4, Xbox One, and PC on Steam.