#656: Mad Father
Some family legacies are darker than others
Initial release: December 10, 2012 (original)/November 5, 2020 (remake)
Platform: PC (original)/PC, Switch (remake)
Developer: sen
Horror in video games goes back almost to the beginning with a haunted house overlay for the Magnavox Odyssey, but in the decades since, horror as a theme grew and evolved to manifest in all sorts of ways, in all sorts of genres, ultimately blending different, well-established genres to create something new: survival horror, the classic iteration of which is probably closer to traditional adventure games than anything else — indeed, Infogrames seemed to acknowledge this lineage directly by establishing connections between Alone in the Dark, their landmark 1992 survival horror title, with Shadow of the Comet, a traditionalist point and click adventure title released a year later. In a case of what might be considered convergent evolution, or perhaps just working within the confines of easily-accessible but comparatively primitive tools, “explorer horror,” a predominantly-Japanese subgenre, utilizes engines such as RPG Maker and Wolf RPG to effectively recreate the horror adventure game genre, where combat is at a minimum and instead you’re expected to explore and solve puzzles. Which leads us to Mad Father, a seminal explorer horror title using the Wolf RPG engine, developed by sen of Misao fame (and indeed the two games are implied to share a character.)
Mad Father tells the story of Aya Drevin, a young girl living in early 20th-century Germany — exactly when is unclear, though likely sometime between the World Wars, given the presence of (early) cars, a fridge in the kitchen, and what appears to be radios — whose father is rather clearly a mad scientist of some sort with an extensive body count. What the nature of his research is, or its purpose, isn’t immediately clear, but it’s clearly not pleasant to his test subjects. Aya’s mother passed away the year before of some unspecified illness, not long after she discovered that her husband had been cheating on her with his assistant. The house itself is festooned with dolls of all kinds and sizes made by Aya’s father, with special prominence given to a large room full of them right by the entrance hall. One night Aya hears screaming from the basement, and leaves her bedroom to investigate — only to run into the shuffling corpses of her father’s experiments. It seems the constant suffering he inflicted in the basement has triggered a curse, and now the ghosts of his victims lurk the manor. Aya — who is aware of what her father does for a living — thinks only of saving him, but things aren’t that clear cut.
Mad Father is like most other explorer horror games in that combat is non-existent; most encounters require you to run, or perform quick time events. A few encounters are a puzzle in and of themselves, such as finding a way around a life-sized, murderous laughing doll carrying an axe. But these encounters are relatively rare; most of your actions in the game is relatively simple adventure game stuff: collect items to make a torch, dump a jar of eyeballs down the ash chute of a fireplace so a blind ghost can see again, that sort of thing. There’s a real strong macabre element to the game, the way things go bump in the night and you’re constantly being watched. One particularly grisly moment was when returning from outside, you’re greeted by a trio of dolls in maid outfits who welcome you back. Suddenly, one of the dolls’ arms falls off. If you leave and come back, the middle doll is busy stabbing her unlucky colleague, blood everywhere; later, the maids are gone and a long smear of blood trails to the fireplace.
As far as these things go, Mad Father is relatively simple. No absurd adventure game logic is required; while the manor is large, especially its underground, it’s generally pretty straightforward in layout with easy signposting. The only really tough point are some of the encounters, which aren’t always easy to get away from (I’m thinking particularly of the bathroom ghost, who can trap you, and the cart ghost, who can surprise you and is an instakill if she gets you.)
Mad Father is actually really nice-looking. Crisp pixel graphics aren’t any less disturbing than something more high-fidelity, with well-defined character sprites (Aya’s walk animation is plenty cute) and a variety of unique props and environments. Higher-quality character art for dialogue sequences (or even just Aya musing to herself) makes the game feel a little more alive, and cutscene sequences make the game feel a lot scarier. The music adds to the sense of creeping dread, with lots of piano and droning sounds.
The story… well, it’s a choice. The mad scientist concept is solid enough, but the characterization of Aya’s family — especially the new stuff added to the 2020 remake of the game — doesn’t quite hit the mark, especially combined with the stuff about the house being a former cult ritual site. The three endings are all appropriately grisly, with the True Ending being a particularly dark twist (especially in the remake.) Ultimately I don’t think Mad Father quite makes the connections it wants to make half as well as Witch’s House. What’s here is good, but I feel like it’s a little undercooked; the 2020 remake has attempted to flesh things out a bit, but in its ruminations on the Drevin family’s dark legacy, it only makes things feel more convoluted.
The game was initially released for free in 2012, towards the end of the explorer horror heyday of the late 2000s/early 2010s; like a lot of the bigger RPG Maker/Wolf RPG horror titles, it got a paid update on Steam in 2016, and a full-fledged remake in 2020 that supplants the 2016 version entirely (and was also released on the Nintendo Switch.) This new version features all of the new stuff from the 2016 release as well as the addition of Blood Mode, a sort of New Game+ that has an adult Aya retracing her steps through her memories of the house to learn the dark truth about her mother. You also get an “IF” mode, which seems to be a retelling of the game’s ending from the perspective of Robin, a ghostly boy who helps Aya out from time to time.
If you’re coming at this genre from the likes of Yume Nikki or the million versions of Corpse Party, Mad Father — for all my issues with its undercooked story — is a seminal work and if absolutely nothing else well worth the ten bucks on Steam if you like this kind of thing.
