Imagine a mechanical world that rotates and changes at the push of a button. Monstrous creatures, toe-like in appearance, float up and down the corridors of an old house. You cringe as you hear them spew nonsensical words in odd frenzied voices. They want to transform you into one of them: a stump of human flesh with jagged teeth and glowing eyes. As you move through a surrealistic landscape, warding off a pack of toe people with blue light, you’re tortured by endless questions. Is this purgatory? What happened to these monsters? Why do they have an aversion to blue light?
I discovered Albino Lullaby a month ago at PAX East. I was initially drawn to Ape Law’s booth because of the enlarged pictures of the game’s “grandchildren.” These absurd looking monsters, with their grayish skin and pronounced chins, forced me to pause in middle of a highly chaotic show floor. The grandchildren are unique in that they don’t resemble any kind of monster I’ve personally encountered in other horror games. The unconventional shape of their bodies and exaggerated facial features naturally awaken a person’s inner curiosity and ignite conversation. I even pulled a friend over to the booth because I was compelled to show someone else and have a conversation about them. The image of the grandchildren stayed in my mind long after the convention was over.
The alpha demo is about an hour long and available to download on the game’s website. I didn’t know what to expect at first. From what I’ve seen in the trailers, the game prides itself on a lack of jump scares and gore. It strays from the more traditional trademarks of the horror genre, which I find to be refreshingly unconventional. Though I adore a game that gets my adrenaline pumping, I also want a game that makes me think and question. This game takes me somewhere else completely. 
The opening cinematic focuses on an unnamed protagonist who, after getting into a car crash, winds up in a kind of limbo or in between place. I call it the world of the toe people because its inhabitants are an alien something else that’s quite far from human or anything remotely familiar. Though the demo exhibits some horror elements, there’s something very sci fi about the mechanicalness of the world. It’s astounding in that the world is a colossal puzzle I’m unable to comprehend, its intricacies beyond me. The rooms rotate and change, elevate or lower the player to different levels, and so on. It’s a technological beast of a world where the rooms all feel connected or intertwined somehow. Additionally, the strangeness of the world is comparable to the Netherworld from Beetlejuice because it’s indescribably weird in the best way possible.
The game mechanics are fairly standard as far as game mechanics go. The player can move the protagonist with the WASD keys, run by pressing shift, and so on. Though the alpha demo does not feature a controls tutorial, a later version of the demo does. The developers were kind enough to send me an updated version of the demo but aside from a crisper looking world and a controls tutorial, I didn’t notice many changes in the game play or narrative structure.
I’m particularly captivated by the monsters in this game because there’s something rather pitiful about them. They often glide along in set paths and babble to themselves or yell at each other. It’s easy enough to avoid them in both versions of the demo because they move slow and have poor peripheral vision but their mental states seem to be entirely shot. Is it possible to feel repulsion, pity, and fear all at once? This ambiguity and confusion drives the narrative. There’s a point in the demo where the protagonist encounters a half formed grandchild and it’s a disturbing yet telling moment. These grandchildren were once human and they’ve been reduced down to these limbless, childlike creatures. It makes me reconsider the idea of a monster.
The demo alone showcases how very ambitious and unafraid this game is. I say unafraid because this game knows no boundaries and there’s a sort of fearlessness when it comes to featuring the absurd and nonsensical. The developers have created a highly abstract world and that in itself is brave and innovative. The narrative, though still on the vague side, is intriguing enough that I want to know more. I applaud the developers for not relying on more traditional elements for the sake of creating something truly remarkable and different.
