Day 27 - M. Stain

Horror, Creepypasta, Snake? Snake!? Snaaaake! · 27 May 2024

Sam’s Take:

This is going to be an odd review, because I’m going to spend most of it bashing this game, and then recommend it at the end. I think the best way to go about this is to say upfront that this game does many things well and one thing extremely poorly, and unfortunately, the thing it does poorly is the more interesting thing to discuss. I don’t think it ruins the game at all, it just takes a long time to explain, and is what got my brain churning while playing. So for what it’s worth, this game nails the razor-thin horror-comedy tone. I had many a genuine chuckle playing this game.

I also appreciate the game’s flair for the cinematic, for example when you sit down with the titular M. Stain, and he’s got that classic poison-green tint and a dutch angle.

This game has a clear direction, it’s the appropriate length for what is essentially a horror-themed walking simulator, and there is some imagery from it that will stick with me. The game is free, short and worth a playthrough. So please don’t take the following rant as a huge dig on this game, it is one problem with a mostly interesting game.

M. Stain is a simple choose your own adventure walking sim. You play as a man trying to get a job in the big city. You go, interview with my boy M. Stain, and then wacky horror things happen based on your choices. I’m going to recount the events of my first playthrough in full to make a point, so if you do want to play this game, please do that first and then come back. It’s only 15/20 minutes long. If you want to see my conclusion first, you can skip to the last paragraph, it won’t spoil anything.

My first playthrough, I picked up a quarter on the street, then walked into the interview building. I met with the secretary, and a cowboy fella also looking to interview, then headed into the boss’s office. I chose my seat, answered some questions the best I could, then accepted his job offer.

I then went to a bar to celebrate, where a bartender gave me a drink and asked me to put on a song for him. Upon playing the requested song using the quarter I had picked off, he popped off his human head and revealed his snake-body. Neat.

After going through a few rooms collecting random items, I went to the arcade and watched a pervert movie in a room, after which a skeleton hand gave me a knife. I went to the VIP section and saw my new boss M. Stain, who asked me to kill his secretary to appease his god. Following the bartender’s advice, I instead stabbed him, which turned him into a flying baby boss (boss baby, if you will).

I deftly avoided his fireballs, stabbed him many times until he died, but not before he exploded, setting the whole bar on fire. I dodged some freaky hands and got out of there, where a taxi driver took me home.

At the end you are presented with a screen ranking your ending. This screen fades super fast, so I apologize for the faded screenshot, but it’s important that you see it (for real I beat this game 3 times for this shitty shot).

If you see a screen ranking your ending, especially in a game this short, what does it make you want to do? It makes you want to play again and see a different ending right? My first time through M. Stain, I was all ready to write up a fairly positive review and go about my day, but then I saw this screen and thought “huh, maybe there are a bunch of wildly different endings, I guess I should check”.

So of course on my second playthrough I tried to do everything different. I tried not entering the interview building, but there’s nothing else to do, and the game just waits for you, so I went in. I tried going to the boss’s office before talking to the secretary, but the door is locked unless you do things in the right order. Fine, it makes sense that the start isn’t different. The interview is where all the choices were anyway. I choose to refuse his offer this time, and this DID lead to a different scene where I got put in a prison. After that scene though it took me right to the bar like my last playthrough.

The bar didn’t have any way to do things differently, other than avoiding the bartender and skipping that cool snake scene. Once I got to the sacrifice room, I stabbed the secretary instead of M. Stain. His god declared the body impure and killed M Stain for me, leading to the same boss fight.

I tried to lose the boss fight this time, but you can’t. I ran into the fireballs, let him run into me. I even tried standing still for about seven minutes. It shows red around your screen when you get hit, but there’s no way to actually lose the fight. I killed Boss Baby once more and decided to see what happens when you run into the hands in the hallway. Nothing, they behave just like walls.

I’m all good with smoke and mirrors in games. Video games lie all the time to our benefit. Modern Call of Duty games give you the maximum damage screen (ie. most red around the edges of your screen) at roughly 33% health, making it seem like you are inches from death well before your actual last hit point. Fire Emblem’s hit rate is actually based on the average of two rolls rather than a single one, resulting in a 95% hit chance hitting 99.55% of the time in reality, and a 5% hitting 0.55% of the time, in order to closer match how our dumb human brains FEEL like statistics should work.

https://serenesforest.net/general/true-hit/

Smoke and mirror design is a powerful tool, but there’s a big difference between me looking up how these tricks work because I’m interested in game design, and finding them by accident in a game. I don’t mind that Fire Emblem lies to me because I never would have noticed had I not taken the time to look up hit calculations like a freak. M. Stain basically begged me to play again for a different ending, and of course I’m going to test out different choices and see if I can die in different ways on a second playthrough. It’s wild to have a tight simple experience for exactly one playthrough, and then rank/title your ending.

I really think this does the game dirty, because there are little things that do change. I mentioned that there’s a prison scene if you refuse the job offer. The amount you’re offered, while inconsequential, does change on your contract based on how you answered the interview questions. Even the very end with the taxi has a mild change, with the ghosts of who you killed in a particular playthrough being the ones to drive you away at the end. None of these are huge changes, but these little tweaks and the minor dialogue differences do give the game a little sense of flow that helps your playthrough feel unique, even in a linear game.

That’s the real issue though. It makes the playthrough FEEL unique. If you only play it once, then feeling unique is absolutely enough. If the experience is real to the player, then a trick is just as effective as the real deal, but the illusion is fickle. Encouraging players to play a second time when it’s all a trick, is an extremely bold choice, and I would have left much happier if I had not been coaxed into a second playthrough.

So as I said, the game is pretty entertaining. I would recommend playing it one time and treating it as a linear game with a little spice. When viewed that way, I think it’s very cute and worthy of your time, just don’t expect a second playthrough to blow your mind.

Recommend: Yes

Replay Percentage Chance: 2%

Time Played: 40 Minutes

Skeeter’s Take:

I went into M. Stain expecting some creepypasta type horror, or some meta commentary on how applying to jobs is a nightmare. Instead, what I got was a short ride with some fun thrills. It’s a quick little tale that doesn’t over complicate what it’s trying to do, and has enough twists and turns to keep it interesting until the end. But mostly, it has this odd sense of humor that permeates the whole game.

So start, there are some fun, kooky characters - including your interviewer: Walmart brand Beetlejuice. He’s the boss at this strange establishment and a self-proclaimed “millionaire playboy”.

I figured it stood for “Millions”.
Turns out I was wrong:

There’s his Secretary:

At one point, you’re supposed to follow her back to the boss’ office for the interview and if you stop in the hallway of endless doors she will make an annoyed sound and turn around to stare at you like you shouldn’t keep her waiting.

There’s Woody, who’s also interviewing for the same job:

I had never seen that word before, and I figured it could be a fun one to add to the vocabulary, so I searched up the definition.

Hmm, no, that doesn’t quite seem right. Maybe there are some pictures of him?

???

I wasn’t the biggest fan of Woody…

Later, after my interview, the Boss offered me a measly 1k dollars for the position. After obviously declining that offer, he pushed a trapdoor button which sent me tumbling into a cell. And who should I spy across the way?

Funny thing about karma is, it always comes back around. Upon my cell wall was a big wheel with the words “SAVE YOURSELF” written over it.

In Woody’s cell, there was a wall of spikes, and the Zorch man himself.

So I spun the wheel, the spike wall inched toward Woody, Woody died and his ghost flew inside of me. The world was once again free to precede zorch free.

One thing that M. Stain does, that I love is, it uses its old Playstation looking graphics for comedic effect, rather than trying too hard to make them look scary.

Take the Bartender over here for example:

While unsettling, there’s something so funny about how this character looks. Honestly, I think he’s a better poster child than the Boss is. Look at that face - it’s uncanny, kind of strange, but ultimately makes you laugh. That summarizes how I felt playing this game. This guy doesn’t accept a tip for a free drink, and instead just asks you to play a song on the jukebox for him. Naturally I obliged, and just look at how happy he was:

In fact he was so happy that he turned into a cobra:

I love this. It’s so goofy and strange, but dipped in this creepy themed aesthetic - it’s a hard balance to strike, but M. Stain does it well. It tells a fun story in a short amount of time, with plenty of surprises along the way and doesn’t outstay its welcome.

I’m looking to wrap this up, but before I go, I wanted to leave you with a few other things I liked:

This event board was funny: