Love the use of video and more psychedelic aspects of the presentation. Not very into the finding notes form of storytelling or the default camera. Really looking forward to whatever you make next!
The Black Iris is a Cosmic Horror with explorative elements. The year is 1983, in Scotland. You are an Engineer, send into an abandoned research facility to decommissioned equipment and collected research material from scientists, as further, you go into the crypt of science. Unforeseen and unexplained events happen. Not even the man of science can't explain.
Presentation
Feature a PlayStation One era graphics gives it a grainy look, with a dominant vibrant hue of magenta, a colour not found in the spectrum or view by our eyes. The game consists of four areas, each open with a title screen of a movie prompt. Black Iris does an exceptional job of visually describing Cosmic Horror.
Notes found regular, lore dive into the backstory of Black Rock. There are even cassette tapes, much the same as the notes. The story takes inspiration from Roadside Picnic, taking place in a zone in North East of Scotland. Focus around an oil-mining operation unearthed anomalies that affect the miners—forming a religious sect, the Order of the Void worshipping the Black Iris. The rest is explained whether well by the game.
The ambience is fantastic, casting a menacing aura. The pouring rain is rebellious, compounded by the breathing like there is a sense of struggle. The credit music was superb.
The gameplay inspired by Resident Evil, inventory for items to equipped for puzzle solving. The fixed-camera angles. The whole ten yards. The game does give you a compass and a map from a terminal to guide you to each location. Up to you to figure out the directions. Thankfully, navigation isn't complicated. Game-map is cross-shaped. If you get lost, I don't know what to tell you. Your main objective is simple; decommissioned equipment in each area and collecting research material.
Black Iris is short 30-40 minutes. It does help the fact Black Iris is free.
Collapsing Cosmoses
Black Iris is a stunning game that understands what is Cosmic Horror, visually with a fantastic ambience. A captivating story to match. Black Iris gets a heavy recommendation.
Such a great game! So beautiful to look at and I really enjoy the camera angles. I think however I did break the game a couple of times, so my bad haha!
A trippy, surreal experience. I really enjoyed the art style of this, the plot and unfolding the mystery as it went on deeper and deeper into the site was fun to do so as well. Everything about this felt great! Would for sure tell you to play it and experience it yourself :)
I just wanted to post a quick update. Firstly, thanks so much to everyone who has played the game and had kind things to say. It has just reached 3.5k downloads which is orders of magnitude more than I could have hoped. Secondly, to all of you who have donated money, I am so grateful, it will make a huge difference in my community, where unfortunately foodshares are being needed a lot more because of the pandemic.
On that note, I will be updating here and on Twitter with receipts etc. as and when I transfer donations to West Dunbartonshire Foodshare. With itch.io, for each purchase made of a game, the creator must wait 7 days before a payout can be requested and then there is usually another 7+ days until the creator receives the money, so in order to try and make things easier, I will probably wait a few weeks before requesting the first payout so that I can group as many of the purchases together as possible. I thought this was worth mentioning since there will be some time between me requesting a payout and it actually being donated.
Super jazzed to try this out but I keep getting stuck after selecting Play from the start menu. Could just be the fact that I'm playing on an older machine?
I'm having this problem too. Win 7/64bit I tried both versions jic and restarted my computer too, cuz why not ^__^;; Mostly playing it on this computer cuz my Newer computer isn't as powerful for gaming.
i sure am hyped to play this game! is there any chance a Steam or Linux port are coming? if not, i could probably find a Windows machine somewhere, or borrow one from a friend.
Hello! I will most probably put it on steam at some point in the future. I'm not currently planning on doing a linux or mac port, just because the numbers compared to windows users make it hard to justify the resources for testing on other platforms and since it's just me that is a big time investment, but who knows in the future.
Darn it, you bring up a sad but valid point (about lower sales on non-Windows platforms). I don't know the first thing about programming games, but I can see that conundrum. For being the only employee at Arboreta Games, I am more or less blown away by what you've created. (And BTW I love BTBR!)
I streamed this game a couple days ago and some of my viewers seemed pretty interested in the game and was asking me questions about it and I happily recommended the game to them. Only thing I wish I could do was use one of the tracks for the beginning of my stream as the music is so fantastic! Still, great job on the game. Loved the environment and the vivid colors!
I got stuck behind an invisible wall in the left door area (left from the central zone facing the final zone). Luckily I got out by walking towards the main building in that area. Great atmosphere tho.I love the interstitial vids between zones.
I love the atmosphere of this game! I was creeped out the whole time wondering what would happen next, especially once it started getting trippy. Was it just a coincidence that I perceived several references to Beyond the Black Rainbow? Hope you like my gameplay! Don't mind the dumb jokes and commentary
SO so stylish, loved our time playing this & awesome to see something made & set in Scotland! Great work here, the shaders & title cards in particular are amazing
Excellent, loved every second. FWIW, I played on a 21:9 monitor, and the game went into "vert-", meaning I had a full-width display but was missing the top and bottom of the image. I know fully supporting ultrawide is a bit of work, but a better default would be to go into pillarbox 16:9.
hey thanks for the comment! Yeah I need to rethink the display size next time. It's set the way it is just now because the UI would be all over the place otherwise, but you are right 16:9 would be better. Most of the time it scales appropriately but occaisionally runs into trouble
Loved the game, the art style for it was just amazing, and the soundtrack was absolutely bumping. It really helped build the atmosphere. The weird trippy transitions also caught me really off guard, but overall this game blew my mind. I really hope that we can get to see a sequel to this or anything else to do in this world that's been built, because the story is quite interesting, and the art style for the game is just stunning!
Hello, I'm sorry the game wasn't loading for you. Are you using a 32-bit version of Windows? I have uploaded a 32-bit version of the game that might work for you
Loved it, big fan of the cinematic approaches and influence from that genre of movie.
Maybe a shot in the dark, but was the Canadian sci-fi horror "Beyond the Black Rainbow" a big influence at all too? I'm seeing a lot of parallels and even Arboreta Games is sounding like it was inspired by the movie's fictional Arboria Institute. A fantastic movie to draw inspiration from to be sure 👍👍👍
Hey there, thanks for dev'ing and releasing this game.
Not a bad jaunt into cosmic horror. I enjoyed the PS1-esque visuals and the sound design was fantastic. My main issues do indeed lie with the story, which I feel was lacking on content and overall pacing - but hey, for a solo developer, I think you did a great job.
I would like to see this idea fleshed out into a bigger, more expansive game. You do have a great setting on your hands with the separated zones.
Still looking forward to checking this out and recording a playthrough, but even after the most recent patch I still just get a solid non-crash black screen after hitting play, which is a shame.
Hello, I'm sorry the game isn't working for you. Are you using a 32 bit version of Windows? If this is the case then the original version of the game might not work. I have uploaded a 32 bit version that you could try if this is the case. If not could you let me know and I can look into it further. Thanks again
Nope, 64 bit here, so I'm honestly not sure what might be the problem based on the ones other people have been having. Thanks for looking into it for me though.
The art style, the music, the camera, the loading screens between areas like in Mandy... it is the actual definition of good taste. I also loved the references to Panos Cosmatos' filmography and to The Void, they are introduced to the player in a smartly way to help with the immersion creating that strange and inexplicable environment. I think everyone should experience those films before experiencing The black iris.
Thank you for creating something so unique, I hope to see more from Arboreta Games!
I played this game on my stream and I was thoroughly confused the entire time. I wish it was longer, and had some more coherent details to it, maybe even a sequel.
cool look. I like the integration of video clips, interstitials, and the overall cinematic presentation. also a fan of switching from a third person follow cam to various fixed camera angles. good atmospheric sound, good moods. well done
Thank you dev for responding quickly about the main menu screen issue and thank you so much for delivering an experience that is pure definition of cosmic horror. Playing through this, I could honestly tell that you put a lot of love and work in it. Well done!
Really loved this! The atmosphere and the story made this a creepy and amazing experience! The pixelated style really added to the time setting as well!
Really REALLY good. My mum brought me a pancake while I was playing this (it's pancake day) and I slightly burned my finger grabbing the plate too hastily out of fear because this game spooked me so much. I love it. The graphic style, atmosphere, and tank controls are really cool. I've also been really into Chernobyl-related content lately so it was a nice surprise seeing that feed into The Black Iris a lil' bit :-)
The tank controls took me a second to get used to, along with the camera getting weird, but it's a really solid game and story. I did run into the cabin issue (in the most recent version), but it was worth reloading the game.
Hi thanks so much for playing, this is really unfortunate timing because I've just now uploaded a new version with a patch for this bug. Thanks so much for reloading though... I understand bugs like this are annoying, especially when you are recording, so I really appreciate you sticking with it
I wanted to get into this (really interesting use of retro visual design, good story and atmosphere!) but I just can't handle the keyboard controls. Wishing for game pad support -- this and an option to dial down/turn off certain effects would go a long way towards accessibility. Thanks for reading.
Hey, thanks for your comment! I am intending to add controller support as soon as I can. Covid has made it hard to get my hands on controllers for testing so I decided to just go ahead with keyboard only for now to just get the game out there and not have half finished controller support. When I get around to adding controller support I'll be sure to update the page and add a devlog. Thanks again!
First, I love the color palette for this game haha. It's a very interesting story and I'd definitely like to hear more. As someone mentioned below, the motion video was sooooo good. I was kinda hoping for more. I haven't experienced any bugs or problems during my walkthrough, so it was all smooth and nice. Thanks for the game!
Looks like I'm the second person today to have the same issue with the latest version of this game. Stuck at main menu. No mouse cursor. No keyboard controls. Windows 10 64bit.
I looked into this further and noticed some more weird issues with the UI in the start menu. I've patched this further, so hopefully there shouldn't be any issues now. Just so you know, the latest version is no v1.4 (you can see the version on the .zip download). Thanks again for letting me know
* Update *
I have uploaded a new build in case this was an asset loading problem that can sometimes happen. If it happens again with this build could you try loading the game without any other apps open? I know Unity games occaisionally don't get on with being run at the same time as other apps. Let me know if you still have problems and I can look into it further.
thanks for letting me know, i'm looking into this now, i'll reply when there's a fix
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Comments
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I was able to figure it out and beat the game! So wonderful! Well done!
Thanks! Glad you liked it
Of course! It was so much fun!
Love the use of video and more psychedelic aspects of the presentation. Not very into the finding notes form of storytelling or the default camera. Really looking forward to whatever you make next!
thanks!
My review of the Black Iris:
Introduction
The Black Iris is a Cosmic Horror with explorative elements. The year is 1983, in Scotland. You are an Engineer, send into an abandoned research facility to decommissioned equipment and collected research material from scientists, as further, you go into the crypt of science. Unforeseen and unexplained events happen. Not even the man of science can't explain.
Presentation
Feature a PlayStation One era graphics gives it a grainy look, with a dominant vibrant hue of magenta, a colour not found in the spectrum or view by our eyes. The game consists of four areas, each open with a title screen of a movie prompt. Black Iris does an exceptional job of visually describing Cosmic Horror.
Notes found regular, lore dive into the backstory of Black Rock. There are even cassette tapes, much the same as the notes. The story takes inspiration from Roadside Picnic, taking place in a zone in North East of Scotland. Focus around an oil-mining operation unearthed anomalies that affect the miners—forming a religious sect, the Order of the Void worshipping the Black Iris. The rest is explained whether well by the game.
The ambience is fantastic, casting a menacing aura. The pouring rain is rebellious, compounded by the breathing like there is a sense of struggle. The credit music was superb.
The gameplay inspired by Resident Evil, inventory for items to equipped for puzzle solving. The fixed-camera angles. The whole ten yards. The game does give you a compass and a map from a terminal to guide you to each location. Up to you to figure out the directions. Thankfully, navigation isn't complicated. Game-map is cross-shaped. If you get lost, I don't know what to tell you. Your main objective is simple; decommissioned equipment in each area and collecting research material.
Black Iris is short 30-40 minutes. It does help the fact Black Iris is free.
Collapsing Cosmoses
Black Iris is a stunning game that understands what is Cosmic Horror, visually with a fantastic ambience. A captivating story to match. Black Iris gets a heavy recommendation.
Thanks for the in-depth review!
Such a great game! So beautiful to look at and I really enjoy the camera angles. I think however I did break the game a couple of times, so my bad haha!
Thanks for playing!
No problem! It was a wonderful game!
A trippy, surreal experience. I really enjoyed the art style of this, the plot and unfolding the mystery as it went on deeper and deeper into the site was fun to do so as well. Everything about this felt great! Would for sure tell you to play it and experience it yourself :)
Thanks very much!
No problem! It was a pleasure playing the game :)
This was Awesome!
It was honestly one of my favourite PS1 style horror games that I have played in such a long time! I really am excited to see what you do next! ☺️
Thanks so much!
I just wanted to post a quick update. Firstly, thanks so much to everyone who has played the game and had kind things to say. It has just reached 3.5k downloads which is orders of magnitude more than I could have hoped. Secondly, to all of you who have donated money, I am so grateful, it will make a huge difference in my community, where unfortunately foodshares are being needed a lot more because of the pandemic.
On that note, I will be updating here and on Twitter with receipts etc. as and when I transfer donations to West Dunbartonshire Foodshare. With itch.io, for each purchase made of a game, the creator must wait 7 days before a payout can be requested and then there is usually another 7+ days until the creator receives the money, so in order to try and make things easier, I will probably wait a few weeks before requesting the first payout so that I can group as many of the purchases together as possible. I thought this was worth mentioning since there will be some time between me requesting a payout and it actually being donated.
Thanks again,
Jamie
respect, this is a fabulous effort with a charitable cause.
im in :)
Thanks!
Super jazzed to try this out but I keep getting stuck after selecting Play from the start menu. Could just be the fact that I'm playing on an older machine?
hmm could be? Sorry that it isn't working for you. Have you tried both the 64 and 32 bit version? You might have better luck with the 32 bit version
I'm having this problem too. Win 7/64bit I tried both versions jic and restarted my computer too, cuz why not ^__^;; Mostly playing it on this computer cuz my Newer computer isn't as powerful for gaming.
i sure am hyped to play this game! is there any chance a Steam or Linux port are coming? if not, i could probably find a Windows machine somewhere, or borrow one from a friend.
Hello! I will most probably put it on steam at some point in the future. I'm not currently planning on doing a linux or mac port, just because the numbers compared to windows users make it hard to justify the resources for testing on other platforms and since it's just me that is a big time investment, but who knows in the future.
Darn it, you bring up a sad but valid point (about lower sales on non-Windows platforms). I don't know the first thing about programming games, but I can see that conundrum. For being the only employee at Arboreta Games, I am more or less blown away by what you've created. (And BTW I love BTBR!)
Amazing game. One of the only games I've seen that does cosmic horror right.
Thanks so much for your kind comment!
I streamed this game a couple days ago and some of my viewers seemed pretty interested in the game and was asking me questions about it and I happily recommended the game to them. Only thing I wish I could do was use one of the tracks for the beginning of my stream as the music is so fantastic! Still, great job on the game. Loved the environment and the vivid colors!
Thanks for playing! I'm glad you and your viewers liked it
I got stuck behind an invisible wall in the left door area (left from the central zone facing the final zone). Luckily I got out by walking towards the main building in that area. Great atmosphere tho.I love the interstitial vids between zones.
Hey thanks for letting me know about this, I'll get it fixed for a future patch
Выглядит жутко)
I love the atmosphere of this game! I was creeped out the whole time wondering what would happen next, especially once it started getting trippy. Was it just a coincidence that I perceived several references to Beyond the Black Rainbow? Hope you like my gameplay! Don't mind the dumb jokes and commentary
Also subscribe!Thanks so much! Yeah, I am a huge fan of Cosmatos's movies especially BTBR!
Awesome! I love his films too! I hope you make more games, I'll play them if you do!
SO so stylish, loved our time playing this & awesome to see something made & set in Scotland! Great work here, the shaders & title cards in particular are amazing
Thanks so much!
Excellent, loved every second. FWIW, I played on a 21:9 monitor, and the game went into "vert-", meaning I had a full-width display but was missing the top and bottom of the image. I know fully supporting ultrawide is a bit of work, but a better default would be to go into pillarbox 16:9.
hey thanks for the comment! Yeah I need to rethink the display size next time. It's set the way it is just now because the UI would be all over the place otherwise, but you are right 16:9 would be better. Most of the time it scales appropriately but occaisionally runs into trouble
Loved the game, the art style for it was just amazing, and the soundtrack was absolutely bumping. It really helped build the atmosphere. The weird trippy transitions also caught me really off guard, but overall this game blew my mind. I really hope that we can get to see a sequel to this or anything else to do in this world that's been built, because the story is quite interesting, and the art style for the game is just stunning!
Thanks very much for your kind words, I really appreciate it!
Hello, I'm sorry the game wasn't loading for you. Are you using a 32-bit version of Windows? I have uploaded a 32-bit version of the game that might work for you
Loved it, big fan of the cinematic approaches and influence from that genre of movie.
Maybe a shot in the dark, but was the Canadian sci-fi horror "Beyond the Black Rainbow" a big influence at all too? I'm seeing a lot of parallels and even Arboreta Games is sounding like it was inspired by the movie's fictional Arboria Institute. A fantastic movie to draw inspiration from to be sure 👍👍👍
You are 100% on the money with Beyond the Black Rainbow and it makes me very happy to hear other people talking about it! Thanks so much for playing
Hey there, thanks for dev'ing and releasing this game.
Not a bad jaunt into cosmic horror. I enjoyed the PS1-esque visuals and the sound design was fantastic. My main issues do indeed lie with the story, which I feel was lacking on content and overall pacing - but hey, for a solo developer, I think you did a great job.
I would like to see this idea fleshed out into a bigger, more expansive game. You do have a great setting on your hands with the separated zones.
Hey thanks so much for playing and for your comments!
Still looking forward to checking this out and recording a playthrough, but even after the most recent patch I still just get a solid non-crash black screen after hitting play, which is a shame.
Hello, I'm sorry the game isn't working for you. Are you using a 32 bit version of Windows? If this is the case then the original version of the game might not work. I have uploaded a 32 bit version that you could try if this is the case. If not could you let me know and I can look into it further. Thanks again
Nope, 64 bit here, so I'm honestly not sure what might be the problem based on the ones other people have been having. Thanks for looking into it for me though.
One of the coolest games I've played in a long time!
Thanks so much!
This is a piece of art.
The art style, the music, the camera, the loading screens between areas like in Mandy... it is the actual definition of good taste. I also loved the references to Panos Cosmatos' filmography and to The Void, they are introduced to the player in a smartly way to help with the immersion creating that strange and inexplicable environment. I think everyone should experience those films before experiencing The black iris.
Thank you for creating something so unique, I hope to see more from Arboreta Games!
Thanks so much for your comment! It's great to see that people are enjoying the referernces to movies in the game
I played this game on my stream and I was thoroughly confused the entire time. I wish it was longer, and had some more coherent details to it, maybe even a sequel.
cool look. I like the integration of video clips, interstitials, and the overall cinematic presentation. also a fan of switching from a third person follow cam to various fixed camera angles. good atmospheric sound, good moods. well done
thanks very much, I am glad that you had a good time!
Thank you dev for responding quickly about the main menu screen issue and thank you so much for delivering an experience that is pure definition of cosmic horror. Playing through this, I could honestly tell that you put a lot of love and work in it. Well done!
Thanks so much for playing and for the kind words!
Really loved this! The atmosphere and the story made this a creepy and amazing experience! The pixelated style really added to the time setting as well!
Thanks!
This game was on another level than most!
Thanks so much!
1st game I played. Not bad
thanks for playing!
Really REALLY good. My mum brought me a pancake while I was playing this (it's pancake day) and I slightly burned my finger grabbing the plate too hastily out of fear because this game spooked me so much. I love it. The graphic style, atmosphere, and tank controls are really cool. I've also been really into Chernobyl-related content lately so it was a nice surprise seeing that feed into The Black Iris a lil' bit :-)
Thanks for making this tidy lil game!! <3
Thanks, I appreciate the pancake anecdote, that is really funny! I'm glad that you enjoyed it
Thanks so much for playing, I am really glad that you enjoyed it!
GOOD GAMES I DOWNLOAD AND PLAY
THANK YOU!
thanks for playing!
The tank controls took me a second to get used to, along with the camera getting weird, but it's a really solid game and story. I did run into the cabin issue (in the most recent version), but it was worth reloading the game.
Hi thanks so much for playing, this is really unfortunate timing because I've just now uploaded a new version with a patch for this bug. Thanks so much for reloading though... I understand bugs like this are annoying, especially when you are recording, so I really appreciate you sticking with it
Unrelated to the game, but you wrote your Twitter wrong, in your profile, it says "ARBOERTA" instead of ARBORETA.
Thank you!
I wanted to get into this (really interesting use of retro visual design, good story and atmosphere!) but I just can't handle the keyboard controls. Wishing for game pad support -- this and an option to dial down/turn off certain effects would go a long way towards accessibility. Thanks for reading.
Hey, thanks for your comment! I am intending to add controller support as soon as I can. Covid has made it hard to get my hands on controllers for testing so I decided to just go ahead with keyboard only for now to just get the game out there and not have half finished controller support. When I get around to adding controller support I'll be sure to update the page and add a devlog. Thanks again!
Thanks for the response! Keep up the good work and I'll look forward to any updates and future work :)
If you want to create a test build with some basic Unity input mappings for game pad, I'd be happy to test for you :)
Outstanding job dev!! This is a 5 star game. It looks as great as it plays and has perfect atmosphere! I cant wait to see more form you!
Thanks so much for the kind words and for playing!
First, I love the color palette for this game haha. It's a very interesting story and I'd definitely like to hear more. As someone mentioned below, the motion video was sooooo good. I was kinda hoping for more. I haven't experienced any bugs or problems during my walkthrough, so it was all smooth and nice. Thanks for the game!
Thanks for playing! Glad you had a good time with it
Looks like I'm the second person today to have the same issue with the latest version of this game. Stuck at main menu. No mouse cursor. No keyboard controls. Windows 10 64bit.
* Update 2 *
I looked into this further and noticed some more weird issues with the UI in the start menu. I've patched this further, so hopefully there shouldn't be any issues now. Just so you know, the latest version is no v1.4 (you can see the version on the .zip download). Thanks again for letting me know
* Update *
I have uploaded a new build in case this was an asset loading problem that can sometimes happen. If it happens again with this build could you try loading the game without any other apps open? I know Unity games occaisionally don't get on with being run at the same time as other apps. Let me know if you still have problems and I can look into it further.
thanks for letting me know, i'm looking into this now, i'll reply when there's a fix