Forgery review — Choose your own horror

Horror media is intended to elicit responses of fear, terror, disgust, shock, and suspense. One look at horror films, and it’s pretty obvious. Franchises like A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Saw, amongst others, pride themselves on a combination of disgust, terror, and an iconic lead to convey their narratives. Other films, like Possession, Suspiria, Scanners, rely on psychological terror, body horror, and a sense of dread throughout to provide the viewer with a sense of dread about the world and the characters within it. The Night of the Hunter, Silence of the Lambs, Seven, are all rooted in reality, exposing the evil of humanity.In many ways, Horror as a genre allows us to be exposed and experience these feelings while in relatively safe conditions. Video games and tabletop games allow us to play in those worlds interactively, enhancing the emotional response. Resident Evil and Silent Hill are household names which allow players to explore increasingly disturbing worlds and play through classic horror tropes and narratives.  Vampire the Mascarade, Call of Cthulu, Eat The Reich, all allow players to be in those worlds, take actions, and experience what it’s like to potentially be a monster. 

Forgery, a solo journaling horror game from 2022 that I played at GaryCon, by author Banana Chan and published through Game and a Curry, is a combination of these elements, allowing the player to control and experience horror through a narrative lens that is familiar, with the added element of artistic impression through the use of “paint by number” coloring pages of a demon, allowing for a unique “Chose your own experience”.  Let’s dig in.

To play Forgery, all a player needs is the 139 page book, a journal (or piece of paper), and some art supplies. For our experience at GaryCon, we all were given a coloring book page of a demon (which is included with Forgery or for free on Game and a Curry). The coloring book page is important, as a core mechanic of the game is to utilize warm/cool/neutral colors. These choices help the guide the player through the story.  Here's a video that helps explain Forgery and the universe it's in.

And a note on content: since Forgery  is a horror novel first and foremost, the subject matter within is absolutely not for children. If you’re a parent considering this game, read through all of it first. Luckily, there is a content warning in the beginning of the book, as some of the subject matter moves into more graphic topics. 

As you read through the book, Banana Chan weaves a wonderful story about your character, alongside artwork to help expand the world. Like a classic Choose Your Own Adventure, in each section, there are questions that you answer which then send you to different sections of the book; for example, in Chapter 21, you and a character experience a supernatural moment in an art gallery. The questions that you answer build more narrative, creating character motivation, and building up a future. At the end of the chapter, you skip 2 chapters, and go straight to Chapter 24, which is one of the final outcomes of the story. As another example, as you start making color choices on the coloring book page, new narrative options appear according to the usage of warm, cool, or neutral tones, which results in different chapter pathways. Much like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book, this is where replayability comes in, although considering the subject matter, you might want to take a breather after this first time playing.  And at the end of the story, you have a fully colored-in demon, which reflects the choices you made in the story. 

As an art student graduate, I appreciated the reality of the story, which involves the player going through post graduate financial woes, reflecting on their ethics, and ultimately the decisions they make as a creative in the world. Granted, I didn’t make any deals with demons in my career. 

Reading through the various chapters, I reflected back on our game at GaryCon. Considering we were in a Convention space, I feel like it was hard to get into the horror mindset for the game, but I can definitely see the power of this game in a private setting. But don’t let that stop you! If you organize the right room of horror fans and people with open minds, I could totally see a group game session. If you're interested, Banana Chan is launching a crowdfunding campaign for the next book in her series, Knockoff.

At the end of the  day, I was impressed by Forgery. I think it’s a great story and the coloring mechanic really adds a depth of complexity to the gameplay that I wasn’t expecting.