Alors que 007 First Light remet IO Interactive et le jeu vidéo danois sur le devant de la scène en 2026, je découvre Blackout de Deadline Multimedia, qui se voulait l’œuvre-somme du jeu vidéo danois en 1997 avec une expérience CD-ROM intégralement conçue en prises réelles avec des photos de maquettes, des personnages en poupées et des techniques de stop motion. Un peu leur Black Myth Wukong, sans les ventes. La première vidéo qui m’a fait découvrir le jeu est en danois, mais je vous rajoute en dessous une partie complète sans commentaire.
This may not be a ‘video essay’ in the strictest sense, more like a ‘let’s play’ with an intro that gives a bit of background on the game and its developer Deadline Games.
But since Blackout is, as per the video title, a “Danish PC game from 1997 with horror, violence, suspense and sex”, I assume that most of you aren’t aware of this super ambitious and ostentatiously ‘mature’ gem of an interactive psycho-thriller from our (well, ‘my’) slightly demented, pork loving neighbors to the South.
As a young lad I used to play this game, dubbed into Swedish, on the family PC. This was around ‘98, in my non-gamer period, after I sold my ol’ Amiga, but before my interest for gaming was re-piqued by the Dreamcast and the PS2.
The whole video is in Danish but don’t worry, his whole experience is all about the VIBES!
The creepy vibes, the slightly misshapen puppet characters, the eerie, effects-laden, industrial-tinged soundtrack, the charmingly hand crafted dioramas that represent all the different seedy neighborhoods of a city that no one remember the name of!*You want ‘Nordic Noir’? I got your ‘Nordic Noir’ right here!!
I got to know about Blackout from a sort-of-highbrow arts show Nike (named after that winged goddess ‘of Samothrace’) on Swedish television. So this was a mid-nineties case of “video games can be ART!!”-type programming.
The segment showed how the puppets and dioramas were being constructed, and interviewed the novelist behind the short story that functioned as a mood setting companion piece to the game. As far as I can remember nearly everyone involved with putting the game together was wearing black jeans and turtlenecks.
