Killer7 SINdicate

In 1983 Harry Horse wrote a poem covering the whole history of mankind from its genesis by the hands of an alien race from the fallen 10th Planet of the Solar System, to its coming apocalypse - and, in between, the total war for truth being fought behind the veil. Perhaps for a greater exposure, Harry credited his poem to 19th century poet Richard Horne (which was also Harry Horse's real name), but this "forgery" was discovered and the poem was forgotten. Around 1993 Harry Horse played Myst, and found in videogames, at last, the perfect platform for his epic tale - leading to the creation of Drowned God: Conspiracy of the Ages.




For what is worth, the game is still a poem - full of rhyme, symbols and music. The game is linear, but it advances not through a narrative logic, but more of a lyrical one. Things tie into one another not by cause-and-effect but by mental association. Places are multiple places at once, people are multiple people at once. Harry Horse relates us about his vision about the secret history of humanity through superposing voices and sources and ideas. The game is bizarre, ambiguous, and at parts incomprehensible - but never nonsensical.



You play as a "Chosen", assigned a number, a symbol and an animal depending on your name, and are asked to venture into four different realms in search of four different relics: the Holy Grail, the Rod of Osiris, the Philosopher Stone and the Ark of the Covenant. These realms are not concrete places: while the four of them are very different from the rest in style, we should think of them more as "psychic realms" (as the trailer says), or layers of reality. In them different places and times amalgamate into one: for example Chesed, the second realm, is Teotihuacan and the Bermuda triangle at once. Time, as well, is simultaneous. On the words, in-game, of Albert Einstein: "The passing of time is an illusion. In reality, the past, the present and the future are one" - indeed, you meet Albert Einstein, in the same realm as you get acquaintance with the reality of the tale of King Arthur.

Binah


Chesed


Din


Chokmah


You meet several characters: some historical figures, some mythological ones, some purely symbolic, and the borders between these are hard to define - again, multiple characters are the same character at once. But could you trust any of them? Many characters are portrayed in dyads, from Kether and Malkuth to Einstein and Newton to Crowley and Jung. And none of them tell the full truth: it could be because they are limited to their own ignorance, because they want to keep you from finding the truth, because they want to manipulate you into doing something, or because you fail to understand them. Everyone contradicts the other. Even the many "documents" that are there to read are dependent in a certain point of view, those who wrote it (like MJ12) are limited both by their narrow vision and their wider agenda - even the established truths you find out will be put into question as you go further.



I don't wanna do much analysis in this post, which I might do later: I just wanted to talk about this game. If it interests you, the game is now abandonware and easy to find. You can find more art by Harry in here: https://www.harryhorse.co.uk/ . I purposefully avoided to talk about Harry's later life and tragic death, because it has already attracted too much morbid interest.



Drowned God is now one of my favorite works of art of all time. I love this game, and I hope you can love it too.

An archived GameSpot interview with the late Mr. Horse.

In the manual, which is very worth reading as it contains a lot of context for many things in-game (like a diary written by the game's protagonist) as well as some of Harry's own drawings, there's a glossary of terms, places and figures brought up in Drowned God.






An interesting page in the manual immediately after it is a directory of UFO Contact Groups. I think Harry Horse's wanted the game to be "expanded" outside of it; there used to be, or at least it was intended, to include an in-game web browser that you could use to check on related websites. But this is now removed or broken.

I came across this game (and what happened with Harry Horse later on, of course) a year or two ago as well and it's certainly an unique piece of media for sure. It's a shame that conspiracies or occult and esoteric themes are used rarely in any meaningful way or it's always extremely shallow and superficial if it's actually in a bigger part. Back in the 90s they were basically a mainstream thing so you could make games like these just fine, but I guess companies are afraid of being called nazis or whatever nonsense if they even remotely touch something that could be connected to something "sketchy". Anyway, with Harry you can definitely tell he was all in with all this stuff and it certainly feels like a labour of love rather than anything else.

That said, I haven't finished the game myself yet, though I gave it a try some time ago. Voice acting with no subtitles, drowning in the background music was a nuisance, but not a dealbreaker by any means. I read that there's one puzzle in the game that has its answer actually wrong, so it's a shame you basically have to look up a guide at least once during your playthrough. In any case, I should get back to it and finish it, since like said, it's certainly an unique experience.

An ad for Drowned God in Computer Gaming World #148. Notice the contest to win a trip to visit Roswell - unfortunately, the website doesn't seem to have been archived.

I remember when it was an obscure /x/core game. I looked it up, read about the fate of the dev, his plans for continuing the game series and shit like that. Then some e-celeb faggot made a video about it and I fucking cried from how normalfag tier his opinion was, not to mention all these theories how he was deranged and killed himself and his family and shit like that because he was a drug addicted fuck and whatnot.
As for the game itself, I think it's still unique in terms how esoteric the shit is and how it combines all that stuff in it. Definitely top tier /x/core game of all time.
This, along with Cosmology of Kyoto are one of my favourite adv games.

player1 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 05, 2023 7:49 pm I remember when it was an obscure /x/core game. I looked it up, read about the fate of the dev, his plans for continuing the game series and shit like that. Then some e-celeb faggot made a video about it and I fucking cried from how normalfag tier his opinion was, not to mention all these theories how he was deranged and killed himself and his family and shit like that because he was a drug addicted fuck and whatnot.
As for the game itself, I think it's still unique in terms how esoteric the shit is and how it combines all that stuff in it. Definitely top tier /x/core game of all time.
This, along with Cosmology of Kyoto are one of my favourite adv games.

I hate how the most of the little attention that game has received has been through spooky youtube channels like Mexpo - whose video has over three million views, yet I doubt anyone has seen it and actually played the game afterward. Even the ones that do play it, out of some morbid curiosity, end up talking about it as this "schizo artifact" they can pretend interest in. Drowned God definitively deserves a better audience

https://archive.org/details/richard-hor ... s/mode/2up

Here's a some important information about the the manuscripts straight from the horse's mouth. :lol:
Page 4 is the most interesting. Henry Horse didn't know of the other Richard Horne when he was making the manuscripts and that Horne was making forgeries in his time as well. /iiam