Ultra-Indie Daily Dose: Flesh, Blood, & Concrete
Hello, you glorious gluttons for all things indie horror! Are you just starving for the newest of the new, the most unknownest of the unknown? If so, you’ve come to the right place. Welcome to the Ultra-Indie Daily Dose! In this series, we’re going to pick a new game every day from an indie horror creator you’ve probably never heard of. No million-dollar budgets or factory productions. This is the space for the little guy with not but a developer toolkit and a dream. So if you’re down to roll the dice on something different, then stick around and check it out!
Welcome back to a writhing, industrial Daily Dose of Indie Horror! Birthed like a fresh worm out of a mortar womb we have Flesh, Blood, & Concrete, a squirmingly poignant RPG-maker journey about exploring the body of an abandoned apartment building by io, also known as onisarashi.
Memories earlier than you can taste. A screeching, yawning yearning to drift until whole once again. The sting of childhood, like the bite of Winter air against your sore face. Starting on an aimless drive into the snowy void, you take the reins of the main character, Lera. With no end destination in mind, you lose control and crash into a frigid bank nestled like a polyp by a looming khrushchyovka, left to decay and fester. In a vast liminal landscape, you meet an estranged and cheerful soul, Nika.
Entirely unbothered by the fetid corrosion of lived-in plaster and mold, you find her waiting within, unabashedly jumping on the mildew-infested mattresses, and stirring up expired soup. Her hospitality is infectious. A worrisome feeling of comfort seeps into your bloodstream. Is this where you’re meant to be? Each decomposing room, laden with familiarity as thick as the scent of vintage cigarette smoke in a hand-woven rug. It feels like home. The wounded walls, weeping with twitching viscera, breathing your name in hymns. Heaping bouquets of flesh slick with spit sleeping under piles of recyclable relics. Collecting forgotten snapshots of stale honey cakes, and beautifully filthy porcelain. This building… Is alive. It pulsates with memories. It is the womb of your yearning humanity. What Flesh, Blood, & Concrete represents is truly horrifying, but somehow comforting, nurturing.
Care-free Nika leads you along the coiled and twain landscape of your memories. An innocent guiding hand, freckled with emotional reflection. Seemingly leading you through memories of what Lera has lost. She reminds you of what you wish to be. A tangled crawl through a labyrinth of amputated bedrooms and shrines of self. Every section you walk through, a grungier show of disembodiment than the next. Guided by the captivating sense of becoming whole, you plunge deeper into the soul. The swollen, blistering body of meat where we all once belonged. A shapeless amalgam of arms to wrap you tight. Loneliness has kissed and cursed your distance. But flesh, muscle, sinew… We’re all a part of it. This game definitely explores a particular feeling rarely touched. And with its contrast of the organic and inorganic, it becomes one well-grown experience. With under an hour of playtime, and two endings, this primordially meaty journey left me like a coagulated soup of emotions. And I do like a good soup.
Peel back the flesh-doors of your own forgotten building, and try Flesh, Blood, & Concrete here. Hungry for more horror? Take a bite out of some more DreadXP Daily Doses.
