Since Flash will be losing support by December of 2020 (according to Google Chrome, at least) I thought it would be a good idea to talk about some of my favorite flash games, revisit them, and give each of them somewhat of a brief overview. Of course, I’m sure they will be preserved in some form after Flash loses all support but since it’s going to be the end of an era of sorts, I thought it would be appropriate to talk about some of the flash games that have influenced me since, back in 2006–2007 or whenever, I was a big Flash gamer.
The Exmortis trilogy is one that, for people my age, doesn’t require any real introduction. This is mostly because most of the people my age were exposed to this game through big gaming reaction channels like PewDiePie and Markiplier. Not to sound like a hipster or anything, but I didn’t actually find this game through them- rather I found it myself while looking for a good, creepy horror game on the-now defunct- classic-consoles website.
The Exmortis games are point-and-click horror adventure games and the series comes in a trilogy. The games were all created by LefflerWebDesign using a a dark, gritty graphical style relying heavily on edited photos turned into sprites- similar to the digitized graphical style of the original Mortal Kombat games. Each game becomes increasingly story-driven as you follow along as two separate characters experiencing the awakening of Exmortis, the takeover of the world by them, and their eventual defeat.
Believe it or not, each game differs from the others in different ways, so in order to make this as comprehensive as possible, I will discuss each game separately.
Exmortis:
“you wake up in the woods, with a lump on your head and you can’t remember how you got there; all you can recall are the dreams…”
The opening to Exmortis is probably one of the simplest, yet most effective ways one of these games can open. At first glance, the jump scares at the beginning of the game might come off as cheap, but I would argue that they are actually quite appropriate from the narrative point of view. The opening text states that you wake up in the middle of the woods with no recollection of how you got there other than the visions of nightmares that haunt you. With the opening being the sound of a heartbeat, the faces and screams of people, and the sound of howling wind, I think this effectively draws the player into the situation of the character of the game.
Exmortis is a game that encourages the player, heavily, to learn about what is going on through the use of flavor text in items scattered around the abandoned house you explore. There is a lot of reading involved for this game and it might be a turn off for some who just want to get to the end of the game, but if you take your time and immerse yourself in the lore through these interesting texts, it makes the game feel far more enjoyable and fleshes out the world considerably.
The dark and gritty graphics, while aged, still convey a strong sense of horror and the use of audio to even further immerse the player into this world is incredibly effective, be it the sparing use of ghostly voices, the dull roar of the wind outside, the subtle hits of percussion when you find a disturbing scene, or the terrifying sound the Exmortis make (should you choose the alternate ending) as they chase you through the underground tunnels below the house.
Exmortis is a small game and, if you know what your doing, can probably be beaten within 10 minutes. However, I think its small scale is what helps make it so appealing. Giving the player a small environment to explore and slowly revealing backstories and information to them through clever uses of in-game text through leather-bound books helps to provide one of the most immersive atmospheres in a horror game ever. You’re alone in a forgotten, long-abandoned house in the middle of the woods from which you cannot escape. It’s a great, yet simple, set up to a game of this kind and what makes this game truly great is the execution.
The story of this game is self-contained but still leaves the door open to any potential sequels. Of course, we now know that this game did get a sequel and while this game is great, it would end up falling under the shadow of Exmortis 2…
Exmortis 2:
“The hordes of Exmortis swept across the earth. A plague unlike anything humanity had ever encountered. In their final stand, a handful of mankind’s last survivors stood their ground- defiant of their inevitable fate. And in those last moments as death took these brave souls, a stranger passing in the distance put his plans in motion.”
Exmortis 2 is one of the best followups I’ve experienced in gaming. This game opens up the scale a bit as your character, Mr. Hannay, is sent from a church to a nearby ranch where he slowly uncovers the truth of what he must do eliminate the presence of Exmortis.
Exmortis 2 introduces a new, supernatural elements to the game as well as a first person shooter action sequence, on top of adding to what already made the first game so great. At the end of the day, this game still follows a similar gameplay formula as the first game: You go into a house and uncover the answer to a mystery. Along the way, you are greeted by an elevated sense of terror through witnessing the gory leftovers of who last occupied the house and flavor text to go along with it- detailing those characters’ circumstances and how their circumstances deteriorated over time. The flavor text is now more numerous and comes in a wider variety of forms, be it from the narrator’s own comments, newspaper clippings and journals. The journal entries in this game are easily the best part of this game, in my opinion as, while they are quite long the depth of detail they go into while illustrating the lives of the people who lived in this house makes for an extremely immersive experience, even more-so than anything the previous game had to offer.
It seemed that a lot of care went in to making this game to help capture the spirit of the original and further expand on it. This game does both. The production quality of Exmortis 2 is a great improvement from the original and the greater use of audio through realistic sounding news reports of the Exmortis in the beginning and the sounds of Exmortis killing people over the radio in the basement of the house are little details that add so much to the overall experience.
One of the most memorable sequences in the game is right in the beginning where your character sees the Exmortis rapidly approaching your position as you try to find the keys to the old car so you can make your getaway. The scene of the clouds rapidly approaching you, knowing the terror they carry with them is mesmerizing and terrifying at the same time. Watching as the sky gradually darkens around you until you finally see the Exmortis pop up in the distance, attacking the house in the background before getting to you is such an experience in itself that that moment in this game alone is enough to make this game great.
Exmortis 2 is the perfect followup to the first game in the series and is easily the best. Keeping what made the original game so great on top of expanding on those things and adding other sequences like the puzzle sequence at the end of the game as you come back to life and the shooting sequence immediately following that are the icing on the cake. The story is developed much further in this game as well and it helps make the game feel so real and immersive that it’s almost impossible to imagine that there could ever be a followup to this one that could eclipse it…
Exmortis 3:
3 years after the release of Exmortis 2, Exmortis 3 was released to an audience which was beyond eager to experience the third game in the series. Exmortis 3 would end up drumming up controversy, however, as it was expected that people had to pay to play the game in full. But that wasn’t the only controversial thing about it.
Exmortis 3 would end up going into a completely different direction than the first two games in the series. As one of the latest comments on Newgrounds points out “ In the first minute of the game, you manage to completely destroy the hopelessness, fear and amazing tension and terror that Exmortis 2 created, and turn it into an action point and click disguised as a horror point and click, that ends up not succeeding at either very well.”
As Exmortis 3 is the conclusion to the series, looking back, Leffler probably was looking into going for a more epic direction. Experiencing this game, you can clearly see that he wanted this game to be the most ambitious project for a flash game of the time- as it can be easily seen through the much-improved visuals, sound design, voice acting, and cinematic sequences.
The game is more action-oriented. While there are still puzzles, a lot of the game puts more focus on shooting and, later, the superpowers your character gains along the way in order to crush Vlaew- the main antagonist across all three games.
The scale of the game is huge compared to the first two. You travel to so many locations over the course of the game that it definitely feels like an odyssey to push back against the rule of Vlaew.
Because of all of this, however, the game sacrifices the elements of what made the first two games so great. The mystery and the helplessness of your character is completely lost and now, soon after entering the game, you are armed, and you have the same powers as Vlaew, making you his equal. The tension is gone as a result and because of all of this, this is the least Exmortis-feeling of the Exmortis trilogy. Aside from the return of characters from previous games, it would be incredibly difficult to tell if this was the followup to the second game. I remember playing the free version of the game that was available around the time of its release and I was left wondering if this was really an Exmortis game.
On top of that, the ending of the game is a bit strange as well. As the last game in the series, the ending doesn’t really do anything that would indicate that the series is over as we don’t see what happens in the world after Vlaew is killed. I guess it makes sense from the standpoint that we only experience what the main character experiences, but the ending really doesn’t tell us anything other than the Mr. Hannay- the main character- is now cursed to live in a time that existed before man and beast. That’s not to say that I always expect happy endings, the ending to Exmortis 2 isn’t a happily ever after ending but is still a great conclusion. Exmortis 3’s ending, on the other hand, seems to fall short and unfortunately has the weakest ending of the entire series, which is a problem since it is the series conclusion so far as we know.
While Exmortis 3 isn’t nearly as bad as some of the negative reviews of it say, I can’t blame anyone for having come out of it feeling a bit disappointed, especially seeing it within the context of the first two games in the series. Exmortis 3 sort of falls into the ‘Return of the Jedi’ category where, in a trilogy, the third part ends up being the weakest, critically.
However disappointing this game may or may not be, at the very least, the player gets the satisfaction of finally paying Vlaew back for all of the cataclysm and disaster he caused. You may sacrifice yourself in the end and get no real satisfactory ending aside from that, but at least the revenge plot is completed.
Whatever anyone thinks of Exmortis 3, these games still carry a great reputation among those who experienced them and continue to experience them. They are timeless works which remain to be unsettling in the best ways as time goes on. What began as a small-scale horror point-and-click flash game turned into a viral sensation and will continue to go down in early internet memory as among the cream of the crop of horror games.
In my opinion, this series could easily warrant cinematic adaptations. The lore of this series is so rich and detailed, the series is almost begging for an adaptation of some kind. Maybe in the future perhaps?
