Killer Frequency

It emulates the feeling of running a graveyard shift at a podunk radio station very well, but even with that deliberate choice, Killer Frequency needed just the tiniest shot in the arm to be truly great. It's almost there, though. A very classic kind of murder mystery mixed with an 80s slasher aesthetic, portrayed through a unique point-and-click setup, makes the experience stand out, and while you can see the roots of this game's "game jam/tech demo" origins, eventually the story is fleshed out to make it all come together. As someone who used to do a lot of community radio work, I think they did well enough in capturing the feel of fiddling with switchboards, sliders, faders and so on. Maybe a bit oversimplified, but I also realise adding much more would have alienated neophytes from the wild premise. And thankfully, Killer Frequency gets a lot more mileage out of its puzzles and situations with big focuses on environmental detail, cross-referencing conversations and testing your judgment in the heat of the moment. While each segment is a bit too disconnected, and having more tie-ins between each distressed caller could have made overall progression harder but also more engaging, it still works to draw you into the world of small town 80s Americana. Not as much as Faith, but very close.

Add onto this some incredible vocal performances, especially from Forrest Nash' Josh Cowdery, and you have a wild and wonderful take on adventure games, murder mysteries, and even a bit of a walking simulator despite not being allowed to do much walking at all! It just needed a tiny shot in the arm in the middle act and a little more connective tissue to be brilliant; as it is, it can get stale until the stakes are raised. And while I liked how everything tied together, I can understand others being underwhelmed at how the climax treads familiar ground.

There's also just a few inconsistencies with the whole "radio" gimmick. A number of the characters still behave as if they're on cellphones and can carry them around, when a game set in the 80s should have leaned much more into landlines and such. This premise might have been done better in the 90s when radio phone technology was just starting to take off, but small town Americana was still visible and made these stories of isolated communication plausible in a pre-iPhone age. Given all the X-Files references near the end, that may have been the right call. Zing! But despite some of the story's dead air (double zing!), Killer Frequency is still a light but refreshing take on a lot of well-worn genre conventions, pulled off with panache and coming together to be something satisfying.