Funeralopolis | Last Days is a masterful indie-horror experience.
Where most free indie-horror titles uploaded to itch.io would require a long rope given for the efforts of small creators, Funeralopolis absolutely excels at every opportunity.
You are instantly thrown into the gloomy town of Huta-Grobno, a fictional town probably located somewhere deep in the grayest, drabbest part of Poland. The foggy neighborhood features a beautifully depressing, winding, monochrome skybox hovering over the towering brutalist apartment buildings, which are navigated by a singular tram.
The story is told mostly through our protagonist's radio that is, seemingly, modified to listen in to the local no-good church complex that seems to control the town, as well as the standard news broadcast that we tap into once or twice a day.
Without spoiling the entire plot (and therefore the game, because this is a completely story-driven experience), we learn about the sludge that was discovered in our town and is slowly causing hysteria and possibly (hint) something more, which is called "THE SOUP" (silly, but I love it). We also learn about a crack on the wall in our kitchen. The crack, combined with the city view and another mechanic of peeping out the door, all remind me of the best parts of Silent Hill 4. If you disagree, well, the city streets have fog, and fog = Silent Hill, so, checkmate.
Moving on, we meet a few other characters: other tenants in our apartment building as well as some of the church members. The church is not so much shown as it is experienced through the tapping into their radio broadcast, as well as references on the news. However, the few times they are shown, they are made very menacing in their beautifully textured PSX models. Really, the texturing for everything in this game is top-notch; beautifully intricate faces, very reminiscent of Silent Hill 1 faces, but even better, are placed over models with too many polygons to sell PS1 but not enough to sell PS2—so we'll say Dreamcast.
The soundtrack is featured heavily throughout your playtime of about an hour, and it is gorgeously displayed with at least five heavy, dreamy songs, split between fuzzy electric guitar pieces and more classical-sounding arrangements heard on certain radio frequencies.
Overall, I really believe that, for my money, it rarely gets better than Funeralopolis | Last Days, and for a free, hour-long experience, you're wasting your time by NOT giving this game a shot.
Full Playthrough: https://youtu.be/mQlb0Kft7YY?si=dyb5DPVjBJZ-NmGf
itch.io: https://banana-jeff.itch.io/dniostatnie
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