Shipwrecked 64 Is the 2024 Horror Sleeper Hit We Needed
With all the controversies surrounding the creators of Five Nights at Freddy's, Bendy and the Ink Machine, Poppy Playtime, and pretty much every horror game involving corrupted nostalgia or toys/mascots, it's a relief to find a new contributor to this sub-genre. Squeaks D'Corgeh knows when to focus on telling the story, whether it's a cutesy puzzle about rescuing animal friends from a volcano or uncovering a project involving the undead.
Full disclaimer: I know the creator Squeaks D'Corgeh because we both regularly participate in the Night Mind Discord server. When Night Mind streamed and later did a video on Shipwrecked 64, all the server members, including myself, congratulated Squeaks for his success. He is going places and has released teaser images for the DLC.
We aren't going to talk about the game in full, but what we will talk about is SPOILERY. I recommend either playing the game first or watching the analyses because they can better summarize the narrative.
What is Shipwrecked 64?
Shipwrecked 64 is more than just a game that pays homage to a specific gaming era: the Nintendo 64 cartridge games; it's an ARG and unfiction horror story. While the first version came out in 2022, Squeaks retooled the game and re-released it in January 2024. It became a sleeper hit, with both Night Mind and Game Theory covering the game.
As the nomenclature suggests, Shipwrecked 64 is a recreation of a Nintendo 64 game. The team behind the recreation, including an avatar of Squeaks, wants to bring it back for nostalgic purposes, and so that one can play it on a PC. You can feel the nostalgia, at first, but we know there's more to the story than reliving childhood.
On the surface, you play as Bucky Beaver's "imaginary friend", trying to rescue his friends from stranded pirates. They all got shipwrecked, hence the title, but you can complete tasks to build a boat and evacuate Bucky's friends before a volcano erupts on the pirates' island. In the best possible ending, you're able to save everyone with a bigger boat and no, that is not a Jaws reference. Friendship and kindness can lead to a golden victory.
It seems all nice and cute, but it turns out that if you play the mini-games wrong, hurt NPCs, and deliberately try to break the 64 mechanics, darker elements emerge. The game glitches, revealing hidden layers, levels, and footage that you haven't been able to access before. You realize that the developer was trying to send a message about his employers, the ones that rushed the production of the game before killing the project. And people may have died along the way, based on the clips and evidence that you find. Bucky isn't pleased about any of this, especially as you force him to hurt his friends over and over again to get the truth. You aren't imaginary, and you certainly aren't his friend.
Building a willing suspension of disbelief
Many mascot horror games create a narrative that requires the player to provide a willing suspension of disbelief. In this case, we find out that a Silicon Valley-themed company may have invented both a theme park and a means to revive people as zombies. The dark scenes in the “real world” took place at Broadside Beach, the park in question owned by Broadside Animation.
Does it seem silly? Not that much sillier than the abandoned factory in Poppy Playtime or the hidden areas in Sister Location with technology that outpaces animatronics from the actual 1980s. And in fact, it makes sense if you know your animation history.
A timely setting
Some of the clips showing what happened to Broadside Animation employees are dated back to 1990. According to game lore, Shipwrecked 64 came out in 1997. So we have a clear time period.
The Nintendo 64 came out in 1996, a time of prosperity in the United States. Universal Studios Florida had opened in 1990, so it's plausible that another company flush with cash and wanting to compete would want to open a park. And it's even more plausible that such ideas would crash and burn, to the point that the companies get buried with the economic crashes and recessions that arrived when tech and real estate bubbles burst.
We also find out that Broadside Animation, the main patron for Cogware Games and its project Shipwrecked 64, wanted to compete with Disney Animation Studios. That's actually plausible for the 1980s and 1990s. Why? This would have been happening in the aftermath of Disney's main animator, Don Bluth, leaving the studio in 1979. He released competitive films such as An American Tail, The Land Before Time, and The Secret of Nimh. Disney had a hard time with this dark age, given that The Black Cauldron was a financial flop (sorry, Lloyd Alexander), The Great Mouse Detective was underappreciated when competing with An American Tail, and Oliver & Company, well, best not to say anything about that film. It took The Little Mermaid hitting theaters for Disney to revive its reputation.
In short, an entertainment vacuum existed where new studios could emerge and compete with Disney, which had not yet become the 2020s international powerhouse. Squeaks did his homework and made sure the timeline aligned with entertainment culture during these decades.
Motivations make sense
Characterization is also consistent. We don't have to condone what the characters do, or what we have to do to find answers, but we have to understand them. Within that narrative, we can understand.
Bucky's journey consists of us betraying him over and over again to find the truth, and he responds accordingly. He thought he was having a fishing adventure gone wrong with his friends, not a meta-narrative that paints a dark side of his creator. It's hard to blame him for raging at us as he goes through the wringer during our quest.
The meta-narrative also ensures that human characters remain consistent. We also find out why the developer Thomas Conor had programmed all these scares on purpose, and while we may dislike the guy for many reasons, we understand him upon hearing the full story. The same goes for the guy who ultimately screws Thomas over, Mark Mullins. Mark, the head of Broadside Animation, funded Shipwrecked and Cogware Games, but he has ulterior motives and goals which trapped Thomas in a bad situation.
How to scare with hidden mysteries
To do mascot and nostalgia horror right, you can't just have monsters in the dark; here has to be a human element behind all the scares. For all my issues with Scott Cawthon, Five Nights at Freddy's was at its best when critiquing how capitalism dehumanizes employees.
Ultimately, in Shipwrecked 64, it's human cruelty that hits harder than the implied necromancy and NPC jumpscares. Mark Mullins does terrible things, showing the cost of human lives doesn't matter to him as long as he reaches the end goal. Thomas Conor programmed the game with cruelty to reveal the truth to interested players, and those revelations are even more horrifying. Bucky breaks down from the sheer trauma, his only crime being a marketable mascot of a problematic company and its walk-in entertainment.
Honestly, I can't wait for the DLC. Thomas Conor succeeded in conveying Broadside Animation's dark secrets; the question is now what will be done with them. We only know one thing: Bucky wants the story to end, but the player doesn't.