A weird thing I've wondered about only recently: when did "monsters defined by their single gigantic eyeball" become associated with Lovecraft? Looking at Lovecraft's stories and looking up its deities there's nothing that speaks particularly of eyes. In fact, one of them is outright blind (and also an idiot, a massively destructive one at that). He even has another story featuring giant blind penguins. So it doesn't seem eyes were a particular concern of his. The best I can come up with is the famous Michael Whelan painting "Lovecraft's Nightmare." It's a striking piece of art, a diptych commissioned to be used for one of Del Rey's Lovecraft anthologies. And among all the nasty things painted on it, one thing that stands out is a gigantic, disembodied eye, the rest of this mysterious creature being covered in the background fog. Then in 1990, death metal group Obituary used that particular section of the artwork for the cover of their then latest album, Cause of Death. A year later, another metal band you might be familiar with, Sepultura, released Arise, with a weird album cover of their own, a Lovecraftian abomination with a trail leading to a gigantic, garbled mess, and, again, one thing standing out is a giant eye sitting in its center. Was the artist who made this influenced by the Whelan piece? Did Sepultura specifically demand something like it? That I have no idea. But there's no shadow of a doubt that the album Blasphemy Made Flesh by Cryptopsy, released three years later, is practically note-for-note a copy of Arise's artwork, featuring a very similar small pathway leading to a giant, garbled fleshy monstrosity, again, its single piercing eye standing out among everything else. Outside of that niche, there are games like Eternal Darkness, a noted heavily Lovecraft-influenced game, which features if I remember correctly a pit featuring a fleshy monstrosity with giant eye(s). And now we have this game, The God of Crawling Eyes, which features evil eye entities of all shapes and sizes haunting about, and though I don't know if this is specifically influenced by Lovecraft, that's who will clearly come to mind as you play this game, especially by its conclusion.

So what is with this? Well for one thing eyes are a stand-out feature on anyone's face. When people are generally asked what's the first thing they notice when they meet someone it's their eyes, and it's easy to know why, they're so expressive, moreso than a smile or frown ever could be, and yet there are far more complex subtleties involved than either one of those (hence why eyes are so emphasized in cartoons and animation, why we still cannot get past the uncanny valley, etc.), and it's why eye contact is so emphasized as being important for socializing and interviewing for people to be their next wage slave. There's even a famous quote the goes something like "the eyes a window into a person's soul." So if you were to look straight into Donald Trump there'd be enough space there for him to fill it up with all the real estate he could ever want *ba-dum-tsssh* Importance of the eye doesn't just go for people, but even dogs, cats, birds, and pygmy marmosets. Is it not true that people are generally more empathetic and even sympathetic towards organisms with eyes than ones without? People care about the welfare of trees because of their function on the planet, not because of whatever emotions, dreams, and pain they might have, screw that! And the grass and flowers too. They don't have feelings. Not like pygmy marmosets! That also might be why we hate insects like cockroaches, not just because they're disgusting and deserve the Raid, totally on the house, they're given on a regular basis but because their eyes are less defined or less visible to us than other organisms. At least, that's my conclusion based on pee...peer-reviewed studies I have done based on complete made-up bulls...prolonged months and months of observation and research. Let's not also forget, when you censor the identity of someone's picture it is more often than not the eyes that are blackened out and not, say, the nose. So if you don't want your pet goldfish's identity exposed to the public when you take a picture of him you know where the black marker goes (no, not underneath your nose, that will only kill the functions of your brain necessary to know where the black marker is supposed to go!).

Well that was a useful paragraph. But, hold on, I AM going somewhere with this! I think! I want to lead this to next point, what else are eyes good for? Sheer, unbridled terror. It's the creepy painting that you think is watching you. It's the creepy living, breathing human being that most definitely IS watching you. It's the lack of eyes where there should be that still somehow you can feel gazing into your soul. And, after all, you can't have your creepy little girl monster with blood smeared around her oversized smile consisting of fangs without big, black holes for eyes pulling you in. Because it just wouldn't be very scary if it were regular brown eyes she had or something. So a monster that can't see you might be scary, but one that can see you all too well and one that you KNOW can see you all to well is even worse. So somehow giant eyeball monsters became associated with Lovecraft and by god whoever came up with it first is a genius. So, maybe Michael Whelan. Someone before him? A Lovecraft story I don't know about? Some other horror story or mythological tale long predating them and all of us? I guess there's the Cyclops, but it hardly resembles... whatever the hell that thing is on the cover of Arise staring straight at you. Whatever the case, EYE WORMS, EYES ON THE WALLS, EYES EYES EYES, WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF The God of CRAWLING EFFIN' EYES MELON-FARMER!

OK so it's a more... modest game than that overblown introduction would make it out to be. It's a game that will take no longer than under half an hour to complete, short enough to play through four times in order to get four endings, each unlocking a humorous easter egg in the school the game takes place. You star as a kid with color-blindness, the kind that makes everything black and white, but there's hope, the medication you're taking is said to cure it! How convenient. Or not, as we're about to find out (you can see the "eye" theme is thrusted right onto the player from the very beginning). In addition to a simple color palette, the overall art design is simple as well, the interiors reminiscent of those in the first Mother game (something which in fact the game's creator... well I won't say anymore, get all the endings!), with walls on both sides angling outwards and with a few basic objects per area. And it doesn't need anything fancier, it works for the game, and the game works for the graphics. So everyone's happy. There also are expressive, vaguely anime-style portraits per character and they're well-drawn as well. So far, so good, so black and white. When does the color come in? (a drunk heckler yells out as he throws a turkey on stage - why a turkey only the man's drunken logic knows)

You're in the middle of class with a particularly, suspiciously nasty teacher when something... bad happens. Very bad. Bloody bad. Yep, the first color you see is red. Naturally. This is a horror game, what did you expect it would be, cyan? Actually, that would be an interesting twist, you're a character who can only see pretty colors in places where they should be butt-ugly, or see everything in the completely wrong color (which is actually one form of color-blindness, but I digress). So, anyway, you're in the classroom with blood on the floor and as you go walk around you find that the rest of the school isn't in much better shape, and that there's something far more sinister at work. So it's up to you, your best friend, a nerd who communicates exclusively in made-up names of bad B-horror films, and... the hot chick to, solve the mystery, save the day, I guess? Your friend won't stray very far from type through his communications while helping you try find stuff at some points, while the girl... doesn't do much of anything in the game besides standing at a corner in the classroom. It would seem she'd fit nicely throughout the game as a trope of the completely helpless female until... well, with the exception of one of the endings where she unleashes her inner Chun Li, you could say. I... you have to see it. It's the best of the four endings in my estimation. So, speaking of the endings, at several points when talking to the two characters you're given choices how to answer back. It's these dialogue choices that determine the ending you get, but it's not clear which answers determine the ending, since the dialogue choices only seem to connect vaguely to each ending. From what I've determined most of the scenes with dialogue choices don't actually matter except ONE in particular per character. There's no real way of knowing which ones these are outside of trial and error or looking at a walkthrough. I personally looked at a playthrough on YouTube that played for all four endings to see what was done differently. I don't remember the bit of dialogue with your friend that determines the endings for him but for the girl I believe it is during the scene where you that determines the ending with her. In this area I think a little less trial and error and a little bit more in the way of hints would have been appreciated. I know it's a short game meant to be played multiple times but you can only play it so many times before you become tired of it after all.

So while having multiple endings is neat, especially when you receive such delightful rewards from them, the story itself surrounding them isn't as interesting. Initially it is intriguing of course, but by the end time you reach the end it kinda devolves into cliche. Really, the story/mystery takes a backseat to the horror atmosphere, and with respect to that I liked this game's take on the genre. Well, firstly I think the creator came up with the perfect title to draw you in, at least for me it did, then picked a unique aesthetic, both in terms of the clean, simple graphics, and the color contrasts, to go along with it. There also are no jump scares to speak of, and it still manages to be unnerving, a real rarity in the genre. And I would be remiss to not mention the score. For the most part it is just the one track, a looping series of dissonant piano notes and a booming sound, punctuated by hefty helpings of silence. The "less is more" principle put to good use here, keeping things on edge without resorting to bombastic pseudo-orchestral noises or loud screeches or anything like that. Along with this is the sheer desolation of the school, little eye beasties crawling around and back into the earth, and the walls. The walls, covered in eyes, looking at you, blinking in and out, never relenting. It's a game where you are being watched. By Cthulhu's own little NSA program. And then the occasional weird, uncanny thing that you may or may not see in your playthrough. In the bathroom mirror for instance. In most instances it should be your reflection. If not, step the HELL back. Trust me. Also in one room there is a sign that spells out "READ." Check back later to see if anything is different.

If there's one thing I thought was disappointing in that its huge potential was wasted was the colorblindness aspect. So you can't see color, until you see red. Then, I guess, you also see... blue too eventually? The only blue that you see that I recall is on an American flag that becomes an inventory item. For such a common color there's an odd lack of it in the school. And... that's it. This whole aspect of your character is dropped almost completely after the beginning scenes and becomes merely a gimmick. A cool gimmick, but one that could have been used to SO much more awesome effect, especially in a story about Lovecraftian eye creatures and crap. Though I will say it is interesting in its reminiscence to another RPG Maker game, a much older RPG Maker game that is, called Palette. We're talking 1998 old here. It's unique in that it was one of, if not the first RPG Maker title that wasn't just another RPG but an adventure game, one with unique mechanics and contemporary psychological drama driving it. In that game you play as a full-on blind, not just colorwise either, character who is guided by a psychologist to "walk" through her own traumatic memories. The titular "palette" is also minimal as in this game, with Palette being primarily dull grays and browns punctuated by bright, blood red, though other than that the two games look very different. I just felt that was an interesting thing to point out, especially considering what a pioneering game Palette was for RPG Maker (it won awards and even got its own fancied-up PlayStation remake) in terms of the boundaries it expanded for users and how no other game I can think of besides this has tried something similar with its use of color.

As for gameplay, well, it's an RPG Maker adventure title. A very simple one at that. You have only a few inventory slots, very few items to collect, and what to do with them is usually fairly obvious. There is death in this game though, so it is likely that you'll be killed the first time attempting things before you realize the correct solution. It's mostly painless, though there is one part that may be a minor annoyance to some where you have to run in and out of a poison-filled room to obtain an item, but to do so it requires the utmost precision. If you don't take the shortest possible path to the item, if you examine anything else but that one specific item, or are just one step off, instant death. It's not that big a deal, really, it's a very small bit part of the game, but if I was forced to choose one hassle this game has, it would probably be that that would be the closest I could come up with (well, besides the trial-and-error methods of "which dialogue gets you which ending").

So this is definitely a game I'd say is worth playing, even for all four endings, not because the endings themselves are necessarily good (with the exception of the one I mentioned before, just for its unexpected badassness, they're all only OK, and all come to the same basic conclusion anyway, though all of them are the game's culmination of the Lovecraftian "eye" theme the game has been building up to and what I was blathering on about earlier) but because of the delightful, smile-inducing bonuses you get from obtaining them. And as a horror game, it nails it in terms of atmosphere, if simply for its unique approach alone, even if the story and characters around it leave something to be desired.

Its flaws notwithstanding, a game I recommend you give a whirl, made by a developer with a lot of potential you ought to be keeping your eyes on. *wink* *wink* *has eyes clawed out by heckler's turkey for that terrible send-off*