The Horrifying Game Boy Garfield Is Coming For You This Halloween
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Featured Image Credit: LumpyTouch
Back when I was younger and everything was simple, Garfield was a fat, lazy, and loveable cat with a passion for lasagna. He had an endearing - if often one-sided - friendship with a human called Jon. He was also voiced by Bill Murray once or twice, but we don't really talk about that. Better to remember Garfield as a friendly and wholesome cartoon.
As far as I remember, Garfield was never a cosmic horror with a taste for blood and a one-track desire to consume reality itself. There's a chance I missed some of the cartoon's subtleties as I was quite young at the time, but I never picked up on the "Garfield Is Going To Kill Us All" thread. That's until I watched the deeply disturbing Garfield Gameboy'd from from pixel artist Lumpy Touch.
If you haven't seen it yet, I urge you to watch below. It's quite something, which is to say it's completely f**king terrifying and I hate Lumpy Touch for what they've made.
Inspired by a series of creepy Garfield sketches from artist and nightmare maker William Burke, Lumpy reimagines the world of the loveable cat and his cast of friends in a deeply disturbing Game Boy stealth horror adventure. In it, poor Jon is relentlessly stalked by a mutated monster that was once Garfield. The cat - now an eldritch abomination - scuttles and skitters through the house as it taunts Jon and occasionally requests lasagna.
The 13-minute video tells a comprehensive and uniquely nasty story in which the unwitting Jon is a pawn in a pixelated world that combines The Thing and Alien: Isolation. Garfield, who is constantly growing and changing into increasingly ghastly shapes, moves through the house picking off Jon's friends in all manner of gruesome ways. Pour one out for Odie, lads.
Despite the fact that it makes me want to throw up in my mouth and never sleep again, I have to hand it to Lumpy Touch. They've absolutely nailed the Game Boy aesthetic, from the blocky loading screens to the HUD at the top of the screen that displays health, weapons, and a bar that tells Jon whether he's detected or hidden.
If this were an actual game that released today, I'd play it in a second. I'd immediately regret it, but I'd do it. Then again, I'm not entirely sure something quite this grotesque would ever make it past PEGI ratings.
Topics: Game Boy
