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In some ways, Killer Frequency reminds me of Not For Broadcast. In others, it reminds me of Firewatch, and in some small ways it reminded me of 911 Operator. Unfortunately, in no ways did it actually strike me as a horror game, nor as a good representation of a radio operator during an emergency. Hm. Now I want to watch Pontypool again.
The pitch is pretty great – you’re a radio personality in a very small town and a serial killer from 40 years ago seems to have come back from the dead and murdered the sheriff. As the only other person capable of running the 911 line (your producer notwithstanding, since I guess she can’t push the button despite being able to route calls), you are asked to field 911 calls while the regular 911 operator drives to a nearby town to get reinforcements.
In my introductory paragraph, I referenced several other pieces of media. I’d like to compare Killer Frequency to each to flesh out my thoughts. First up: Not For Broadcast. Not For Broadcast is an FMV game with quite a few obviously gamified elements (adjusting the signal to avoid interference), but it tells an engaging and occasionally hilarious story while making you feel like you’re actually doing something. Killer Frequency has none of these quirks – to its detriment. Where am I supposed to place the records after they finish playing? Why am I allowed an infinite amount of dead air with no consequence? Why does the mixer not actually do anything to the actual broadcast? Admittedly, some of these “mechanics” might be introduced to solve puzzles later, but my real complain is that they aren’t important from the start.
This brings us to Firewatch. One of my complaints about Firewatch was that you never actually use the tools they teach you about. Indeed, I would have been far more engaged (or dare I say, immersed) had I actually used the Osborne Fire Finder to, y’know, find fires. Similarly, in Killer Frequency, you don’t ever really play the part of a radio personality in a very small town. I have often argued that effective horror has to establish the “normal” for us to understand and care about the abnormal. This isn’t always necessary, but Killer Frequency in particular could have used an establishing 5-10 minutes of normality to make us care about the characters and get us used to the mechanics we’d have to manage through the rest of the game. Though, of course, there are no mechanics for us to get used to as I mentioned in the previous paragraph, which is part of the problem.
Pontypool, on the other hand, doesn’t really follow these rules. But then, it doesn’t have to – it’s a movie. In fact, it’s a movie which hews quite close to the pitch for Killer Frequency (including several plot beats). Games, on the other hand, are a more difficult medium. For a story to be a game, it needs a reason to be a game and mechanics to support it (Visual Novels notwithstanding). I don’t think Killer Frequency has this reason. To be sure, you make several narrative choices which I assume have some bearing on the outcome of events, but few felt either meaningful or logical enough to make me more interested in the story than I was about getting 100 wastepaper basketball throws. Tier Three.