Steam celebrates Valentine’s Day with the most cursed release imaginable

A mysterious cult classic from 1996, Drowned God: Conspiracy Of The Ages, just appeared on Steam out of nowhere. Let’s look into why this is one of the creepiest games ever made and how this specific choice of date probably makes this the most cursed game release of all time.

What’s special about Drowned God: Conspiracy Of The Ages?

Drowned God: Conspiracy Of The Ages is a point-and-click adventure title in the vein of Myst and Riven. Though not as revolutionary as the games that inspired it, Drowned God enj🅺oyed good reviews, featu🎐red gorgeously eerie art, and even earned some back in the day.

Drowned God’s most remarkable aspect, however, is its plot and the way it tells it. Drowned God is the brainchi💛ld of Harry Horne, an English writer and cartoonist whoꦓ went by the pen name Harry Horse.

Long before directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick started toying with the idea of a horror movie that was actually real for The Blair Witch Project, Horse had already forged a manuscript to claim it was a secret document written by 19th-century poet Richard Henry Horne. The manuscript was filled with wild prophecies and eerie conspiracies that he’d later use to fuel Drowned God: Conspiracy Of The Ages.

Another remarkable element of Drowned God is its heavy use of conspiracy theories in its plot long before they became one of the most common things on the Internet. The plot revolves around subjects like the Greys, Atlantis, and the Illuminati, but at its core resides a tale about how humankind has evolved due to the influence of a superior alien intelligence — so yeah, History Channel’s Ancient Aliens.

But that’s not the scariest part about Drowned God

The truly messed-up dark part is how Horse and his wife both turned up dead under grim and unclear circumstances back in 2007. Obviously, once a man who’s known for a game about conspiracy theories is found dead, people begin theorizing about conspiracies. Still, the case doesn’t need any external factor to look utterly bizarre.

Both bodies were found with dozens of stab wounds on them, with the couple’s pets dead and mauled around the house. The authorities declared Horse the author of the killings; the only doubt remaining being whether he died in consequence of a or if it was a rage-induced murder-suicide. With all that, just how bizarrely tone-deaf is it that Steam has chosen — or accidentally allowed — for the game to be released on Valentine’s Day, of all days?