At nine-ten every night, he sends you into a dim world. He’s the presenter of Krypta FM – pronounced in the clipped staccato of any good radio announcer as Kryp! Ta! FM! – and you are his eager listener and hopeful protégé. Sniff the evening air. Breathe deeply! The small-town world that sleeps around you is certainly crawling with cryptids. Has anyone seen a mothman lately? A werewolf? Grab your camera and head out there – but be careful, okay?
The genius of course is that Krypta FM, a miniature – and completely free – exploration game, sends you to two worlds at once. There’s a miniature town in Poland with abandoned train stations, dim forest roads and flickering streetlights, and there’s the world of 2006 in which the game takes place. That era gives you chunky digital cameras with bad batteries, bulletin boards with flame wars and talk of “netiquette” and desktop computers still in thrall to Frutiger Aero. Because of that, Krypta FM is several things at once. It’s sinister and nostalgic. It’s creepy and often strangely sweet.
It’s a wonderful combination in the game, and it’s all driven by a straightforward, deeply evocative idea. Strange things are happening in your village, and you hear about it on the Internet and on the radio every night. It’s a silent, cozy business, being part of a club, an informal group that believes there’s more to the world than most people are willing to see. So every day in the game you get a nudge toward something you should investigate. What tore the cattle apart? Who’s blowing smoke in the woods? Someone on the Krypta FM forums is talking about Tarot cards. Someone else wants you to take a picture of a statue in a cemetery…
These daily, or rather nocturnal, objectives give you just enough of a sense of structure as you begin to explore the surprisingly wide open world. At the center of it all is your little house with the radio tuned to Krypta FM, the noble bulk of your computer monitor flickering through the screensavers on your desk, and the narrow hallway to the front door, where it gets so gloomy you’ll have to turn on your flashlight. But beyond that, and beyond your wretched garden with its missing fence panels and chain-link gates, there’s the paved road, the rest of the village, and whatever else lurks just out of sight.
And these locations provide the game’s most evocative moments. Woods so dim that even with a torch you’re moving between thorny absences of trees and shrubs you can’t really see. A train station that’s currently padlocked and inaccessible. That cemetery is out there somewhere, but where exactly? And what about the hissing, crackling electricity pole beyond the point where the road surface gives way to rutted mud?
You’ll discover all these places and get to know them well. That’s because your mission to take pictures of local weirdness and post them on Krypta FM’s bulletin boards sends you out in every direction. It’s all very straightforward. But you’ll be in this haunting world for much longer than it takes to snap a few pictures. You’ll be there until the whole place starts to feel real, and that’s thanks to the map you utilize to find your way around. It’s a hand-drawn thing that you have to hold in front of you and read with a flashlight. There’s no marker that magically appears on the map to show you where you are, and no helpful compass rose to point you in the right direction. You’ll have to figure it all out for yourself, and instead of being frustrated, it creates an inventive piece of weirdness that provides much of the spookier kind of fun to be had here.
And as you figure that out, you start to realize that this map is defined by its abstractions. A road that seems miniature and straight on a map might be three times longer and full of exhilarating twists and turns in the real world. And it might get really, really dim. And you might wander in the right direction for a very long time, each modern step more and more certain that you’ve left the right path and are trudging into oblivion. Carry on? Turn around? Can you even find your way back from here?
This is prime territory for jump scares, and in its miniature run, Krypta FM has at least one that’s thrillingly straightforward and effective. But the game also knows when to hold back from tapping you on the shoulder or jumping out in front of you. The moments I remember best are when I was in the woods and I was sure something was going to happen, and then it didn’t. The world of Krypta FM feels real in part because I spent so much time lost in it, sure, but also because I spent so much time just standing there in the trees, wondering if I was alone or if something—a beast? the looming intention of the game designers?—was there with me.
So instead of shocks, it’s a game mostly punctuated by moments of relief. Just when I was losing hope, I’d stumble upon the thing I was supposed to photograph and take a decent shot of it. Lost in the woods, I’d see the amber glow of a city in the distance and suddenly know how to get home. Returning to the forums, a photo I thought was a bit of a dud would elicit a decent reaction: I’d feel that strange excitement that comes with being part of an online community and someone else’s world, even though I was only entering that world through the curved screen of an ancient monitor, the up-to-date equivalent of Madam Leota’s head floating in a crystal ball.
I think it’s this sweetness that consistently balances out everything that’s scary about this stretch of northern countryside: along with the promise of cryptids, photography jobs, local cultists and satanic graffiti, Krypta FM promises community and creates a growing sense of belonging. The names on the forums start to feel familiar and I start to be able to predict what they might say, what replies they might leave to my posts. The map slowly starts to make sense and by day three I’m leaving home pretty sure of the direction I need to go. Photo opportunities are ticked off my list and the story of what’s really going on there starts to come into focus. I go to bed buzzing with what I’ve seen and the next day, at ten past nine, I’m ready to turn on the radio again and hear that familiar voice.
