Bad Cheese

Steamboat Willie has become public property, which in itself is a strange feeling. Of course, it didn't take long before opportunists around the world, armed with film cameras and far too much free time, pounced on the material and churned out a series of dubious horror films with titles like Screamboat and Mickey's Mouse Trap, in which Mickey Mouse is transformed into some kind of knife-wielding demon in braces. We saw exactly the same situation with Winnie the Pooh a few years ago, when the honey-loving teddy bear was transformed into a serial killer who sneaked around the forest with murder in his eyes. I'm not saying the world ended, but it certainly felt like humanity took a couple of missteps...

And now here we are again, but this time it's not about a film but a game - Bad Cheese - which is basically another interpretation of Steamboat Willie, just as much of a knock-off as its blood-spattered cousins on the silver screen.

What attracted me to playing Bad Cheese was the aesthetics. That old "rubber hose" style where the characters look like their arms and legs are made of overcooked spaghetti and the whole animation sways like a jazz band on a bender. It can be absolutely delightful when done right. And here, in Bad Cheese, moments of truly shocking aesthetics are interspersed with parts that are so repulsive that you feel like scrubbing the screen with bleach.

The developer, a lone warrior named Simon Lukasik, has also inserted parts where the style changes and turns into what I would describe as brain rot goo, you know, that visual mess that feels like it was taken from the darkest of TikTok basements. The point is that it should be scary, but the result is that you mostly just sit there thinking, "Oh, okay?" Because yes, Bad Cheese is a horror game, but a horror game that fails completely at being scary.

It took me less than two hours to complete the game, and I was scared exactly zero times. However, I was depressed, because the plot is truly tragic. You control a little Mickey Mouse-like child who is alone with his dad while his mum is away. She sends instructions by letter about small chores to be done: clean the kitchen, which is littered with beer bottles and angry spiders, wash the clothes, and keep things tidy so that dad doesn't explode. And this is no honourable father figure, he is a genuine bastard who can whip out his leather belt and lash the boy's lower back at any moment. A dark, almost claustrophobic theme, absolutely, but scary? No. Rather tragic and unpleasant in a socially realistic way.

And what do you do in terms of gameplay? Well, you vacuum up rubbish, swat spiders with a fly swatter, and shoot socks onto the washing line with something best described as a sock cannon. There is variety on paper, but in practice it all feels about as fun as cleaning the gutters. Let's not even talk about the boss fights. They're hidden in the corner of shame at the back, where no human being should ever have to see them. It's as if the game has ambitions, wants to be something bigger, but the developer has aimed too high and steered his cheese boat straight towards an iceberg.

When psychedelic, twisted faces suddenly appear in my field of vision in a clumsy attempt to scare me, I mostly feel sad. Not scared, just sad. Because it could have been something interesting if Lukasik had dared to work more with the theme, with the grief, with the child's constant fear of his father's outbursts of anger. There was a nerve to explore, but instead we get slapdash jump scares that fool no one. It's a shame, because the game is really nice at times, but never quite becomes anything more at any point. Therefore, I cannot in good conscience recommend Bad Cheese to anyone, except perhaps for a quick look at the aesthetics. And honestly, in that case, it's enough to Google a couple of pictures. The rest can be left behind, just like a piece of mouldy cheese at the back of the fridge.