This surreal horror game created entirely in PowerPoint will help you get ready for Halloween

You wouldn't guess that the dismal nightmare Roche Limit with its empty pixel-art landscapes and figures is running in PowerPoint. Leaves fall, trees writhe, and eyes blink in a way I never thought possible in an organizational software that I have avoided since highschool. I thought dissolve transitions were cool. But I guess an entire horror-game is too.

Quietly released in 2022 but recently gaining buzz, developer Jack Strait stitched together the "one-thousand-something slide presentation" using gifs and hyperlinks, according to a 2023 interview with him on Game Developer. His first game, The EdCo Incident was also created in PowerPoint, because he had lost his copy Gamer Maker several years earlier.

It doesn't seem like the prior experience made Roche Limit easier to do. One of the spoiler-driven features of the game required manually checking all the links to ensure they were correct.

It was fun to ask myself not 'what would I like this game to be' but instead 'what does PowerPoint want this game to look like?' "It was fun though getting to ask myself the question not of 'what do I want this game' to be? He said.

When you see the game in action, it's difficult to tell what its limitations are. Roche Limit looks like an adventure game with a retro or simplistic style that seamlessly transitions between scenes, similar to Monkey Island. If you didn't need to download the.ppsx files to play it, then it would look like any other esoteric Horror game on Itch.io.

The playful teaser trailer of Roche Limit does not mention its medium and I love how it adds an unsettling feel when you discover that it is only available via a MediaFire hyperlink in the video description. What if your home was hiding something? It asks. Even though it says that the house, which looks like it is covered in dried blood, is not hiding anything at all. The only way to find out is to open PowerPoint 2016 or later. It's possible that this makes Roche Limit an exclusive Microsoft product: it only works with the latest version of Office.
You can also have Strait send you the game in the mail, provided he still offers this service a few more years down the road. In the Game Developer interview, he said that he wanted as many people as possible to play it and would send you a link and QR code if you asked him politely. Shipping is free, but he offers Venmo or Cashapp if you want to contribute.