Spooktober: Sagebrush is an unconventional horror game

We kick off our October series of horror games with an extremely disturbing and unsettling look into Sagebrush.

Trigger Warning: This article will contain conversations about sexual abuse, alcoholism, drug use, religious and cult practices, and suicide. It is with nuance, tact, and a deep love for all humans that these topics are carefully approached, but for those who are sensitive to these topics and may find these conversations disturbing, we completely understand if you choose to close the tab and hope you would rejoin us next week.

In 1978, more than 900 men, women, and children were manipulated into drinking fruit drink mixed with cyanide and sedatives, leading to history’s largest and most notorious mass suicide.

The site of this mass suicide was called “Jonestown,” a remote compound in South America, built and ran by Jim Jones and home to more than 900 people who had been indoctrinated and tricked by Jones to abandon their lives in California. These people quickly became victims, being forced to do inhumane amounts of grueling labor and endure near-endless abuse, often from the hands of Jones himself.

Due largely to his drug abuse and raging syphilis, Jones became paranoid and filled with hate, leading to the death of a US diplomat from California, along with his convoy. This only served to intensify his paranoia, which would lead Jones to force his followers to drink that deadly concoction.

On November 19th, 1978, the Guyanese military arrived at the quiet compound to find 908 victims dead, a third of which were children, and most of which spent their final moments embracing the loved ones that they inadvertently led to their death. They also found one monster, dead of a self-inflicted bullet wound, too cowardly and too weak to face the consequences of his atrocities, but probably too high to feel the pain he deserved.

Modern media, especially modern horror media, has warped and twisted how society perceives and identifies cults. Anytime cults are portrayed in modern media, images of dark, candle-lit caverns filled with tall, cloaked figures standing around, typically performing a satanic/psuedo-satanic/eldric ritual comes to mind. Everything from children’s cartoons like Gravity Falls, to modern horror masterpieces like Hereditary, or even cheap horror like As Above, So Below shares and partakes in these tropes.

In reality, cults are much more visible, much less aesthetically scary, and a whole lot more dangerous. They prey on the less fortunate, using socially acceptable ideologies as a guise, appealing to peoples’ fears and insecurities to draw them in and using blackmail, intimidation, and control to keep them in.

Sagebrush /

Redact GamesIn reality, the leaders of these cults are not spawns of the devil or the anti-christ, but instead just normal men who use their charisma and positions of power to manipulate and mislead others. They crave power and are willing to twist and distort whatever teachings or ideology they want to get as much of it as possible. Whatever high power and abuse does not get them, they typically fill with amphetamines and other abusive chemicals.

And it is that reality that Sagebrush brings players into.

Sagebrush drops players onto a compound situated in a valley in the middle of the New Mexico desert. There is no music, no directions, and no signs of any other life.

After some exploring, players are drawn to the common building, where they can find a cafeteria still set up from the last meal, sheet music for a praise and worship band, instructions for how to make certain meals and upkeep the kitchen and pantry. On one of the tables in the cafeteria, players can find a cassette player, which when played will play will let the player listen in on what is assumed to be the main character giving a deposition.

A few details are communicated to the player in this tape: firstly, that this is the site of a serious tragedy, and secondly…

… This used to be your home.

After exploring the commons and finding the keys to explore the rest of the compound, the player has the opportunity to experience the rest of the story.

Most horror games typically utilize masterfully composed and unsettling music alongside cutting edge visuals to display gut-wrenching imagery. Dead Space pushed the boundaries of the 360 and PS3’s graphical capabilities, while Agony did the same for the PC and Xbox One. The Silent Hill franchise has some of the best music ever found in all of gaming, let alone horror gaming.

Where so many horror games utilize these tactics to help create truly horrific experiences, Sagebrush skips both of those and instead utilizes silence and extremely outdated graphics. These limitations breed creativity and extra effort in the sound design and graphical/visuals department.

Every second spent in the valley is accompanied by creaking metal trailers, the rustling of dry grass as rodents scurry along the ground, or the distant howling of a coyote. The doors slam shut behind you in a startling manner, all of the floors creak, and the lights whine and hum with electricity.

Despite the low graphical quality, the game utilizes lights and shadows to its advantage to help interest and guide players. The darkness may drain almost all color from the compound, but when the colors are able to stand out, they are dull and sickening. The glowing red window at the northwest of the compound makes for an interesting and spooky objective.

On the northwest of the compound sits the only house on the compound, which belongs to Father James, the leader of the Perfect Heaven Cult and the oligarch of the Black Sage compound. It is exponentially larger than any of the other living quarters on the compound, a fact that Father James obviously relishes in.

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After exploring the trailers that the cult members live in, the player finds the code that opens the electronic gate and lets the player pass the fence surrounding the house. It is completely dark by this point, with only a flashlight and the moon to help guide the player through the compound.

The front window of James’ house demands attention with its devilish red glow, and as the player approaches the house, it’s red glow makes the player uncomfortable while they try to locate the front door. If only the red light was the most uncomfortable thing the player would find in that house.

In the house, everything seems ordinary: a perfectly normal living room setup, a kitchen area, and an upstairs bedroom. Things first start getting odd in the pantry, where instead of food and cooking supplies, there is only a cot and a desk with notes on it. The notes are written by Father James’ wife, who lives in the pantry, speaking of her commitment and support to James and his teachings and writings. Her commitment and love for him, despite his disdain and blindness for her, is heartbreaking, but it is only made worse when entering the guest bedroom.

The red light is visible coming through the bottom of the guest bedroom door, beckoning and encouraging the player to come in.

The first thing the player will see in the room is the gigantic bedroom, the silk sheets and thick blankets unmade and a mess. The altar may come into focus next, unusually set up at the foot of the bed with a cross, a candle, and a cassette player.

The most egregious object in the room, however, is the video camera set up in the corner, pointed at the bed and filled with fresh film.

Playing the cassette player lets the player listen to the deposition once again, with the main character going over what it was like to be invited into James’ room.

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James would consistently bend and change the teachings and laws of the Bible to gain and maintain power. He essentially rewrote the Bible to not only exonerate him of any future sin or responsibility (like premarital sex, adultery, drug usage, and envy) but also to essentially make it a religious requirement of the women to sacrifice their bodies to him. The women of the compound who had been purposefully misguided and manipulated, desperate to please God and find favor in the eyes of Father James, hesitantly obliged. His lust for sex and power would only grow, and he would eventually start preying on the young girls of the compound as well.

His lust for power uncontrollable and inflating every day, he would begin videotaping the encounters after a while, which he would use as blackmail to not only keep his victims from leaving but keep them coming to the nightmare house on the hill.

His lack of concern and care for the women is obvious, but in the public bathrooms, it is only made more concerning when the player finds a positive pregnancy test, recklessly abandoned in the toilet.

The gameplay of Sagebrush is simple and shallow, but that only serves to help the player focus on the story.

The player explores the compound, going from building to building with the intention of finding information on the story and the way into the next building. The story comes in at a steady pace, never slowing down, instead only picking up in intensity and severity as the story comes closer to the end.

The game does not rely on cheap jumpscares like lower quality horror games, and instead just focuses on the uneasy feeling that the story and the isolation make players feel uncomfortable. There is only one section of the game that utilizes cheap horror tropes is the mine area, which uses flickering lights and tight corridors to give off a scarier feel then the scene actually creates.

The commons building opens the gate and the tool shed, the toolshed has the flashlight and boltcutters needed to open certain trailers in the living area, those trailers send you to the classroom for the gate code, the gate opens to Father James’ house which sends you back to the living quarters with a master key to explore the rest of the trailers, one of the living quarters encourages the player to search near the bonfire which gives players access to the cleansing room, which tells players where to find the key to the mind, which unveils where the Father hid the key to his upstairs bedroom, and the upstairs bedroom has the seal that opens the church up top.

The church on the hill is the cleanest building on the compound, in perfect condition with no dust and no clutter.

The main room is the sanctuary, a massive hall filled with rows of pews all pointed towards the front, where an organ and pulpit stand. There is a door on the back wall that leads into an office with a desk and a cassette player. The cassette player can be played to show the tragedy that we were told about early.

Due to fear of outside forces coming in and threatening his control and power, Father James convinced his flock to douse both the church and themselves in lighter fluid and fuel and set everything ablaze. The congregation was offered stimulant and nulling agents to help fight the pain, while the children are forced to take drugs that put them to sleep during the flames.

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Father James may have led the suicide/murder, but he had no intention of dying himself. In preparation of this day, he had built a safe room that he could access via a vault door in the office. The safe room was livable for a few years if necessary, with tons of food and kitchen supplies, a shower, and bed, and in case outside pressure was too much, it was loaded with weapons as well.

Except on that day, he did not make it to the safe room. Instead, the protagonist beat him there, locked him out, and made him perish in the flames where he belonged.

The protagonist’s life was not easy after leaving the compound, with the guilt and shame making every day of her life a living hell. Meeting people reminds her of when she was recruited, the family that she was taught to hate in the compound continues to reach out to her, and she must live the guilt of not saving the congregation from their fate. She refuses to get close to anyone, only trusting her feelings to alcohol and drugs. Her counselor and family can not get through her walls and she isolates herself to drown in her sadness.