Blood, Death, Satan & Metal

Your console boots up. You switch the input to TV03. Color bars flash, static fizzles. The CRT scanlines reveal the words Vermis: Lost Dungeons and Forbidden Woods . MIDI synth music issues forth, soft and sinister --what we would call Dungeon Synth today, but what was mysterious and unnamed in childhood-- fades in, filling the dark room lit only by the glow of the screen and the power button of your console. A jarring flash occurs, with the words Which flesh is your flesh? appearing, briefly, before you are given the prompt Press Start to Enter the Darkness . Vermis (volume 1, with more to come?) is a guide to a game that never existed. It’s a lo-fi dark fantasy action RPG, with Dark Souls being an easy point of comparison, but of the era of Eye of the Beholder grid-based movement and sprite-based Doom engine graphics but with an off-putting layer of grime. In those days, a guide book would sometimes contain a world unto itself, with the world lore, character options, and select