The word “Lynchian” has become a descriptor for a specific kind of story, one thick with mystery, the supernatural, and a healthy dose of what most people would describe as weirdness. The late, beloved director David Lynch is undoubtedly one of the most influential filmmakers of all time, but it consistently feels like it’s hard to pinpoint what exactly it means to be Lynchian, and how do you make something that feels new and fresh, not just weird for the sake of it?
It’s a constant question many games face, but few have managed it well. Of all the games I saw at PAX West, the one that keeps sticking in my mind is The Final Cut of Lilith Cunningham—because of that very reason.
“I think it means understanding that he loved what he made, and I really respect the way in which he made things. He made things with care, not just for what he was making, but for the people he was making it for.” Causeway Studios creative director Greg Rogers tells me, “I came a little late to David Lynch, and it was me watching his filmography and realizing all of these things that are key inspirations for me share this core. What is that? It’s difficult. It’s authenticity in weirdness. It’s a trust in the audience.”
The Final Cut of Lilith Cunningham is Causeway Studios’ second game, a direct follow-up to the first-person mystery game The Haunting of Joni Evers. And while the two games are connected, you can play each one in a vacuum, and Rogers tells me that’s the intent of the “connected mythology” of the studio’s games, much like Remedy does with its connected universe.
“I have this saying, ‘The canon is dead, long live the canon.’ We want all of our stories to be the truth,” Rogers says, “There’s connections, there’s overlaps. I want people to make connections, but I also don’t want there to be a single truth. I want there to be openness to interpretation of your emotions and feelings; what do you bring?”
In The Final Cut of Lilith Cunningham, you play Lilith, a mother haunted by the life she could have had, who receives a cryptic message from her estranged daughter. Following the trail the message left, Lilith heads to a hotel in rural Colorado to find her daughter, where things start to get weird. And while Lilith Cunningham definitely isn’t shy about its inspirations, the game has a unique tone and slant, focusing on reality-warping puzzles and elements of classic film.
The demo I played felt like a mix of the methodical exploration of something like Gone Home and the quirky, mind-bending mechanics of a Remedy game. Lilith arrives at the Alpine Movie Manor Hotel and Drive-In, a bizarre little building that, you guessed it, doubles as a hotel and drive-in theater. Over roughly an hour, I poked around the hotel to uncover clues about what happened to Lilith’s daughter, picking up notes and clues, and solving a handful of puzzles. The setting is actually a particular highlight, as it reeks of mystery and something unnatural just behind the scenes. It’s a hotel and fittingly feels welcoming, but with an edge of unease around the edges.
As a longtime resident of Colorado, I’m particularly interested because the hotel is based on a real-life location in the San Luis Valley of Colorado and New Mexico. The San Luis Valley is best known for the Great Sand Dunes, but it’s also a massive expanse of land filled with local legends, UFO sightings, and more. After talking to the developers, I’m pretty sure I’ve pinpointed the inspiration as the Frontier Drive-Inn, an old drive-in theatre transformed into a glitzy hotel.
“Our first game is in Oakland, and we’re based in Arkansas. We feel like there is an underrepresented element of what I’ll call Middle America, when it comes to the strange or mundane elements that you don’t see as much in stories,” Rogers says. “The San Luis Valley fit just right because it has a reputation for having strange things going on, but it’s also a really unique place. It’s this high alpine desert; it has the Great Sand Dunes. That park is a really interesting place where you can get some of the vibes you might get from a David Lynch film set in Los Angeles, but it has its own meaning.”
Perhaps those Lynchian vibes come through most in the game’s big twist: you use an old film reel called The City of Dreams to literally warp reality. Partway through the demo, you discover the reel, trying to figure out the murder of a journalist named Todd.
Lilith has a sort of pause-menu “mind place” she can go to, where you have an evidence board filled with clues and details from your investigations to help guide the way. This room also contains a film splicing machine where you can cut and insert different pieces of film you’ve found to change the “story” of the movie. I use movie literally, as the game makes liberal use of FMV footage to separate and accentuate that film element. Rogers also tells me the studio has taken a dynamic design approach to the FMV element, intentionally making smaller elements, like a host introducing the hotel on a TV, feel like cheaply made 90s green-screen TV footage, while the City of Dreams FMV is intentionally designed as a well-shot film.
As you edit the film, you shift reality outside the mind space, opening new rooms or placing things in new timelines. For example, I needed to get into a specific room to find the next piece of the puzzle, but it was missing a door handle. By splicing in a frame where Todd avoided getting murdered, I opened the room, got another piece of film, and could carry on.
It’s a fascinating element, and clearly the killer app Causeway Studios hopes will set the game apart. Of course, it’s the element that fascinates me most, especially when combined with the FMV approach. The idea of shifting reality opens up a wealth of mind-bending puzzle design choices. Even in that hour-long snippet, I’m also impressed by Lilith Cunningham’s writing, which nicely sets the stage for the strained relationship between its core mother and daughter.
As a big fan of Lynch’s work, there are only a handful of games I’ve ever played that I feel properly capture the genuine, honest approach the director was known for. I walked away from my demo pleasantly surprised by the big swings The Final Cut of Lilith Cunningham is going for, and I hope they pay off in the end.
But if you’re talking about Lynch and video games, you can’t avoid Remedy Entertainment and titles like Alan Wake or Control. Interestingly, that’s something Rogers and the team are keenly aware of the comparison their game will get.
“I love their games, and to some extent you embrace it. When I talked about Lynch, it’s kind of hard to talk about Remedy stuff without thinking of Twin Peaks. So it’s to say, yes, there are elements in there, but I hope what we’re doing, identifying that thread of emotion and tonality and approach to creativity, that I’ve been picking up from all these people that pass around what we shape as a creative community, speaks for itself,” Rogers says, “Yeah, you’re walking into a familiar tone, and yet you can expect novel gameplay and storytelling. We’re not just simply trying to repackage the exact same thing, because that’s already been done.”
The Final Cut of Lilith Cunningham is currently in development for PC.
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