Bloodwash is the latest video game to be published by Torture Star Video, a publishing label launched by Puppet Combo, the developer behind notable instances of playable nightmare fuel such as Babysitter Bloodbath (2013), Nun Massacre (2018), and Murder House (2020). Like these games, Bloodwash has a distinctive low-poly style reminiscent of video games from the PS1 era, as well as a story straight out of an old school slasher film.
As pointed out in publicity material for the game, Bloodwash is “giallo-inspired.” In a broad sense, the Italian term Giallo “has become synonymous … with mysteries and thrillers” (Koven, 2013: 204). More specifically, the term has come to describe “the Italian style of psycho-killer movies, which dominated much of Italian vernacular film-making in the 1970s, and, in many respects, were the precursors to the ‘slasher’ films from Canada and the US in the late 1970s and early 1980s” (ibid.) Tropes of Giallo cinema include stylised murder scenes, mysterious killers, and tormented women – three components that feature prominently in the video game, Bloodwash. Read more
