You'd be forgiven, after playing Paradise Killer's opening moments, for thinking that this might be another all-style-no-substance foray into the world of Vaporwave. Not because the opening isn't simply one of the best of all time (it is), nor because the premise doesn't immediately intrigue the player with a fascinating, high concept world (it does), but simply because video games, and internet culture at large, have an unhealthy obsession with Vaporwave aesthetics rather than theme. Originally a tongue-in-cheek music genre/counter-culture movement pioneered by artist and musician Ramona Andra Xavier (also known as Vektroid, Macintosh Plus, and dstnt, among many other monikers), the internet-at-large has fallen in love with the pink and teal, grecian statue remix of 90s-era shopping mall consumerism. Paradise Killer, fortunately, is much more interested in the how of a Vaporwave paradise, and is all the stronger for it.

    Paradise Killer stars disgraced detective, Lady Love Dies, as she returns from her sentenced isolation atop a Rapunzel-esque tower, high above Island 24, the twenty-fourth iteration of a manufactured paradise for demigods. The 25th and supposedly final iteration of the island has been created, and just before the move of the final personnel off of Island 24, there's been a massacre of The Council, high ranking lawmakers of demigod society, and Lady Love Dies has returned from her eight-million day exile to find the responsible party and dispense justice. It isn't long into the journey before the player will be spending the game's only currency, blood crystals, on travel, prayer, and upgrades. When spent on a shrine, a jet stream of blood spews out in a sickly spurt and splashes against a gaudy, Egyptian pyramid that opens and dispenses with a verse on the greatness of one of the many gods of this island. Paradise Killer wants you to know: this is a world that, quite literally, runs on blood. I bet you can guess whose. 

    As the game progresses, details about the world and how it functions slide into focus. Kaizen Game Works, the developer, are not interested in presenting a high concept that you should simply accept at face value. The truth behind most of the functions of this artificial paradise are explained, and these explanation are horrifying. Island 24 exists as a pocket dimension of sorts, and the demigods who live in perpetual luxury do so on the backs of incalculable kidnapped humans (dubbed "citizens") who are forced to work maintaining the Reality Folding Drive (a massive, inaccessible structure that looks like a nightmare combination of Dr. Manhattan's clockwork crystal creation and the geodesic EPCOT sphere at Disney World). When they're not physically working, citizens are expected to devote their spare time in prayer to the island's gods, who feed off the psychic energy. This exploitation is built into the very foundation of Island 24. The pleasant, summery climate is simply the heat radiating off the reality folding drive. There is one "convenience" store on the entire island. In order to move from one island to the next, the gods will sacrifice the entire population of the "citizens" to provide the energy to power the move.

    Perhaps the greatest success of Paradise Killer is that it at no point drops the bubbly, synth attitude. There is no tonal nosedive in the presentation. As you interrogate suspects and survey blood spattered crime scenes, your playlist of groovy, synthwave pop music (which is incredible by the way) is your constant companion. Paradise Killer trusts the player to piece the horror together, to draw the connections between the exploitation of the human abductees and the conniving, self-absorbed demi-gods that live in a paradise caked in the blood of slaves.This tonal juxtaposition is constant because the perspective is constant. As the game continues, the player will stumble upon the notion that they are not the hero, they are a villain among villains, a sham of justice, delivering judgment in a fundamentally unjust society. 

    This commitment to theme takes a great investigation/mystery/adventure game and escalates it to a veritable grand-slam of genre-fiction. To play Paradise Killer is to wonder around an abandoned shopping mall themed after ancient Egypt, to peruse the empty, plastic neon as a familiar pop song moans over crackling loudspeakers. Paradise Killer is about digging through the ruins of a fallen capitalist empire. Most everyone has already moved on to the next venture, but they're still sure to find someone to throw to the wolves, someone to blame for this failure so they may continue grinding the working-class into a paste to fuel the next. 

    The true horror of Paradise Killer lurks in the end, where justice is supposedly served -- one or more of your suspects will be executed for the crimes of murder and conspiracy, and everyone remaining is permitted to move on to the "Perfect 25". It is here the final kick in the gut is revealed: the player character is powerless to enact greater change. The so-called dispenser of justice has instead enforced the status quo. The cycle will continue, the vulnerable will be exploited and murdered for the benefit of a select few upper-class members, and nothing guarantees that this will be the last time. The spirit of vaporwave has not been represented in gaming in a more fitting, soul-crushing manner.

    My personal standout moment was the reveal of the ziggurat, a grand, gaudy gold structure adorned with flames and religious scrolls. As I made my way inside, I was immediately met with a terrifying display: gold from top to bottom, statues and fetishes of the gods and shrines to their glory, all still splattered and caked with the blood of the citizens sacrificed to power the trip to the next island. In perfect fashion, the synthwave bass of the soundtrack bounced along, not missing a step. I was left alone in the proverbial shopping mall, forced to soak in the terror of it all.