Anthology of the Killer

Lore & Background

The series follows BB, a college student living with her sister ZZ in XX City, a metropolis with an extremely high murder rate. BB writes a zine about eerie happenings and frequently encounters serial killers and supernatural creatures. The games are primarily walking simulators where the player explores environments, reads dialogue from hovering bubbles, and occasionally escapes pursuing antagonists with no penalty for failure. The camera follows BB erratically, sometimes making navigation unclear.

Anthology of the Killer is a single compilation of multiple short games, each presenting a self-contained story. The episodes include: Voice of the Killer, where BB works at a strange insurance company; Hands of the Killer, where she stumbles into a murder-themed night college; Drool of the Killer, where she confronts a ghost at a water park; Eyes of the Killer, where she attends a play about a killer; Flesh of the Killer, where she visits a gallery of crime scene photos; Blood of the Killer, where she investigates a burned zine distribution; Bone of the Killer, where she encounters a skeletal menace; Ear of the Killer, where she gets involved with a surf musician and a cult; and Heart of the Killer, where she works as a mystery shopper at a Dream Resort.

Ben Catmull created the series to combine humor, horror, surrealism, and mystery, balancing the two tones to create a never-ending cycle. He enhanced the bizarre elements through improvised game design and distinctive drawings.

Reader's Guide

Anthology of the Killer gained critical praise for its comedy-horror balance and surrealism, particularly its visuals and humorous dialogue. At the 2024 Independent Games Festival, it won the Nuovo Award and was nominated for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize and Excellence in Visual Arts. The series stands as a notable example of independent horror comedy, using walking simulator mechanics to deliver episodic, bizarre narratives. Its free release on Game Jolt and later paid collection with bonus content helped build a cult following. The port to Nintendo Switch and PS5 in 2026 expanded its reach to console audiences. The series' legacy lies in its unique tone, recurring heroine BB, and its ability to blend absurd humor with genuine horror elements.

Did You Know?

• The compilation includes multiple short games released for free on itch.io between 2019 and 2024.
• The protagonist BB lives in XX City, which has an extremely high murder rate.
• The game was nominated for Excellence in Visual Arts at the 2024 Independent Games Festival.
• The player cannot control the camera; it follows BB erratically, sometimes making navigation unclear.

Origins & Development

Stephen Gillmurphy, an Irish independent developer working under the pseudonyms "garmentdistrict" and "thecatamites," created the Anthology of the Killer as a nine-part horror comedy series. The individual games were released free of charge on Game Jolt, with the first entry, Voice of the Killer, appearing in December 2020, and the series continuing through 2024. In May 2024, a paid collection bundling all nine titles alongside bonus content launched for Windows, macOS, and Linux. A Nintendo Switch and PS5 port followed in April 2026. Gillmurphy's stated motivation was to weave together humour, horror, surrealism, and mystery into stories about a "recurring heroine," deliberately balancing comedy and dread so that each feeds into the other in an endless loop. His design process involved combining visual drawing features and improvising level layouts to amplify the series' bizarre tone.

The World of XX City & BB

At the heart of the series is BB, a college student who shares an apartment with her sister ZZ in XX City, a metropolis plagued by an extraordinarily high murder rate. BB channels her surroundings into a personal zine dedicated to eerie occurrences, and it is this relentless pursuit of "spooky" material that repeatedly plunges her into life-threatening encounters with serial killers and other monstrous beings. Looming over the entire city is a supernatural bird-headed figure known simply as "the Killer," the most prominent of XX City's many murderers. When BB is not interacting with other characters, she delivers a non-continuous monologue offering her thoughts on whatever absurd or terrifying situation she finds herself in. The city's infrastructure itself seems complicit in the violence: wealthy owners fund immersive theatre productions where audiences are murdered, and cults operate openly, even monetising massacres as direct-to-video horror films.

Gameplay & Design Philosophy

The nine entries function primarily as walking simulators. Players guide BB through environments, walking toward hovering speech bubbles to read dialogue from her and supporting characters. At intervals, she must flee from pursuing antagonists, though failure carries no penalty. Notably, the player has no direct camera control; the lens tracks BB, sometimes in an erratic and disorienting fashion, meaning that in the earlier episodes players may find themselves navigating spaces with little sense of direction. This deliberate lack of mechanical safety nets reinforces the series' surreal, dreamlike quality. Gillmurphy has spoken about maintaining a careful equilibrium between humour and horror, designing the two to exist in a perpetual cycle where one amplifies the other. His level design and visual drawing features were improvised and combined to heighten the bizarre atmosphere, and the humour is delivered largely through dialogue and the absurdity of the situations themselves rather than through traditional game mechanics.

Critical Reception & Awards

The Anthology of the Killer collection earned significant recognition at the 2024 Independent Games Festival, where it claimed the Nuovo Award and received nominations for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize and for Excellence in Visual Arts. Critics consistently highlighted the series' successful marriage of comedy and horror, praising the way its surrealism permeates both the visual presentation and the witty, often deadpan dialogue. The hand-drawn aesthetic and the tonal whiplash between genuine dread and absurdist humour were singled out as the collection's defining strengths. The fact that the series was initially distributed free on Game Jolt before being packaged into a paid multi-platform collection—and subsequently ported to Nintendo Switch and PS5—suggests a growing audience that responded to Gillmurphy's distinctive voice. The IGF recognition, particularly the Nuovo Award, placed the work among the most notable independent titles of that year, validating a project that began as a solo developer's free experiments on a community platform.

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