Kollok actual play kicks off season 3 with a gonzo two-part premiere

Traditional play series such as Critical Role or Dimension 20 have been come-as you-are events, where players and gamemasters look like they have just walked into the room. That’s been especially true during the pandemic, which has seen troupes forced to play remotely via video conference tools like Zoom. Hyper RPG’s KollokThis series has a third season and is totally different.

Kollok players aren’t tiled on screen like the introduction of Brady Bunch. Instead, they’re sitting side-by-side in a studio, in costumes and light makeup, monologuing dramatically to the camera. When they are knocked unconscious, players will be fumbling around on the tables, spewing fake blood at one another, and trying to keep their characters straight the whole time. It’s a much more gonzo style of actual play that goes well beyond using funny voices. You feel both experimental and daring in this play.

The program made its premiere on Monday night, kicking off a 20-episode arc airing live on AMC Network’s Fear HQ Twitch channel. The episode, the first after a two-year hiatus, wasn’t without its hiccups, but it more than made up for any technical difficulties with some solid performances and a couple good jump scares.

[Warning: What follows contains spoilers for the season 3 premiere of Kollok.]

KollokIt takes place in a horror-strange dystopian science fiction setting. Zac Lim EubankThe former showrunner at Critical Role and Geek and Sundry. Bike for Kids ruleset. This timeline differs from ours in the early 1990s. The setting spans over 30 years, after which the last one was born. Players are powerful members of The Ascended, one of nearly 300,000 children who share the same — humanity’s final — birthdate and are locked in a power struggle with a mysterious totalitarian elite for control of the former United States of America.

This is where the real attraction lies. It features two distinct troupes that are adventurers.

Ethan Nestor (CrankGameplays for YouTube) and Danielle Radford (“Honest Trailers”) are the primary members of this group. yellowspoongirl(Twitch), Xu Mason(Funnyish) – Elyse Willems, (Rooster Teeth), makes a special guest appearance Psychonauts 2). They take on the role of an outlaw militia unit recovering from a failed attack. During the premiere episode it was this group that had the most trouble finding its feet, rolling failure after failure and becoming bogged down during the stream’s first few hours.

Three players from past seasons returned to cleanup. They include Aabria Iyengar (Critical Role’s Exandria Unlimited), Lucas Eubank (Geek and Sundry), and Mika Midgett (Twitch). (Twitch). The experienced trio seems to be trapped by an unknown force and are currently in a simulation over which they only have limited control.

If that all sounds tremendously confusing, things only get more challenging from there — especially if you haven’t seen the previous two seasons. A synopsis was my only saving grace in preparation for the premiere of season 3. It can be found hidden within a Discord community server’s dimly lit corner. That’s where the majority of the fan interaction takes place as well. One of the show’s gimmicks is that players who subscribe to the channel on Twitch can then make their own characters and are then allowed to embark on a freeform text-based role-play via Discord.

But the real draw is the weekly actual-play program. This multi-camera, in-person, multimedia production includes live music, sound effects and digital filters as well an extensive set.

These high production values were what attracted me to the episode’s back half. Camerawork focuses intensely on the players’ faces, yielding an actual play that is far less about the game system and more about performing collaborative fiction in real time. It left ample room for Iyengar and Lucas Eubank to take in the sights. It all built up to multiple tense crescendos, highlighted with both practical effects (like blood spouting from the game master’s mouth during one scene) and digital effects (like a graphical treatment that simulated the rebooting of an in-fiction virtual reality system).

I’m almost four hours into Kollok, and I’m still not entirely sure what’s going on here. It’s not a frustrating thing, but it makes me long for more. I’ll likely wave off of absorbing the show’s first two seasons for now mainly because of the decentralized, sprawling nature of those episodes. But there’s something deeply thrilling about watching these players discover the world around them in season 3. Coupled with those high production values, it’s a truly novel horror experience that you won’t find anywhere else.

This program will air for 19 more weeks on Twitch, Monday nights at 9 pm EST.