Author: erlee1

Unfortunately I was unable to play Pry, as I don’t have an iOS device. While watching Samantha Gordon’s video, though, I was struck by how the creators of the game(?) tried to simulate the main character’s mental state as closely as humanly and technologically possible. They weren’t as interested in portraying a certain interesting series of events as most stories are, though they did privilege certain events over others. Rather, they wanted to capture the full range of James’s thoughts, emotions, memories, and experiences, or at least those that relate to his trauma. (Then again, doesn’t trauma make everything relative to itself?)

Did they succeed? In my opinion, I think it was impossible for them to. Humans are infinitely complex and we are unable share the reality of anyone other than ourselves due to us not being a hive mind. I also think the goal of fiction is not to achieve absolute realism but rather to push the limits of our imagination. Any character is ultimately a vehicle for that purpose and thus an archetype, an intensification of a select few traits tied to a select narrative. That isn’t realistic, and that’s okay. Fiction isn’t meant to substitute for genuine human experiences and connections.

That being said, I don’t think Pry was pointless in the least. It is in fact extremely successful in pushing the limits of not only our imagination but also the very medium it was delivered on. That is the most, however, that it and other works like it should hope to achieve.

Queers in Love at the End of the World is a timed hypertext game in which the player must decide what to do or say to their romantic partner in the span of ten seconds. Her Story is a database game in which the player must piece together a coherent narrative from hundreds of police interview clips. Even though their narratives and mechanics couldn’t be any more different, these two games do share one crucial similarity: keywords.

You could say that keywords are present in every hypertext game, as there are almost always words in a given passage that, when clicked or otherwise interacted with, progress the narrative. However, the time constraint of Queers in Love lends such words a heavier significance than usual. Ten seconds is hardly enough time to read even a single passage. If the player wants to get further in the game, they must make snap decisions about what paths they want to take and click through them almost nonstop. The player may feel as though they are clicking at random, but I would argue that they are in fact likely to gravitate towards the words that compel them the most, whether they’re sensual like “kiss” or expressive like “tell.”

The appeal of Her Story rests on this very same premise. The game begins with a word already typed into the database, waiting to be searched—”murder.” The several videos with this word in it produce other terms of interest, which in turn produce other terms of interest, and on and on without an end in sight. Much like in Queers in Love, the player latches onto whatever words pique their interest the most, from Simon to fennel to twin, and uses them to push the narrative. The five-video limitation on each keyword especially encourages players to search for the words that will help fill in all the blank spaces.

Bursts of static, wayward pixels, frames dropping at random from a dimly lit video—in most video games, these effects are mistakes. They interrupt the immersion and so degrade the quality of the work. Sometimes they render an otherwise respectable game unplayable. Why, then, do they produce the opposite effect in horror games? How can they intrigue and electrify a player when they frustrate in every other circumstance?

Sigmund Freud describes the “uncanny” as a crossing of boundaries between the familiar and the unfamiliar. It just so happens that horror is a genre primarily concerned with the crossing of boundaries, primarily those holding our reality together. I’ve heard that the appeal of horror games is that they allow people to experience fear in a safe, controllable environment, but a good horror game seeks to undermine our reality. It reaches out to us from beyond the screen.

The Flat, for example, is a game that features a first person point-of-view filtered through a VHS-like distortion. It shakes and scrolls in strange directions as you attempt to navigate the titular flat. Whenever you move between areas, the screen flashes with static. The audio is somewhat garbled, as if it’s being played underwater. Though these effects give the impression of glitches, they’re clearly intentional. They’re so out of place, so inherently wrong. You know without being told that something terrible happened in this flat. And if the medium keeping it inside your computer is fraying, what’s to stop it from happening to you?

You would think that what every game wants is to get you to keep playing it. The more hours you log, points you gain, achievements you earn, and money you spend (if micro-transactions are involved), the better for its creator. If you play to the end, assuming there even is one, then play it again. It’s a win-win situation—the creator gets acclaim and you get to have some release from the stresses of the real world.

Yet some games will tell you that there is no happiness to be found inside of them. These games include “howling dogs” by Porpentine and “SPY INTRIGUE” by furkle.

During each day that passes in “howling dogs,” you must complete a series of menial tasks before you can indulge in the activity room. You are made to shower, eat a nutrient bar, drink a bottle of water, and maybe clean up your trash if you feel up to it. These tasks are important to your upkeep, of course, but they’re monotonous, repetitive. They aren’t nearly as interesting as the activity room, which lets you participate in vivid scenarios that vary in setting and role each day. Later in the game, the shower won’t turn on, the hydration unit fails to deliver cold water, and the trash disposal ceases to operate. Your skin itches and trash piles up on your floor. Even the sanity room begins to break down, signifying that your deterioration is mental as well as physical. This is all the more reason for you to retreat to the lavish fantasies of your activity room, up until you lose your very sense of self in the game’s most common ending.

“SPY INTRIGUE” gives a similar commentary about the allures and dangers of escapism. It has a clunky interface reminiscent of an outdated computer, featuring text in all caps and a choice map that lets you anticipate which options let you progress and which lead to dead ends. On the surface, the game is a ridiculous spy adventure that is impossible to take seriously. Whenever you die, however, the screen fades into a flashback sequence typed in all lowercase. These sequences give keen insight into the descent of the character’s real life, including drug abuse, traumatic memories, and mental illness. It’s as if in the interval between their game character dying and the game reloading to its last checkpoint, the player character is forced to sit alone with their dark thoughts and impulses. Then the game reverts back to its chirpy spy antics. Where the player in “howling dogs” wants to rush to the activity room as soon as possible, though, the player in “SPY INTRIGUE” wants to guide their character to the supposed dead ends in order to learn more about them. The more you die in the game, the more you revisit your life. It isn’t as fun—it’s pretty heart-wrenching, actually—but in the end, it’s the better option.

In any given game, it seems there are two ways to play a character whose decisions drive the story. You can make the decisions you would make if you were the character, or you can make the decisions you think the character would make.

The former approach is common to most modern games, particularly ones that feature customizable characters, silent protagonists, or open worlds. These games offer a blank slate for the player to fill as they see fit. Since the player is indistinct from the character they play, they can allow their own background to influence their decisions despite the fictional context. Galatea, for example, is a game that features two characters: the titular Galatea and you, an art critic. That’s all you know about yourself to begin with. The entire game is based upon your interactions with the one other character in the room, but it supplies you with several versatile commands and many topics of interest for you to construct your own personality with. What topics you fixate on, where and when you touch her, whether you view her as an artwork or a human—it all depends on you. The decisions you make reflect upon you, because what is a person but the series of decisions they’ve made throughout their life?

The latter approach is less common, but it has deeper roots. The most famous example of a game that makes use of this is Dungeons and Dragons. Though you can still customize your character, this is a roleplaying game and so you are generally discouraged from making a character that resembles you. Instead you are meant to spend the campaign portraying a character whose words or actions would not line up with your own if you were in that same situation. Every decision you make must be “in character,” which at once frees you from moral responsibility and burdens you with narrative plausibility. Photopia is a prime example of this. It leaps between the perspectives of several different characters and provides limited dialogue choices that progress the story in one direction regardless of what is chosen. As such, every decision you make is automatically in character. The responsibility of finding the best possible ending has been lifted from your hands, but you are left with a growing feeling of helplessness as the story veers towards tragedy. The game will end the same way every time because the characters don’t know what kind of story they’re living in. Only the player does.