I want to try a little experiment.
I’ve long been fascinated by horror as a genre. Not specifically in video games, but in many forms. Movies, books, television, and so on. Video games are just an obvious medium to tackle because so much of my life is tied up in them.
But that fascination gives way to some problems. I don’t like being scared. Or maybe I don’t like being terrified? I enjoy that sense of anxiety and dread, but generally dislike the shock that much horror media leans toward. A surprise here and there is fine, but there can be too much. I want that slow burn.
And yet, when I try to think about what it is that makes things horrifying – that specific flavor I desperately crave – I find it difficult to really describe. The words exist, but they feel empty. It’s an experience that needs to be shared. Is it even really possible to share that experience?
I’ve been thinking a lot about Signalis. A game that I’ve played a couple of times now, and every now and then I wonder if I should replay it. Obviously the thrill of the first-time experience is gone, but upon revisiting I could find something new to appreciate. There’s a richness there that asks to be picked apart, but picking it apart takes time and effort. Do I have that time and effort?
And yet, the fact that Signalis rests on my mind means something. That I think about replaying it is itself a testament to its power over me. I’ve played other horror games, but there are only a scant few that I want to play again.
I want to try a little experiment.
I’ve long been fascinated by horror as a genre. Not just in video games, but in movies, television, and books, too. One of my favorite books that I read only very recently is House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski. It’s something that stays on my mind constantly.
When I think about the horror games that I most enjoy, I recall this constant feeling of uncertainty. A sense of continuous anticipation, drawn out near-endlessly and yet never losing its tension. It is an atmosphere of sounds and objects and movements that leave me wondering without ever needing to see anything.
A while back I played Iron Lung, which was a very short game about exploring in a submarine. You have practically no sense of the world around you beyond a camera that can take a single still shot at a time. You can only imagine what’s out there on this alien planet, knocking against your tiny sealed can of a ship.
And that absolute ignorance of your surroundings is great. It’s just you and your thoughts. And the more you are left with your thoughts, the more those thoughts begin to intrude. What was that noise? Do you see something in that photo? Did you just see movement out of the corner of your eye? Was that something in the game you saw, or was it actually outside the screen?
The game can have you jumping at nothing because that you don’t know what awaits in that nothing. It gives a feeling that there is something waiting to jump out, but you don’t know what or when. Like a presence standing behind you, its finger waiting to tap you on the shoulder. It never taps, but you can feel the weight of the hand, you’re sure of it.
And then you turn around, and there’s nothing.
Which is the point, isn’t it? The game could give you something to scare you, but it doesn’t need to. When you felt that need to look, the game already had you. It’s a feeling as though something has escaped from the game and is watching you. You know it’s not true, but you check anyway. You leave a light on when you go to sleep. You open your eyes just before you drift off. You just need to make sure.
I want to try a little experiment.
I’ve long been fascinated by horror as a genre. Not specifically in video games, but in many forms. Movies, books, television, and so on. Video games are just an obvious medium to tackle because I play them so often.
When I think about some of my favorite games, I think about how they often make you perform a lot of repetitive tasks. Sometimes it’s running back-and-forth through the same area. Maybe you’re ferrying objects to a safe room. Maybe you’re trying to reach a safe point. Or you could have found a key in one side of a mansion that opens a door on the other side.
The repetition feels tedious, but the tedium itself puts you into a state of relaxation. A relaxation that can then be interrupted. Running through a hall you’ve run through a dozen times now finally yields a monster jumping out, and it is the fact that it jumped out on the dozenth time – not the first – that makes you feel uncomfortable. Because now you don’t know when that might happen next.
Is a room you previously believed to be completely safe going to betray you next? If you try to save your game, are you going to be attacked by something else? You can only be safe when you are certain of how things work, and repetition builds that certainty. Taking it away shatters your confidence and forces you to start over. You can rebuild that confidence with more repetition, but if you get burned in just the right ways at just the rights times, you can be put into a constant state of fear.
Because it’s not actually the monsters that are scary. You often have the tools to deal with them. It’s the fact that you feel like you don’t know what you can expect.
I want to try a little experiment.
Horror intrigues me because it needs to mess with the audience. It has to do things differently for a few reasons. Firstly, it has to disrupt the audience’s understanding of the medium they’re experiencing. If you’re playing a horror game, and the game operates like every other game, you fall into a routine. You know how this works. Secondly, it has to disrupt itself as an experience. We seek out and create patterns, and a game that operates on clearly defined rules is one that can be understood not merely in hindsight, but at the time of playing.
Disorientation is one key facet with how a game can disrupt the player. To shift the player’s sense of position and place. You make that disorientation periodic – enough to remove the player from their reference, but not so much that they give up. Moving rooms about. So you institute a clear pattern that the player can try to learn and memorize. You open a door sure it will lead to the kitchen, only to find it leads to the upstairs bedroom. If you don’t know where you’re going, you feel ill at ease. You exit to find yourself in the basement. Though there still needs to be some logic. Complete randomness would be too aggravating. Let the player put the pieces together if they wish.
There’s a Doom mod called “MyHouse.wad” which became popular last year. It plays a lot with impossible space. Doors leading to rooms which can’t physically exist in the space they’re built in. Other doors that disappear when you’re trying to leave. Rooms that repeat and switch their own proportions, leaving you uncertain exactly where you are at a given moment. It is a discomfort made all the more palpable if you have a deep understanding of the game itself, as little bits and pieces of the game shift to mess with your familiarity.
It is safety of place that allows us to feel comfortable. I know where I am right now, and if I walk forward, I know where that will take me. Perhaps most importantly, if I turn the corner I know what I will find. But disorientation removes that safety. You don’t know what you’ll find around the corner, so you let your imagination run wild. It could be any number of things. A sense of place breeds a sense of certainty. A surprise in a familiar place is one thing. But the void of pure ignorance is another entirely.
I want to try a little experiment.
I keep coming back to several games. Signalis among them. I find myself questioning so much of what I recall. What did this mean? What is the symbolism of this cutscene? Should I go back and try to translate these words?
There is a surrealness to the game that could be both ignored and explored. I could choose to just accept what I saw at face value. Let the narrative wash over me and then move on. I might not get much out of the experience – perhaps I find it a bit neat or just frustrating in its ambiguity.
But I could instead dig into it. Refuse to accept what I see as mere show. To accept it as a created work and ask what that creation entails. Investigate what’s going on in each given line and movement.
Which isn’t a guarantee I will find meaning. If there’s a deeper meaning within it, I might not find it. Or I might wind up making up my own meaning. I could even just make up my own meaning if there isn’t something the game has to offer.
But really, that fact that I want to explore and investigate and poke and prod is important. That’s what makes it stick with me. The game gets to live on in my head because I’m constantly thinking about it.
Sure, I’ve finished, but I can keep going. Or I can start again. Either way, I’ve been changed.
Abstracting Games 