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Thursday 30 August, 2018
I forgot to mention it, but yesterdays gameplay ended with me being captured. Today was much more intense as the gameplay became more centered around encounters with the other character. He is so creepy! The character design is very well done, he’s disturbing but not overly gruesome. He’s clearly messed up but there are several details that force you to keep looking at him. His animations are equally chilling. The slow jerky movements and cold pops of his joints add suspense and reinforce the fear the game creates.
Once again, the gameplay and narrative progress side by side. We finally learn more about the situation as we see other children trapped in cages around us. As we move to the next room we see the monster packaging the bodies and dumping them off for later. We sneak further and further into his maze of a house as he follows us, getting deeper and deeper into trouble, with no option to turn back. As the narrative becomes more focused on character interaction, so does the gameplay. There are more sneaking and chase levels, less focused on movement and exploration. The gameplay between these two situations is vastly different. I have time to think and enjoy the art and movement during the puzzles. On the other hand, my heart is pounding and my palms sweating as I hide behind a box in the elevator with the monster, or duck into an air vent barely out of his reach. Both are rewarding in their own way and combine to create an exciting gameplay.
The most disturbing and controversial part of the gameplay for me was when you drop into the massive room of children’s shoes beneath the monster’s workshop. This immediately made me think of the holocaust and all the images of rooms of shoes. I felt like the connection was so immediate and distinct that it had to be intentional. What does this say about the larger themes of the game? Is the monster symbolic of something more like Nazi’s, and that connects into the running and hiding in fear as gameplay? How is this commentary reflected in our modern world, and how does it apply to issues’ we’re facing today? I think it’s important to look at the level of abstraction in the game to look at these issues on different planes. How does the deconstruction of a theme allow it to be reconstructed in different ways?
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