Yet, I yearn for the lush feel of summer, the radiant sun intertwining with the greenery of nature, the whites of the cities blooming with intense light absorption, creating high contrast that begs for street photography (which benefits plenty from the increased light, especially on film). There are more feelings that emerge in me when I think of summer—some barely conscious ones, unattended and unlabeled—that are far from unique and relate to childhood.

As I try my best to avoid being exposed to summer heat, I quench my thirst for this unconscious nostalgia by means of art.

It was summer 2024 when I played A Short Hike. I could not have asked for better [accidental] timing. This little two-hour video game transported me to a world that felt so safe and peaceful I hardly managed to put it down. The entire video game is about the young bird Claire, who’s spending her summer with her aunt on an island, journeying to the peak to catch a signal and call her mom. Claire runs into some chill characters on her way up the mountain. A few of them are Theo, a relaxed photographer snapping shots and talking about life; Avery, who’s full of energy and ropes her into a goofy game of stickball; and a painter bird quietly doing their thing with a canvas. These little run-ins give the hike its charm and make the world feel cozy.

There’s a forest, a mountain, a waterfall—plenty of varied locations—and you, as Claire, can glide over those sceneries, which feels so satisfying and calming. There’s something about the camera movement, crunchy pixels, everblowing wind, and the way distant vistas are rendered that gives this little game a quality of liveliness. Almost as if it breathes.

There’s something more important about this video game for me. It brings me back to childhood—not even in a relatable way, it just triggers a very specific feeling, or a state. Early childhood is, needless to say, of paramount importance in terms of the core development of the human psyche. It molds certain behavioral patterns, integrates trauma responses, builds the initial belief system, etc. An obvious (mostly) common aspect of childhood is being unburdened by the weight of the world. The entire drama of being is usually encapsulated within family and friends. A child’s mind is not burdened with a background process in the brain to feed a family or prevent democratic backslide. And there was something even more important for me in childhood during summer—summer vacations. During this time I was free to taste the present—play, rest, educate myself, have my own little childish adventures, be content (most of the time), and really, just sink into the now. There was something magical about it. Sure, there were problems, conflicts, unpleasantness, heartbreaks, disappointments—but all of those were intimate, they were mine, they were interpersonal. I had not yet consciously inherited the weight of societal expectations and responsibilities. I was in an exploration mode.

The “vibe” of those summers was vibrant, bright, contrasty, bold, free, uncrowded—as if everyone were on their own little adventures or explorations.

This state of pure being is what A Short Hike transposes me into. It’s not really about childhood even—I, for one, did not have a pleasant childhood per se. Most of my memories of it are buried deep, and I do not yearn to go back to it. What it transposes me into is those few days in summer when I was happy. Happy not as joyful, but happy as peaceful, content, not seeking fulfillment. Doing things for the joy of it, not from the need to do them.

This feeling nowadays often evades me. If you want to taste this feeling for yourself, I would highly recommend A Short Hike to you. Just play for the joy of it and perhaps reflect on it—not to take shelter in the past.

There’s this artist I follow on Instagram: sseongryul. I think their art invokes the exact same state in me. I hope you, dear reader, will also enjoy their work.

Maybe it’s also one of the reasons why I find Call Me by Your Name so refreshing—as if I’m breathing fresh summer air while watching it. Or playing the first few days in Firewatch as Henry. Or even in Animatrix, following Yoko and the kids (story: Beyond).

I’ve been made aware of a new game that I have yet to play, but it promises to take me back to that state again—Despelote.

Your inner child is not gone. Your happiness is not gone. It is not out there to seek. It is not something that has been lost and needs to be acquired again. It’s always there, veiled by the ever-increasing Drama of the apparent world. We just sometimes need some triggers to taste it and then perhaps to reflect on it.

In terms of musical recommendations, I don’t think anything could beat Joe Hisaishi’s Spirited Away score to achieve the same state.

Does not contain spoilers for Layers of Fear (2016), Layers of Fear 2 (2019) or Layers of Fear [Remake] (2023)

Contains light spoilers for: Rings of Power Season: 2 Episode 7

Silent Hill 2 Remake by Bloober Team was received fairly positively. I love the horror genre and Silent Hill—especially so—so I grabbed a copy of Silent Hill 2 for my PS5... and then proceeded to download the Layers of Fear Remake from PSN. Yeah, I decided to be thorough. I was curious about the game that first put Bloober Team on the map of horror game studios.

I hadn’t played any of their titles before, largely due to their middling reviews. It also doesn’t help that Jacek Zieba, the director of their upcoming game Cronos, said, “Okay, we made some shitty games before, but we [can] evolve.” That sentence left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. I get what he meant, but I think it’s important to appreciate your own work and recognize how much it helped you grow. Without those “shitty games,” you wouldn’t be where you are today.

I don’t believe in shitty art per se. I think there are well- and poorly-executed ideas mediated through art.

Layers of Fear is a poorly executed idea—2/5 stars. Review done.

The remake combines Bloober Team’s first game, Layers of Fear, and its sequel, Layers of Fear 2, upgrading them visually with UE5 technology. Unfortunately, narrative and character development are not its strongest points. The experience feels like your average Blumhouse haunted house horror movie—occasionally obtuse and overly poetic in its attempt to explore the struggles of creating art and the sacrifices it demands. It’s as if the game is "faking" the depth of its characters through highfalutin expressions rather than genuine storytelling.

I could dive deeper into the unsuccessful attempts at narrative threads and the overuse of Goya’s paintings in Layers of Fear, but I’ve found it’s not worth exploring. Instead, I want to focus on something far more interesting: the game’s main mechanic of rearranging the environment.

This mechanic is a fascinating approach to evoking fear. Let’s explore that instead.

Layers of Fear is a first-person video game. The core gameplay revolves around exploring an old mansion where the internal layout keeps changing as you progress. These changes are primarily achieved by rearranging the order of connected rooms and altering the room decorations.

What’s crucial to note is that [almost] none of these changes happen in view. Instead, they occur when you’re not looking—either when you’re facing away or just before you enter a room. This subtle sleight of hand forms the backbone of the game’s fear mechanic. The idea that a completely different scene might appear when you turn the camera around is profoundly unsettling—and undeniably effective in creating tension.

I believe most readers are familiar with the concept of fearing what we cannot see—the fear of the unknown. Our animalistic instincts kick in to anticipate danger, and our brains construct narratives and expectations, conducting chemical processes to heighten alertness and caution—sometimes overly so.

This primal fear is one of the reasons why the first Alien movie works so well as a horror film. You don’t really see the Alien that often. It’s the not seeing the creature that builds tension. Sir Ridley Scott has said this was very much intentional, relying on the viewer to construct a more terrifying reality in their imagination than anything that could be shown on screen.

This concept is also the foundation of jump scares—the abrupt transition from not knowing or anticipating to brutal or horrifying knowledge. But we’re all aware that a horror movie cannot rely solely on jump scares. They lose their impact with overuse. Why? Perhaps because repetition robs them of mystery. Once the viewer expects to be startled, the moment ceases to evoke true horror and instead becomes a predictable jolt—an external, superficial reaction.

I’ve always liked the comparison of cheap jump scares to tickling: both aim to trigger a desired outcome (fear or laughter) without genuine substance. This is why a well-earned jump scare can be as satisfying as a well-crafted joke—it’s the quality of execution, not the mere presence of the tactic, that makes it resonate.

Personally, I’m very desensitized to horror movies. I love them, but they rarely leave me mortified. Yet, horror video games are a completely different story. I get so anxious while playing that I can’t muster more than two hours per session.

I understand why there’s such a difference between how I experience horror in movies versus video games. In a movie, I’m merely an observer. In a video game, I’m a participant—responsible for every action. What’s particularly terrifying for me is turning the camera around. The simple fact that I have to use the camera fills me with dread. My brain tells me that anything could be waiting there, lurking just beyond my sight, within the framework of the environment—and I must face it voluntarily.

This is why games like the Amnesia series and Silent Hill 2 work so effectively. They manipulate your perception by obstructing your vision—whether through darkness or fog—forcing you to constantly guess what might be ahead. All the while, they build tension masterfully, keeping you uncertain of when—or if—that tension will collapse. This perpetual unease is what makes these games so gripping and uniquely horrifying.

Layers of Fear attempts to exploit this concept to a higher degree, though somewhat unsuccessfully. Frequently, when you rotate the camera, the scene behind you is completely altered—a different room, a new hallway, unfamiliar decorations, or an entirely reimagined space. Because the game manipulates the environment so drastically, your brain can’t even form expectations. The framework of what’s possible expands, and with it, the scope of the unknown. This makes the simple act of turning around a gut-wrenching experience. It instills paranoia.

At least, it did for me—initially. But, much like jump scares, overuse dulls the impact. The repetition of this mechanic makes the unknowable a known quantity. Unfortunately, Layers of Fear leans so heavily on this technique that, after a while, I became desensitized. Patterns emerged. I recognized the same rooms, the same changes. The magic faded. The game’s carefully crafted illusion crumbled, and I saw the seams: models of rooms loaded and unloaded from memory.

By that point, I was sprinting through the game, rarely bothering to look back unless it was strictly necessary to progress. The fear gave way to routine.

Interestingly, the designers behind the game might agree with this critique. In its sequel, Layers of Fear 2—which is included in this remake—the use of environmental alterations is significantly reduced. These changes feel far more unpredictable and impactful. Unfortunately, even in the sequel, this effectiveness diminishes over time.

The concept of not knowing and the act of turning the camera are incredibly powerful tools. What’s fascinating is that they can operate even without the creator’s explicit intent. I experienced this firsthand when I accidentally played Gone Home (2013) as if it were a horror game.

I went in knowing nothing about the game—no trailers, no detailed reviews—just vague but glowing recommendations. Intrigued, I gave it a try. The game begins in a dimly lit house, where you explore room by room, uncovering the narrative through environmental storytelling.

Throughout the entirety of the game—even up until the very end—I moved cautiously through the house, turning around carefully at every corner. I was afraid. I didn’t know what to expect. The clues I uncovered triggered my heightened sense of caution, keeping me in a state of wary exploration.

Yet, in the end, there was nothing to fear. It was, in fact, a lovely queer story. I couldn’t help but chuckle at myself afterward. A few years later, I heard from someone else who had also accidentally played it as if it were a horror game, and it gave me a good laugh.

I think, to this day, the best video game—or rather, the best demo of an unmade video game—that employs this concept to perfection is P.T.. It always comes back to P.T., doesn’t it?

Silent Hills P.T. has become the stuff of legends. The unmade project by Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro has inspired countless imitations and spawned an entire subgenre of atmospheric horror. Its influence is undeniable.

The core gameplay loop of P.T. involves endlessly moving through the doors of an L-shaped corridor until you solve the puzzle to escape. Each time you pass through, the corridor shifts—sometimes subtly, sometimes drastically. Occasionally, you’re confronted by the apparition of "Lisa," whose presence is utterly terrifying.

On paper, this sounds strikingly similar to the gameplay loop of Layers of Fear. Yet, while both games use the concept of an ever-changing environment, P.T. excels where Layers of Fear falters. There are many reasons why one succeeds while the other struggles, but here, I want to focus on a single aspect: why the concept of a changing room doesn’t lose its power in P.T.. Even as the expectation of a shifting corridor becomes a known quantity, it remains effective—it becomes the expectation itself.

The reason is quite simple, and I have to admit, there’s not too much to analyze here. While the changing corridor in P.T. becomes an expectation, the changes themselves remain unknowable and grounded within the limits of reason. These shifts aren’t random; they enhance the mood, sometimes serving as part of a puzzle. This careful balance is something Layers of Fear struggles to maintain.

In Layers of Fear, environmental changes often occur upon camera rotation without purpose. They seem to happen for the sake of it—perhaps because it looks “cool.” However, this tendency creates a new, unintended expectation for the player: a change for change’s sake, devoid of meaning. This lack of purpose introduces a different kind of limitless expectation. While limitless expectation might sound compelling, it’s less terrifying. When the scope of possible outcomes expands to include non-horrifying scenarios, my mind starts conjuring ideas beyond fear. These ideas might not entirely replace the horror scenarios, but they certainly dilute their impact.

On the other hand, P.T. carefully surprises you with each iteration of the corridor, but always within the boundaries of things designed to scare you. The changes are deliberate and meaningful, never overstaying their welcome. If those surprises become repetitive or reveal discernible patterns, the illusion falters. It becomes evident that even our imagination has limits—it’s finite. Similarly, if P.T. had introduced alterations without purpose, players would start to expect anything—horrifying or not—which diminishes the tension.

A fun technical note: the character "Lisa" is attached to the player’s camera from behind, meaning she’s always lurking just out of sight. This subtle design choice underscores the paranoia the game evokes.

Simply put, P.T. keeps its scares within a controlled scope, ensuring that every change serves a purpose. It doesn’t overstay its welcome, nor does it wander aimlessly. It’s this balance that makes it so effective.

Despite these shortcomings, I can see why Konami chose Bloober Team to handle Silent Hill 2. Much of their work explores subjective perspectives and how the world can be reshaped in real time, aligning well with the themes of Silent Hill. Now, perhaps, I’m ready to finally play Silent Hill 2 Remake.

Where do I even begin? This question preempts my every endeavor. The quest to perfectly project my thoughts one-to-one in a single step, without mistakes, is exhausting and unproductive. I know this, yet it’s irresistible. It’s as if I want to perform a BSOD memory dump in an instant, constructing the thought without a beginning or an end, much like how the Heptapods use their logogram writing language in the movie Arrival (2016), where sentences have no beginning or end—they come into existence in one atomic operation. I wish I could do that; I wish I could speak in a Universal Language. But, alas, I will have to concede and instead face my OCD head-on.

I didn’t have a good gaming PC growing up, nor did I have a console. I always had to play either older games or run newer ones on potato graphics settings just to try and enjoy them to some degree. Perhaps that’s why I tend to almost never play video games upon their release—I wasn’t used to it, and my PC couldn’t handle it, so the sense of immediacy is mostly (Death Stranding 2, ahem) absent. I remember when I upgraded the GPU on my PC, I immediately got a few games to test it out. These were: Prince of Persia (2008), Mirror’s Edge, Crysis, Dead Space, Assassin’s Creed, and Mass Effect—yeah, “those were the years.” However, only two from this list are more relevant in the context of this writing than the others.

It might have been the beginning of 2010; I was 16 at the time. I had just beaten the first Assassin’s Creed. I liked the Animus gimmick, the art direction, and the world-building, so I immediately proceeded to play its sequel, Assassin’s Creed II, which was already out by then. Oh boy, did I enjoy Assassin’s Creed II. It was quite an experience, but I don’t want to replay it at all, fearing that Ezio’s antics may not have aged particularly well. I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to exhaust it—I wanted to consume it fully, to feel like there was nothing left the game could offer me before I moved on. And to my delight, there were plenty of optional quests and collectibles. I completed all the achievements, which was fulfilling, and I even did all the copy-pasted assassination missions that, in retrospect, offered nothing new for the time I invested.

The same scenario played out with Mass Effect and its sequel, Mass Effect 2, which was also released by then. I did multiple playthroughs, completed all the side quests, and tried to get the “best” possible outcomes. I aimed to exhaust it entirely, ensuring I missed nothing from the experience. This behavior of “100%”-ing video games continued for a while, and, in fact, extended well beyond video games and computers in various forms, but I won’t delve into that here. I’ll stick to discussing it in the context of gaming.

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag tested the limits of my compulsions. The game was open-world and packed with collectibles and missions. It might have even been my first big open-world game. During my playthrough, I realized that open-world games, which were all the hype back then, were not for me. The lack of direction, the absence of purposefully crafted scenarios, and the more sandbox-style approach of letting players craft their own stories left me unimpressed and uninspired. It felt almost lazy in terms of world design—just a terrain that told hardly any story (and I don’t mean cutscenes or narration), merely a playground for exercising power fantasies.

Of course, much later, thanks to FromSoftware and Kojima Productions, I discovered that not all open-world games lack direction. It’s simply a matter of expertise from the game designers and artists to incorporate intent, purpose, and direction, even in the largest and densest open-world games. Unfortunately, this is still a rarity to this day.

But there was something else about the open-world nature that bothered me, perhaps even more than the lack of direction and environmental guidance—it was overwhelming. It gave me choice paralysis. A series of questions arose in my mind: Where do I even begin? In what order? How can I ensure I’ve covered all of the map? How can I be sure I’ve seen and done everything without a solid structure?

What made it even worse was the sheer number of collectibles in the game. There were Treasure Chests, Viewpoints, Templar Keys, Animus Fragments, Taverns, Shanties, Mayan Stelae, Art, Manuscripts, Letters in a Bottle, and Buried Chests. The map was barely legible with all the collectible icons cluttering it.

I was compelled to collect them all. I had this unrecognized urge to make the entirety of the game figuratively part of my brain—to fully consume and integrate it. While collecting Sea Shanties, I realized I didn’t care for them at all, but I couldn’t stop. I knew I couldn’t. Every time I decided to leave an item untouched, not collected, I felt this terrible sensation that I couldn’t quite name, so I gave in. And yes, I 100%-ed Black Flag.

During my playthrough, I started to recognize a lot of things I no longer appreciate in video games: repetitive missions that differ only slightly, quest structures that bounce you between NPCs just to give the illusion of significance but, in reality, only waste time. And the map—cluttered with icons signaling the “chores” that need to be completed or collected.

After Black Flag, I decided I would only play video games that respected my time. I became very selective. Games that padded their length to hit some arbitrary “60-hour content” mark were a no-go for me. By then, I knew I would spend all that time, and if I did, I wanted it to be meaningful in every moment. Five hours of excellent playtime became far more valuable than a 30–40 hour game filled with filler content. This constraint filtered out plenty of games, but, needless to say, the core issue remained.

Even if I didn’t enjoy certain parts of a game, memorable or not, I would still force myself to finish it. Worse yet, sometimes I didn’t even enjoy the game as a whole, but I still felt compelled to complete it. Abandoning a game midway felt like an incomprehensible loss to me. It sucked. I was slowly losing the joy in my favorite pastime.

This went on for years, affecting the number of video games I played, as I spent so much time obsessively completing each one with varying degrees of enjoyment. I had already played Dark Souls, and it instantly became one of my quintessential games. I got all the achievements—this time with genuine pleasure—read everything about it, and analyzed as much as I possibly could. Then, one day, I was watching my buddy play it next to me. He was sprinting across the invisible walkways toward Seath the Scaleless, and he chose a path I hadn’t noticed before.

It was a shock—I had missed something about this game. There was knowledge I didn’t have. I was filled with sadness. I thought I had completely exhausted the game, but I hadn’t. That small, seemingly insignificant detail had escaped me. That’s when I realized that what was supposed to be an enjoyable hobby had turned into a chore, a responsibility.

I disengaged from gaming for a while—years, in fact. I observed all the exciting new games coming out, but I couldn’t bring myself to touch them. I knew I’d ruin them for myself and end up hating every second. By that time, when I was around 18 or 19, I had come to realize I had OCD, although it was yet undiagnosed. I wasn’t doing anything about it, and it only grew worse, manifesting in every aspect of daily life. It affected my relationships, my self-development, my mental well-being, my hobbies, and my ability to enjoy things. In other words, OCD is not just being “neurospicy” or getting triggered by posts on /r/mildlyinfuriating—it’s much more severe than that.

Fast forward to 2017. I was 23, and Nintendo had just released the Switch handheld console along with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I decided to give it a try, with the consolation that I knew it had no achievements or trophies. It felt like a good first step toward getting back into gaming. I thoroughly enjoyed the game and did as many things as I could out of genuine enjoyment. In fact, I didn’t collect all 900 Korok seeds (which, ironically, rewards you with a… golden poop—right call, Nintendo).

This was still just a tiny step, as my playtime in Breath of the Wild reached around 200 hours, but the absence of an achievement list—a list that would have symbolized my perceived failure—made it a bit easier. It was a small step, but the right nudge I needed. For the first time, I felt that I didn’t need to chase every achievement. From that moment on, I set artificial limits for myself: aiming for “most” of the achievements, rather than 100%.

It was hard. It felt terrible at first. Knowing I had only done, say, 80% of the achievements left me uneasy, as if I’d accomplished nothing, as if I hadn’t grown or experienced anything. But I kept going, and with each game, the feeling of frustration lessened. It took a lot of patience and time to go from “most” of the achievements to aiming for only half, which represented a much lighter burden on my compulsions and allowed me to focus on enjoying quality gaming sessions.

Many years have passed since then. I was indeed diagnosed with OCD and started a treatment regimen that included Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). This combination of calming my mind and engaging in introspection had a profound effect on me. I now understood why I had the compulsion to exhaust every possible experience in a video game. It stemmed from my drive—a compulsion to perfect myself and fill the perceived imperfections and brokenness inside me by acquiring perfect facsimiles of experiences and integrating them into my identity. As for the “why,” that’s a personal matter.

However, recognizing this endeavor as futile and truly feeling that all of it is simply impossible has been an important step for me.

As a result of all this, I now hardly pay attention to achievements or trophies. I tend to just play the game and allow myself to get lost in it—to a degree. I’m not There yet! Some things still intimidate me, especially open and expansive worlds. This is probably the main reason I have yet to start Elden Ring; I’m afraid it will suck me in, compelling me to spend hundreds of hours on it. Overcoming that will be my important step two.

Please, if you are reading this and think you might have OCD, try to get professional help. It works; it is indeed manageable. If you’d like to share your experience, feel free to contact me.

Dark Souls

You all know what Dark Souls is by now.

For the longest time during my teenage years, I avoided playing Dark Souls. My response to its perceived difficulty was, "Do you hate fun?" But then a friend whose taste I usually aligned with recommended it, so I decided to give it a shot. I won’t dive into the topic of difficulty here, as it’s honestly the least interesting aspect of Dark Souls for me.

From the moment I started Dark Souls, the mood of the game completely captivated me. I found myself blindly dropped into this dark fantasy world, role-playing as a nameless Undead marked with a Darksign, wandering through Lordran and battling various monsters. My heart raced as I fought bosses, sweating through each encounter, all to rekindle the Flame—whatever that meant. The story felt nebulous; I didn’t really grasp why I should care or what was going on. But after a long and arduous journey, I finally defeated the first boss, the Asylum Demon, escaped The Undead Asylum, and lit the bonfire at The Firelink Shrine, where my character could rest and find a moment of peace.

A warm feeling washed over me, one I couldn't quite rationalize yet. I continued my journey and defeated the second boss, the Taurus Demon, which led me to meet the NPC Solaire of Astora. Together, we stood admiring the "grossly incandescent" scenery before us. That warmth inside me grew louder, but it still had not reached the clarity for me to contemplate on it.

I pressed on, defeating the Bell Gargoyles as my third major challenge. Climbing the tower felt important but calm, and ringing the Bells of Awakening there seemed to be a pivotal moment.

As I gazed from the tower at the landscape below, everything I'd experienced began to coalesce. The various elements I'd encountered came together in a harmonious tapestry and the beauty of Dark Souls unraveled in front of me. It resonated deeply within me, sparking a profound appreciation for the game's design, storytelling, and emotional impact. Here are my observations:

One of the most obvious but striking aspects of Dark Souls is its storytelling approach. For me, it was the first game that fully embraced diegetic narrative. There's no heavy exposition or narration outside the intro video, and the characters aren't overly expressive. Instead, the dialogue from the sparse NPCs reads more like poetry—short, layered, and shrouded in mystery. The game doesn't hold your hand; it trusts you to piece together the story on your own.

Imagine being dropped into a strange city where a major event, like a war or revolution, is unfolding. You might see a newspaper article, overhear a conversation in a cab, or witness a protest outside a government building. That's how Dark Souls reveals its narrative. The world of Lordran is desolate, but the few characters, the architecture, item descriptions, and even the atmosphere all contribute to the storytelling. You collect these puzzle pieces and gradually understand the context you're in.

Just like in all works of art, ideas are dime a dozen, true value lies in the execution of the ideas. While diegetic storytelling isn't a revolutionary concept, its execution in Dark Souls is what sets it apart. It’s something that can only be fully realized in a video game to this degree, where players can explore the world in any fashion they want, as opposed to movies that already have an inherent fixed narration to them even simply by virtue of having a deterministic sequence of frames. This is where it shines brightly. The world design is incredibly dense—not in terms of graphical fidelity, but in purpose. Although the art direction is so strong that I'm hardly bothered by aging graphics. Every structure, door, and ruin feels intentionally placed, rich with a layered history that gives Lordran the depth of a real, lived-in environment that has been developing throughout centuries. For instance, the massive steps and archways in Anor Londo suggest that the city was once inhabited by giants, even though it's nearly empty now.

In the New Londo Ruins, you encounter the massive floodgates that were used to seal the city underwater, a deliberate measure taken to contain the spread of the Abyss and the Darkwraiths. The architecture here is not just visually striking; it’s practical and purposeful, emphasizing the gravity of this defensive action. You can also spot remnants of the city’s former grandeur—large structures and bridges now submerged, hinting at a once-thriving metropolis.

These observations reveal that the architecture in Dark Souls is not merely thematic; it's designed with functional intent, offering players essential clues about the history and purpose of each location. This layered storytelling through environment design invites players to explore and piece together the narrative in a way that feels organic and immersive.

Unlocking that door in Darkroot Basin was a standout moment for me that really highlights the genius of Dark Souls' level design. The way everything is interconnected not only pulls you in but also amps up the sense of discovery. When you figure out how the Undead Burg connects to Darkroot, it’s like a lightbulb goes off—you suddenly see the game world as a cohesive space instead of just a bunch of isolated chunks being loaded and unloaded from hardware memory. You place the area relative to other areas in your mind.

This realization shifts your perspective and makes you appreciate how each area contributes to a larger narrative. It’s not just about wandering through random levels; you’re navigating a meticulously crafted environment where your choices and explorations resonate. Every corner feels alive and significant.

Another thing I really appreciated is how the game mechanics feel seamlessly integrated into the world of Dark Souls. I’ve always loved how the inventory menu is an in-game projection in Dead Space, but while Dark Souls doesn’t have that, it has its own unique touches. The way the game connects you with a subset of other players online, without you even knowing it, feels completely organic.

When someone else rings the Bell of Awakening, you hear that distant sound echoing through the air. You spot messages left by other players using the Orange Soapstone, and occasionally, you catch a glimpse of ghostly apparitions wandering around. There’s even the multiplayer aspect where you can invade other players’ games. Time in Lordran is warped and non-linear, and the reality feels like it’s crumbling, allowing these remnants from other players’ experiences to intertwine with yours. These other players are just fellow Undead on their quests to rekindle the Flame or step into the Age of Dark. It’s like you’re never truly leaving this fictional world.

A comparable example is Death Stranding, where structures built by other players are shared, fostering a sense of community and collective effort. I know I would have struggled a lot more to build highways in Death Stranding, just like I find the helpful messages in Dark Souls invaluable—some are genuinely useful, while others are just there for a laugh.

I’ve been talking about that growing warmth I felt during my playthrough, so let’s unpack it. I’ve always preferred idealized fantasy worlds, like The Lord of the Rings, over more deconstructed ones, like Game of Thrones. Sure, I enjoyed watching Game of Thrones, but more as a drama series than a true fantasy experience. Its somewhat grounded, plausible nature never satisfied me—I crave those extreme, idealized versions. If it’s a dark fantasy with Bigger Than Thou themes, then I’m all in for that treat.

This preference is probably why I never got into The Witcher 3. I’m sure it’s a fun game, but the bright, sometimes jolly fantasy world just doesn’t resonate with me. The same goes for Wheel of Time. But the world of Dark Souls? It feels like it was crafted specifically for my tastes. The world of Dark Souls is bleak, it's dark, it's oppressive, it's decaying—ancient castles, crumbling cathedrals, and desolate landscapes inhabited by hollowed souls and monstrous beings, each a reminder of the fall of once-mighty gods and civilizations.

The atmosphere is thick with despair, yet there’s a quiet beauty in this fading grandeur. It feels peaceful, even tranquil. Gazing up at the sky, where the sun breaks through the clouds in a dramatic fashion, brings a sense of hope and beauty amidst the suffocating darkness. It’s all incredibly dreamy, creating that warmth inside me as I explore this hauntingly beautiful world.

The melancholy of broken dreams permeates every corner of Dark Souls' locations, creating an eerie vibe that hangs over each landscape. The world is populated by various monsters, demons and undead, with barely more than twenty living humans scattered throughout this vast realm. It feels as though this world exists solely for your observation—does it even exist without an observer? It’s fitting that so few unhollowed souls are left to experience Lordran in its state of decay, as if the entire realm is barely holding itself together, on the verge of complete collapse.

Time itself seems warped here, further emphasizing the damage that’s been done. This sense of desolation is beautifully underscored by an ambient score that drips with melancholy. I think this sparse human presence only amplifies the value of existence and community, fostering a sense of camaraderie that transforms individual sorrow into a collective journey. In this crumbling world, each encounter feels significant, as if every connection—no matter how fleeting—holds weight in the face of overwhelming despair.

For fans of the Dark Souls vibe, I'd definitely recommend checking out the Berserk anime (1997–1998) or diving into the manga if that's more your style. The influence of Berserk on Dark Souls is pretty well-known, and you can see it clearly in the character and weapon designs, not to mention the overall atmosphere of the world. If you're into manga, another great suggestion is Blame!—though it’s more of a horror sci-fi, it shares that eerie isolation and decaying world theme that resonates strongly with Dark Souls. Both of these works capture that haunting sense of beauty and despair.

For film lovers, I'd highly recommend The Green Knight (2021). It beautifully captures a knight's journey through a dreamy fantasy world while inviting you to contemplate life, existence, purpose, and the passage of time. The film is rich with strong symbolism, exploring themes of the cycle of life and death, isolation, and, of course, a deep sense of melancholy. It resonates with the same haunting beauty and introspection found in Dark Souls, making it a perfect complement to that experience.

When it comes to games, there are definitely the other titles in the Dark Souls series, along with Bloodborne and Elden Ring, which I have to come out... I haven't played yet, despite the years that have gone by. I do plan to dive into them. Then there’s the whole wave of soulslike games that have sprung up, a genre defined by Dark Souls! But honestly, I'm not too keen on exploring those. So... keep an eye out for Of Love and Eternity. Seems like a promising non-soulslike game that feels somewhat Dark Souls-ish.

Kentucky Route Zero

"I'm not gonna talk about Judy, in fact we're not gonna talk about Judy at all, we're gonna keep her out of it!" - Phillip Jeffries [Twin Peaks]

I'm not gonna talk about the themes and the story of Kentucky Route Zero. We're gonna keep her out of it!

For a good reason.

What I will say, though, is that Kentucky Route Zero is probably best described as an interactive screenplay composed of five acts. It’s a point-and-click video game where you make choices, but these choices do not alter the narrative—only the setting. I find this to be a fascinating inversion of the established approach of giving the player agency to change outcomes. You spend the majority of your time reading large blocks of text overlaid on a 2D presentation. If you’re not comfortable with this, then KRZ might be a hard one to digest.

The game is set in Kentucky and seems to be about delivering a package to elusive 5 Dogwood Drive, much like Twin Peaks is ostensibly about solving the murder of Laura Palmer, or The Curse (2023) is about making an eco-living documentary. But just as Twin Peaks and The Curse are about much more than their literal plots, Kentucky Route Zero is not really about the package at all. There’s no simple way to consolidate what this game is truly about in few digestible sentences, my attempt to describe its commentary on community, debt, company towns, grief will never feel as profound as experiencing them in the game itself, not even close. The tone and atmosphere are the game; it’s its own genre… it’s a vibe.

But words are never meant to convey the absolute truth; they are constructs to express our consciousness within the confines of their framework. Nothing I say about Kentucky Route Zero will ever be True in an absolute sense. If I were to stay True, I would have to remain silent. But if I remain silent, then I am a coward for not speaking at all.

So, this is the best I can do: Kentucky Route Zero is a quintessential piece of Americana, a work that feels distinctly "Lynchian." It stands as one of the most important video games of this decade, where writing, music, and visual imagery converge to create something greater than the sum of its parts.

When you play Kentucky Route Zero, time seems to slow down. You don’t follow the narrative through the rigid discipline of logic; instead, you are guided by intuition, by your own Inland Empire. It’s much like watching a Lynch film, where the interplay between the mundane and the supernatural, the exploration of the American family and community, shines brightly.

The game's visuals often channel Edward Hopper's depictions of isolation within the American landscape, whether it’s the rural quiet or the stark urban settings. The desolate gas stations, lonely diners, and solitary houses in Kentucky Route Zero seem like direct nods to Hopper's work—a sensibility David Lynch also taps into, lifting scenes straight from Hopper's paintings for Twin Peaks: The Return.

There's a distinct artistic influence beyond Hopper, too. The use of broad color fields, geometric abstraction, and minimalist compositions in the game draws heavily from abstract expressionism and minimalist art. The simple yet stark presentation of its landscapes and characters creates a mood that feels both familiar and intriguingly abstract, echoing some of Rothko's early work. I’d simply call it—dreamy.

The expressionist imagery of Kentucky Route Zero is intertwined with an ambient, experimental soundscape that evokes an eerie atmosphere, often conveying introspection, isolation, and a sense of otherworldliness. You can sense that Ben Babbitt's score draws heavily from minimalist composers like Philip Glass and ambient musicians like Brian Eno. The sound and music in KRZ hold particular significance for me because this is where the game truly came to be for me.

I remember it vividly—it was the summer of 2023, and I was playing on my Switch, sitting on the balcony. Events began to unfold on the small screen, and the fictional band Junebug started performing at a bar. The game prompted me to choose the beginning of the lyrics, granting me a surprising moment of agency. I picked a line, and the music began in earnest. I was enchanted by it, it felt ethereal, melancholic, romantic, dreamy, surreal. It was "Too Late to Love You" by Junebug, and for a moment, the game transcended its form and became something else entirely—pure, emotional resonance.

I listened to this music many times after that moment, becoming consumed and obsessed by it. It echoed the sounds of Julee Cruise, Chrystabell, and Rebekah Del Rio. It felt as though it was inviting me to a dark, dingy bar where the patrons, scattered and living their own lives, were momentarily united in this shared, waking dream.

For a while, I assumed "Too Late to Love You" was the only song by Junebug, the in-game band, as it was the only track featured in the game. It wasn’t until later that I discovered the complete album of Too Late to Love You, which includes 11 tracks in total. I hunted down the vinyl issued by iam8bit, and to this day, it remains the most significant record in my collection.

Junebug is not a real band; in fact it's entirely the work of game's composer, Ben Babbit, including the vocals!

Here’s where you can enjoy the live-action performance by Junebug, recording that exists outside Kentucky Route Zero:

Another similarity I’ve found is with David Lynch's The Straight Story. Yes, again, David Lynch is an American treasure. This film, which follows an elderly man traveling across the Midwest on a lawnmower, blends the ordinary with the profoundly human, capturing the strangeness and beauty of the American landscape—much like Kentucky Route Zero. In both works, the journey serves as a means of personal and narrative exploration. For Alvin Straight, it’s about reconciling with the past and understanding human connections, while in Kentucky Route Zero, it represents a deeper dive into societal and personal mysteries. The act of traveling is central to the stories being told.

I didn’t want to lay out the events of Kentucky Route Zero because it wouldn’t capture its essence or do it justice in any way whatsoever. Instead, I wanted to share the “vibes” of the game, hoping to invite players to experience and discover—or rediscover—it for themselves.

I want to wrap up the post by providing some music that further give impression of what playing KRZ feels like:

The Witness

"Be knowingly open, empty, luminous presence of awareness" is the sentence that arises in my consciousness when I think of The Witness. I’ll return to this sentence later, but try to meditate on it while going through everything here. This video game has [indirectly] affected me in more than one way, and I will always be deeply grateful for it.

The Witness is a puzzle game that requires only a basic familiarity with the gaming platform of your choice - just interfacing with it. Nothing else is needed—no prior preconceptions, beliefs, or skills related to video games. You are inexplicably dropped onto a desolate island with no introduction, menus, text, UI, tutorial, soundtrack, guidance, or narrative, and you are expected to solve puzzles presented on flat panels scattered throughout the island. This might evoke comparisons to Myst and Riven, but I assure you, The Witness is a very different beast entirely, and I want to build my case for it step by step.

The game's main setting is an island with visually distinct regions, each representing a different area of interest. These range from a desert to a monastery, a tropical forest, a mountain, a lake, and so on—18 areas in total, which you are free to explore in nearly any order you choose. The art direction is deliberately stylized, a solid choice that helps the game withstand the passage of time rather than trying to compete in the race for realistic graphics which become outdated in few years.

Each area features flat panels that display puzzles, generally themed to match their surroundings. Solving a puzzle panel activates one or more subsequent panels to be solved. To solve any given puzzle, you only need to rely on your wits, sight, and hearing—though this unfortunately means the game has accessibility issues for those who are colorblind or have hearing impairments. I'm certain that if the current video gaming medium could transmit touch, smell, and taste, The Witness would have utilized them as well, for reasons that will become clearer the more we go.

Panels can appear like these, with no rules provided in any conventional form:

Instead of explaining the rules, the game expects you to figure them out on your own. This approach could have easily and spectacularly failed if not for the game's excellent puzzle design, which builds our understanding of the world of The Witness concept by concept, through the act of solving puzzles themselves. Here is the very first puzzle that the game presents at the very beginning:

When you try to interact with the puzzle, whether by finger, mouse, or a controller, you'll quickly discover that it has only one possible outcome, with no fail state—you simply connect the path from the starting circle to the end of the line. There is nothing else you can do with it. This becomes the foundational rule, or axiom, for all the puzzles that follow: connect the circle to the endpoint by drawing a path. Brilliant! From there, subsequent panels are introduced that very subtly build new rules on top of this initial concept.

To solve any given puzzle, all that is required is to have solved the previous puzzles, which recursively traces back to the very first puzzle—the axiom of the rules. As you progress, you discover that puzzles introduce additional nuances to these rules, either by solving them or failing to solve them. The puzzles can become quite complex, incorporating various aspects of the physical surroundings and even the properties of the panels themselves. Some puzzles cleverly use reflection and shadows cast on the panels to aid in solving them, the diegetic sound you hear or color theory. The satisfaction comes from realizing that each solved puzzle feels like a mathematical proof you’ve derived yourself, understanding and building this comprehension bit by bit, from trivial to moderate to complex.

There is indeed no narrative in The Witness. While it would be entirely understandable if the game consisted solely of puzzle panels—after all, Sudoku doesn’t require a narrative thread—the desolate island is rich with diverse architecture, statues of people, a windmill, a monastery, underground passages, a sun shrine, and other deliberately placed elements. This prompts the question: so what is this game about?

For me, the revelation came while exploring the tropical forest area, and this is a major spoiler for the game. As I was simply moving the mouse around to admire the scenery, I looked up at the sky and suddenly noticed something remarkable: from the exact spot where I was standing in-game and looking upwards, the negative space created by the trees in the forest formed the shape of a puzzle! Hesitantly, I moved the mouse towards this negative space, dragged the pointer across it, and voilà—it was indeed a puzzle.

"Oh, okay, the entire world here is the puzzle"

Immediately, I began searching for other similar puzzles, and a whole new world opened up before me. These were the same types of puzzles, created by the environment itself when viewed from the correct perspective—puzzles formed by rocks, clouds, the sun, walls, shadows, light, the river, and more. Soon, I began examining every aspect of this world with an inquisitive eye, trying to... understand it. Observant players will also notice that the pond in the middle of the island has its own purpose and reveals something about the game. All of these elements can be easily missed if you're not attentive enough.

So, The Witness is a game about understanding the world around you. It’s about the process of building this understanding step by step with our Ancient Reptilian Brain, starting from simple concepts and constructing increasingly abstract ideas. As you see the world through this progressively crafted Self, you find meaning and beauty in it.

Shortly before playing The Witness, I was an undergraduate taking a class that became my absolute favorite: Spatial and Quantitative Reasoning. Part of the class involved studying the first few books of Euclid's Elements. I'm sure this contributed to my enjoyment of the game in a big way.

Euclid's Elements is a comprehensive deductive exploration of mathematics, covering Euclidean geometry, number theory, and incommensurable lines. This book has been instrumental in developing logic and served as a quintessential textbook for students until the 20th century, when its contents were assimilated into various other textbooks and it ceased to be considered mandatory. The work consists of mathematical definitions, postulates, and propositions, along with their corresponding proofs. Similar to The Witness, Euclid's Elements invites you to build an understanding from the simplest postulates, gradually expanding into a wealth of knowledge and higher abstractions. Here are some of the 23 definitions presented in Book I:

Definition 1: A point is that which has no part.

Definition 2: A line is breadthless length.

Definition 3: The ends of a line are points.

Definition 4: A straight line is a line which lies evenly with the points on itself.

...

Definition 15: A circle is a plane figure contained by one line such that all the straight lines falling upon it from one point among those lying within the figure equal one another.

Definition 20: Of trilateral figures, an equilateral triangle is that which has its three sides equal, an isosceles triangle that which has two of its sides alone equal, and a scalene triangle that which has its three sides unequal.
...

And here are all the five postulates:

1. A straight line segment can be drawn joining any two points.

2. Any straight line segment can be extended indefinitely in a straight line.

3. Given any straight lines segment, a circle can be drawn having the segment as radius and one endpoint as center.

4. All Right Angles are congruent.

5. If two lines are drawn which intersect a third in such a way that the sum of the inner angles on one side is less than two Right Angles, then the two lines inevitably must intersect each other on that side if extended far enough. This postulate is equivalent to what is known as the Parallel Postulate.

From these 5 postulates and 23 definitions, Euclid's Elements Book I provides propositions that can be proved using these postulates or by building on previously proved propositions. These propositions cover a range of topics, from constructing an equilateral triangle on a given finite straight line and bisecting an angle, to proving the equality of two parallelograms, and much much more.

As an example, here’s the first real "puzzle" from Euclid's Elements:

Proposition 1: To construct an equilateral triangle on a given finite straight line (AB). Using Postulates 1 and 3, along with Definitions 15 and 20, we can construct the triangle by following these steps:

1. Draw two circles, D and E, each with radius AB, centered at points A and B, respectively.

2. The circles will intersect at point C.

3. Connect points C to A and B.

To prove that the resulting triangle is equilateral, we use the fact that the radii of the circles are equal to the sides of the triangle, and hence, all three sides (AC, BC, and AB) are equal.

Triangle ABC is equilateral, as it has been constructed on the given finite straight line AB. The circles D and E, centered at A and B respectively, both have the same radius (AB). Therefore, the lengths AB, AC, and BC are all equal, confirming that triangle ABC is equilateral. So simple, so elegant.

I would say The Witness is a perfect video game for those who appreciate Euclid's Elements, and vice versa. If you decide to delve into this book, I recommend starting with the generally available version. If you're feeling adventurous, consider exploring Oliver Byrne's 1847 edition, which uses color to convey mathematical properties and may be more suitable for those who think visually rather than preferring traditional mathematical notations. For those willing to spend around 200 euros, Euclid’s Elements: Completing Oliver Byrne’s Work is also available which, as the title suggests, covers more books than Byrne's edition. It’s no wonder The Witness excels in its puzzle mechanics without providing explicit instructions; it follows in the footsteps of one of the greatest works in logic.

Today, we live in a world where we must place our faith in proofs of widely established abstractions to navigate life. We must trust that wind results from pressure differences, that gravity keeps us grounded, and that non-ionizing radiation from wireless technologies doesn’t cause cancer—because few have the luxury of time to deduce these truths from the simplest postulates themselves. In fact, is it even feasible to go all the way deep? If you reeeeeally think about it, no one has ever directly observed the fundamental matter, and we are still in pursuit of a theory of everything.

This is why games like The Witness and works like Euclid's Elements offer a profound sense of satisfaction. Within the framework of their worlds—whether it’s the island in The Witness or the realm of Euclidean geometry—you can actually prove everything. Perhaps this sense of satisfaction can then inspire you to investigate the real world yourself, even if the postulates you rely on are abstract and taken for granted. As I mentioned in my overview of Disco Elysium, accepting reality as fundamentally incomplete is a crucial step in keeping your sanity.

There’s something more in the world of The Witness that I hadn’t noted until now. There are few exceptionally challenging or let's say, large-scale puzzle panels on the island which reward the player with... video clips. These include a lecture by Richard Feynman, a scene from Tarkovsky's Nostalghia (1983), James Burke discussing micro and macrocosm on BBC, and few others. However, one video clip holds a special place for me: a meditation on nonduality by Rupert Spira.

Initially, I found the other video clips straightforward to understand, but this one was different. The clip begins with the phrase "be knowingly open, empty, luminous presence of awareness." Uhm what is this guy talking about, I listened to the entire around 40 minutes of the recording, all of it felt way too abstract and highfalutin and afterwards I continued through my day. Yet somehow these words resonated in me, they lingered - "presence of awareness".

I later discovered (googled) that nonduality is essentially another name for Advaita Vedanta (or more specifically, a superset of it), a Hindu philosophical and spiritual tradition that has inspired some of my favorite works, such as The Matrix and The Big Lebowski and indirectly via TM - Twin Peaks: The Return. I went back to listen to the recording more attentively, trying to internalize the content rather than merely understanding it. It was a profound experience, leading me to a nondual understanding of the world. This perspective posits just one axiom: "I am." Everything else is built upon this personal, intimate experience and derives concepts like love, happiness and suffering from it.

This new lens has provided me with a view of the world infused with love and compassion. We are the presence of awareness; we "witness" events unfolding around us indiscriminately, and we are luminous as our consciousness renders things knowable, much like sunlight hitting our retinas. I would recommend anyone to watch this recording and meditate on it.

P.S. I can’t finish this essay without acknowledging the elephant in the room. Jonathan Blow, the talented author of The Witness, has been exhibiting a major "divorced dad" energy in recent years, and his largely center-to-right-wing political views often lack compassion and reason—an irony given the game he created. Despite this, I’ve managed to separate the art from the artist in this rare instance. I am deeply grateful for the existence of this video game and its profound influence on me. So there's that.

I have quite a few all-time favorite games, but some have had such an immense impact on how I perceive things that I could almost chart my life around them. They don’t necessarily have to be my favorites, but it so happens that they are. These games have influenced me in many ways—shaping how I view video games, how I approach the world and people around me, and even introducing me to ideas that have transformed how I position myself within the world. I mean this seriously. So, without further introduction, here are the four games that resonate deeply with me.

Disco Elysium

I'm not into traditional RPG games, I don't like tabletop games, and I don't enjoy rolling the dice. I think this is mostly because specific instances of such games haven't resonated with me deeply enough; I tend to enjoy carefully hand-crafted experiences more than emergent ludo-narratives through gameplay. Fortunately for me, I had no idea that Disco Elysium was a role-playing game in any way—I dove straight into it purely because of word of mouth, fueled by the constant praise from people on the internet who play the latest and greatest games. I'm not usually one of them; only a handful of times have I played a game upon its release.

I'd like to blame the state of many games at launch—often incomplete or buggy—but the truth is, I have a compulsion to play games when they are considered finished, done, complete with all their seasonal content, DLCs, and, in the case of Disco Elysium, the Director's Cut. It’s a game so humane and masterful in every aspect of game design that it made me completely forget my disinterest in the RPG genre.

Disco Elysium is a psychological RPG, meaning that, instead of relying on rigid stats that reduce character traits to straightforward attributes like Intelligence, Physical Defense, or Strength, it uses nuanced, soft Skills. This approach allows for a more intricate and introspective form of role-playing, where your character’s inner world is as dynamic and influential as their outer actions. Here’s a screen showing these Skills alongside their portraits:

These skills function almost like sub-personalities, guiding you through dialogue options, allowing you to perform certain physical activities, and sometimes even speaking directly to you—which is all beautifully voice-acted. They remind me of the emotions from Pixar's Inside Out, but they’re more granular and occasionally even supra-natural.

For example, the Encyclopedia skill might provide explanations for unknown concepts during character interactions, while Shivers lets you become more attuned to the events unfolding in the city: "Raise the hair on your neck. Tune in to the city." My favorite fact is that reaching a Legendary (highest) level in Empathy can help you understand the troubled kid, Cuno. I can relate to this, as I’m not great at talking to kids.

The game's fictional setting closely mirrors the political and social turmoil of the mid-to-late 20th century, particularly in Europe after World War II. Revachol, the game's city, is a blend of post-war cities like Berlin, Paris, or Sarajevo, where the scars of revolution, occupation, and political upheaval are starkly visible.

Our protagonist, Detective Harrier "Harry" Du Bois, begins the game with amnesia, and these skills become his primary tools for understanding and navigating the world around him. The amnesia serves as a compelling framework, allowing the player to assume Harry’s character while also demonstrating how we construct our understanding of the world—building concepts on top of preexisting ones, starting from the most primal levels like the "Ancient Reptilian Brain." Distilling facets of personality into these "skills" is, in my view, a stroke of genius.

Not only do these skills offer a modern alternative to the traditional stats found in RPGs, but they also provide a unique perspective on how we interface with the world. Maybe you have a high Inland Empire—"Hunches and gut feelings. Dreams in waking life."—or low Composure or Reaction Speed. What I found even more fascinating is that having a high value in any skill can actually be detrimental. At high levels, Encyclopedia overexplains everything, burdening you with unnecessary details, while Empathy can put you too deeply into others' shoes, making you overly emotional or unstable. You must be careful about how much you invest in your personality traits, and this idea resonated with me. This "warning" permeates all actions in the game and can often lead to embarrassing situations if you aren't cautious.

Role-playing games often emphasize failure as a core mechanic for progression, but few succeed as effectively as Disco Elysium. Even games I hold in high regard, like Mass Effect, aim to offer a personalized journey—going so far as to allow players to import save files into sequels for a tailored experience. Yet, the failure states in Mass Effect frequently feel like a sudden dead-end. For example, in Thane Krios's loyalty mission, failing to track down his son just abruptly ends the mission, leaving you with the feeling that you missed the "optimal" scenario. While there are narrative consequences for failing, the real-time experience often makes it clear that this wasn't the intended outcome the quest designers envisioned.

This is where Disco Elysium truly shines. It’s perfectly fine to fail; the game doesn't end but rather branches off in new directions that are often just as compelling. The brilliant writing ensures that failure states are not dead ends but instead feel like valid, alternative paths. This is a stroke of genius—I’ve never felt such freedom to project myself in a game. Instead of stressing over the possibility of missing something due to failure, I played with a sense of ease, embracing every outcome as equally meaningful.

This projection of self is best experienced when the game "reads" the player and, out of nowhere, a skill speaks to you, revealing something subtle about your playstyle or personality. For me, it was when the game called me out for being a "sorry cop" because I kept apologizing profusely out of fear of being disrespectful. It felt like the game had a deep understanding of my choices, mirroring back a reflection of myself in an almost unsettling way.

Spectacular writing made me love every character, whether I liked them or not. The game helped me view these characters as products of their surroundings, who used their own Skills to build the understanding of the world belief by belief. It’s a brilliant reminder that people are, in many ways, shaped by a chain of events and deeply held beliefs, forming a unique “bundle” of thoughts, feelings, and perceptions.

This approach has even influenced how I empathize with people who are different from me. I find myself thinking about the series of experiences and beliefs that led them to become the specific person they are—trying to see the world through their eyes, much like how the game encourages you to see beyond the surface of its characters.

Every line in Disco Elysium is crafted with purpose; there’s no filler, no placeholder dialogue. Each sentence perfectly captures the essence of a character, making them feel real, complex, and deeply human. This is further amplified by the incredible voice acting, which adds another layer of depth to the characters.

I even found myself appreciating characters like Joyce, the self-proclaimed bourgeois, who gives you a reality lowdown because she loves to share knowledge, or the gruff bartender at the Whirling-in-Rags, where you and your partner, Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi, spend days unraveling the murder mystery. Even a character like Measurehead, the racist dockworker, is written with such precision that you can’t help but see the person behind the ideology.

It’s this level of detail and care in characterization that makes the world of Disco Elysium so compelling and why I keep thinking about these characters long after the game ends.

The creators of Disco Elysium aimed to imbue the city of Revachol with a Hegelian sense of history—making it feel as if every facet of its depiction is saturated with historical weight. They wanted it to feel fully lived-in, contrasting sharply with more static fictional settings like Star Wars, which often seem more idempotent or detached from any real sense of historical progression.

And they absolutely succeeded. Even though Revachol's history is entirely fictional, it mirrors our own history in a way that feels organic and instantly recognizable. Many players will pick up on the parallels, such as Kras Mazov clearly being a stand-in for Karl Marx, EPIS reflecting the EU, and anodic music representing electronic music, among other references. This deep, reflective design gives Revachol a vivid, tangible sense of realism that makes it feel alive and resonant with the real world, despite being entirely invented.

Visually the game is also marvelous, it's an amalgamation of painterly expressionism, post-Soviet aesthetics and elements from impressionism that shows in handling lights and shadows and capturing the essence of environment, rather than focusing too much on minute detail. Just zoom into the game and see it yourself! According to the game's artbook a cornerstone decision was to have the game shaped by artists rather than a committee. This artistic vision has undoubtedly paid off, as Disco Elysium stands as a triumphant piece of 21st-century art in my view. It took me around 30 hours to feel that I had explored all the content the game had to offer before moving on.

Disco Elysium tackles a wide array of themes, from the consequences of capitalism and workers’ rights to personal trauma, the concept of mysterious Pale as a product of human consciousness, and the struggles with alcoholism. All of these have been discussed to death, I don't imagine I can contribute much more to the analysis of its philosophical themes, nor do I feel I am qualified and eloquent enough to do so. What I can do is to reflect how much more this video game pushed me for self-inquiry, acceptance of reality as fundamentally incomplete when viewed through the lens of human consciousness and loving human beings around me, whether I like them or not.

I've always been fascinated by the so-called "walking simulator" genre of video games. They are often denied the label of a video game and instead referred to as "interactive experiences." Personally, I have no issue with either designation. The term "video game" first appeared in publications around 1973, though it was likely used verbally a few years prior. At that time, video games were still a new medium, limited in variety, so the term accurately captured the essence of the subject—a game delivered through a video signal. Since then, the medium has evolved and diversified significantly, yet due to historical context and the limitations of human language, we continue to refer to these works as "video games." I believe it's too late and largely unnecessary to rename the medium to something like "interactive video experiences," so it rarely bothers me when someone strictly gatekeeps the video game label based on the absence of broad player agency or win/lose conditions in a particular title.

It's fine...

Still Wakes the Deep comes from The Chinese Room, the studio behind Dear Esther, the first widely acclaimed "walking simulator." I hold Dear Esther very close to my heart. It’s a brief experience that always manages to transport me back to certain childhood memories, despite its overly poetic and rather dramatic adult setting. I recall listening to the developer’s commentary on Dear Esther, where they discussed the term "walking simulator." They weren’t particularly fond of the label, but they didn’t seem bitter about it either. Perhaps they’ve embraced it, considering that "Walking Simulator" is now an achievable trophy in Still Wakes the Deep. Seeing that trophy pop-up brought a slight smirk to my face.

Going into this game, I wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of player agency, especially given that the studio has recently been involved in developing the more traditional, dopamine-driven video game Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. Ultimately, what I encountered was a more guided, linear experience that combines stealth elements with extremely simple puzzle-solving.

So, what is the game about? To describe it lazily using familiar comparisons, Still Wakes the Deep is essentially The Thing but set on an oil rig—a description that aligns with how the game director and studio co-founder Dan Pinchbeck initially pitched it. In more precise terms, Still Wakes the Deep is a strictly linear first-person game set in 1975 during a disaster of supernatural origin on the Beira D oil rig. The main gameplay revolves around stealthily avoiding enemies and following a predefined navigation path—literally marked in yellow, making it almost impossible to miss and I've found it to be slightly obnoxious.

In some respects, the game leans more into traditional video game mechanics by including a fail state, but it’s clear that its rigidly linear design and narrow path could be off-putting for players who thirst for more agency. There’s no deviation from the main route, no choices to be made, no illusion of choice, and no multiplicity of endings.

The game begins with the player controlling Cameron "Caz" McLeary, a Glaswegian electrician whose wife is urging him to return home. The character writing is exceptional; Caz is not a mere stand-in for the player but a fully realized character with his own desires and backstory. The characters surrounding Caz also have distinct, memorable personalities. I highly recommend that players take the time to visit the characters’ quarters to explore these lived-in spaces that perfectly complement their personalities.

The story kicks off when the drill hits something that destabilizes the entire platform, leading to chaos. This is when the game truly begins. As we start uncovering the source of the problem, Caz is focused on evacuating the rig with his colleagues. The navigation through the oil rig feels cohesive and interconnected, giving the sense of a real, unified structure. Along the way, we encounter fellow survivors, repair failing subsystems of the rig, and come face-to-face with some truly bizarre creatures.

All of this takes place amidst a relentless storm, perfectly capturing the sense of "dreich," a Scottish word describing grey, gloomy weather. Even when indoors, the harsh weather seeps into every aspect of the game’s atmosphere, making the rig feel perpetually exposed to the elements. You feel it everywhere.

Some horror games are keen on fully dissecting the nature of their sci-fi or supernatural elements. For example, Dead Space eagerly delves into the origins of the Marker and EarthGov conspiracies, while Amnesia: Rebirth provides extensive lore about Vitae and the otherworld. Still Wakes the Deep, however, isn’t that kind of horror game. It's the kind of horror that shows all the important markers for you to orient around and draw your own conclusions, to make you wonder and hypothesize and that is exactly what it did for me.

The moment I began playing and noticed the carefully designed posters, notes, and set decorations like a clock referencing Aberdeen, the game took a more personal turn for me, reminding me of a pen-pal friend from Aberdeen who works in the industry. It was a delightful upgrade of the experience. The oil rig itself remains a stunning set piece throughout the entire game—immaculately detailed and utterly believable. If the artists claimed it was a period-accurate replica of a real oil rig, I’d believe them. Not because I’m familiar with how these massive structures are built, but because of how confidently detailed the entire layout feels. It serves as a perfect modern stand-in for a creepy haunted house.

I really felt as if I were exploring Ishimura planetcracker from Dead Space once more but this time - fully grounded in the current reality. Just like the Ishimura, the rig features plenty of claustrophobic spaces alongside areas that give a sense of vastness, capturing both the suffocating tension and the imposing scale of such a structure.

The mood of the game somewhat reminds me of the film Annihilation. It’s deeply personal, with the overarching narrative centered on Caz’s desperate attempt to escape the rig and reunite with his wife, Suze, while bizarre sci-fi phenomena unfold around him, remaining unexplained. Much like in Annihilation, the mystery is left open-ended, inviting you to speculate and ponder the nature of what’s happening rather than receiving clear answers.

So, what’s happening? During drilling operations, the oil rig accidentally encounters something that spreads throughout the platform in all directions. This entity manifests as fleshy, seaweed-like tendrils, continuously mutating anything living it touches. It doesn’t feel like a conscious being with an agenda—a Kraken or Cthulhu. Instead, it’s more akin to an autonomous organism unearthed from the depths of the sea, existing purely to fulfill its function, much like the alien in Annihilation’s Area X. It lacks desires or intentions; it’s simply there, like a tumor from the sea.

Everything it touches transforms into unrecognizable masses of flesh, barely retaining any trace of their former selves and becoming truly horrific to behold, similar to the grotesque forms in The Thing. Throughout his journey, Caz encounters fellow crew members who have fallen victim to this organism, now reduced to their most basic, often hostile instincts.

"I don't know what it wants, or if it wants"

I think the setting for such an organism is very intentional. The idea of unearthing a horrific monstrosity through drilling for oil—almost like a primordial soup formed from ancient organic matter, evidence of death transformed into a creature—adds a layer to the narrative. This is reminiscent of another recent game metaphor, like the black tar in Death Stranding, which sculpts various creatures, or the black goo in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, which deconstructs and reconstructs flesh to create new forms of life—though not the fleshy life we're familiar with.

Why is this visual imagery so compelling to these artists, perhaps even subconsciously? Every time I reflect on it, I’m reminded of a quote from Nietzsche:

"if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you"

A warning to all: engaging with darkness can have a transformative effect on those who do, potentially blurring the line between the observer and the observed unless one maintains strength and personal integrity. Perhaps that’s what Caz is striving to do, and what Lena in Annihilation attempts as well. The Shimmer doesn’t affect Lena the same way it affects others because she doesn’t merely subject herself to the abyss; she confronts it, meets it head-on.

And why the black tar? Perhaps it’s due to our fascination with inverted or cyclical motions—the symbol of death giving birth to new life, existence emerging from non-existence, the Big Bang arising from the primordial void. As a horror metaphor, it’s fitting: life emerging from the black primordial soup of dead beings often inherits a dark touch, a certain deformity. This concept works well as a horror mechanism to confront our fears. Of course, in reality, not everything derived from something inherits all of its properties, especially those that are metaphysical.

While such imagery is horrific to us due to its drastic deviation from familiar flesh, this game visually suggests that the organism might be beautiful in its own objective way. The seaweed-like tendrils are iridescent and glowing, reminiscent of an oil spill. This is similar to Annihilation, where the Shimmer exhibits the same iridescent glow, refracting light and also metaphorically "refracting" DNA in Area X.

There’s a particular scene in the game that doesn’t shy away from showcasing the creature in all its unsettling beauty, and even Caz is left in awe of its grandeur. This juxtaposition of horror and beauty underscores the complex nature of the organism, challenging our perception and highlighting its alien yet mesmerizing presence.

That being said, as I’ve already mentioned, the sci-fi horror element provides the framework for the game but isn't the core of the story. The real narrative is deeply personal, focusing on Caz's longing to return to his family. His backstory is revealed through several visually striking flashbacks.

However, I felt that this personal story needed more space to develop and breathe. It never reached the emotional high I was hoping for. An additional hour of gameplay and more flashbacks would likely strengthen the emotional connection and sympathy for the protagonist, allowing the story to resonate more deeply.

Overall, it took me around 5 hours to complete the game, which I think is a perfect length for a narrative-driven horror game that lacks any combat.

Please, now someone make this into a movie.

3 / 5

P.S. I need to share some of the beautiful posters you come across in the Beira D oil rig that enhance the feeling of authenticity of this video game