”You ask why are we doing this, and my reason is enjoyment. Doctors say I don’t have long to live. Who knew me at twenty-two was the halfway point of my life. I was always fascinated in looking into the windows of rich people’s houses. It’s an abnormal pleasure, me watching from the dark. Pleasures are a tolerance – you build them up and up and up. It’s only normal that I become the person who delights in saying to you that you don’t have long to live. Who knew you at eight was the halfway point of your life.”
Imagine a game that took place within a gated summerhouse community. You play as a teenager on his way to dinner with his girlfriend at her parents’ house – their guest house is bigger than your house, seeing as how you are the son of the Head Security officer for the community that only numbers a dozen families. Your father is driving you to the house as the game’s opening credits roll. You are free to look outside the window, try and catch a glimpse of people in their homes. Some have their lights on, but you don’t see anybody. When you arrive at the house, a cutscene guides you to the front door. Just as you are about to knock, what sounds like a car backfire goes off somewhere in the distance. Your father tells you to have fun. He drives in the direction of the backfire.
You are now in first-person control of the teenager. You could ring the doorbell, but perhaps you realize the door is slightly ajar. Go on in – they are expecting you anyway. Go on in – it’s where you’ll find your girlfriend’s parents dying on a rug that used to be white.
It’s too late for the father. The mother, however, lives long enough to tell you what happened: a group of men broke into the house, the father told the daughter to run.
Where are they? Where is she? The mother can’t answer. She dies.
At this point you are free to do whatever you like. The game doesn’t give you mission objectives, doesn’t highlight objects or destinations. The game has already set up the premise and motives, and as the player, you should know what your goal is.
Will you play the coward and get out of the neighborhood?
Will you play the hero and find your girlfriend so that you can escape together?
Or will you play the other kind of hero and kill the bad guys?
”We all have the same sickness. And we all had the same item on our bucket list.“
Random is the key mechanic. Every time you start a new game, the neighborhood is randomly generated. So is the layout of the houses. The household items. Your girlfriend’s location. The number of bad guys, their preferred weapons. Scripted events, their rewards, and their outcomes.
The majority of the objects can be picked up and used. You can have an inventory if you pick up a bag, and you realize different bags have different properties like weight and capacity which effects your movement and effectiveness of sneaking and hiding.
The majority of the objects won’t have utility. The point is to inundate you with choices. The ability to pick up every single item is a way to remove highlighting the most effective or important items. If they shimmered or if you were only allowed to pick up items relevant to completing the game there would be no reason to explore the houses, and tension would be lacking.
Take for example the instance of a baddie spotting you. His routine will be to charge at you either for capture or for the kill. They will always be stronger than you, which is why you never want to engage them up close with empty hands. The strategy is to slow them down so that you can run away or hide. Slowing them down involves throwing what items are nearby. Some items are more effective than others. You have to decide: throw a bunch plates at him because it’s nearby and are fast to release or risk him catching you, run into the living room and throw an ashtray because it has more weight than kitchen plates. You don’t play a super soldier, and so you should have the ability to grab whatever is nearby to escape the attacker. This isn’t a first person shooter so you aren’t going to find rooms whose only source of light shines on a weapon resting on a script trigger.
Or perhaps you will. Perhaps you will find a handgun underneath scattered papers in a tossed room. You can’t find a box of ammo, but it doesn’t matter since the gun is heavy with bullets. You feel powerful. You become brave, leave the shadows and charge into the street. There is a bad guy in a track suit emerging from a house. He screams and runs frantic at you, screwdriver in hand. You aim and pull the trigger. There is a click without an explosion. You have no idea why. You have no other means to defend yourself. The guy is upon you, stabbing you and laughing at you and screaming at you I bent the firing pin and tossed the gun onto the floor for you to find die now die.
Game over. Perhaps then you’ll only be sure of guns locked safe behind an untampered box.
”Finding your girlfriend wasn’t too much trouble – there are only so many closets. Killing your father wasn’t too much trouble either – there are only so many hits a person can take to the face. How far can you run on broken glass to save her life, track star?”
Object hunting is another gameplay component. You begin weaponless. You won’t find guns on the kitchen counter or the table in the foyer. This is a rich community, meaning there will most likely be a safe which may or may not contain a firearm – a better bet is a gun storage case, but they will always be locked so you either have to find the key or the passcode – or maybe it’s better to just move along since you don’t have time to methodically go through every room every drawer. Sometimes you have to make the best of the baseball bat you found in a kid’s room or a poker next to the fireplace. Go to any kitchen and you’ll find a knife. That is, if the bad guys haven’t taken them all.
Rummaging through drawers and closets is not a cutscene. Everything is in real time so you have to decide how much pressure is applied to opening a drawer. Do you max power toss it off its tracks and let it crash to the floor? In a hurry you might, and you just might make enough noise to alert a bad guy to your area. And even with a baseball bat, the advantage still lies with evil. You are, after all, just a teenager.
These bad guys: sometimes they will have a random weapon. The majority will be stronger than you. Being a track athlete you do have a speed advantage. They can’t control their breathing like you do, which is why running is sometimes the best option.
You will stalk through houses to find your girlfriend while avoiding the bad guys – some will be roaming the neighborhood, looking for people they may have missed. Maybe some will be hiding, intent to make their victims do all the work by tripping the wire.
With a careful play style you will most likely snake through backyards, sneak through houses as you look for her. Perhaps through the use of a headset you can determine your volume. Whisper her name and she will hear you; of course the range will be limited. Shout – she will hear you and run to you. So will nearby bad guys.
Once you do find her she will follow. You can continue to look for a weapon to fend off the bad guys or you can run to the exit. Maybe you sneak into a house, look for a weapon or keys to the car or boat. Since this room’s curtains have been pulled to the ground, you don’t want to look through the room with the lights on so that someone outside can see you. And so maybe, confident in your brilliance, you decide to turn off the lights.
