The Space Between

Hey, it's been a while! I'll keep this bit short cause it's all the usual suspects that caused the minor hiatus, but now I do have a queue set up again so things should be pretty regular until almost March. So, Yay!

The Space Between is a sureal, three-act narrative created by Christoph "chrstphfr" Frey and originally released in April of 2021. Now, I know I've made the joke about me accidently starting to play a horror game without preparing beforehand, but this time, I prepared for a horror game and still went through the whole thing frankly terrrified.

Please understand, I was years away from being born when the first playstation was released, was recently alive when the PS2 came around and had no interest when the PS3 was making the rounds. I think I watched friends play a spiderman game on the PS4 in highschool but can't really remember at this point. The point to all of this though is the fact that I don't think I've ever seen PS1 graphics before and add the creepy atmoshphere, music, and given dialouge made the whole entire experience what I expect from an atmospheric indie horror film right after the festival award circuits.

Like, no, please don't tell me about the game Martin and Daniel used to play as kids that's now giving Martin an existential crisis about his chosen career path, or the darker questions of if artists are all narcissists for wanting to put pieces of themselves out into the world for others to view. The entire repetition of "Walls do not have to be made of matter." is frankly chilling.

Also the insinuation that through all this Daniel(?) is dead and sort-of-kinda-probably-definitely HAUNTING Martin in this unfinished theatre? Don't get me wrong, I have worked in a lot of theatres in my life, a lot of them are creepy as hell, orchestra pits, understages, and basements almost doubly so. I imagine unfinished under/over stages and basements would be particularly nightmare inducing at night as well. Like, when the music would go from barely audible to that sort of ominous you're going in the right direction when Clara is gone and you walk towards that almost empty room with like a stone piller or something in the middle that has a really spooky almost human shape on it with the two holes in it? The music started and I literally turned around and walked away. Same as when there was something behind the curtain in Martin's room that had the same cut outs.

Like we're just lucky there weren't any like actual jump scares or I would have absolutely thrown my computer! I could have broke it! My Ideapad is old guys! I've broken TVs over a jump scare before! And honestly? The whole thing was still hellla unsettling! Like, I'm not sure if it has to do with the graphics or if it's an actual like story element, but when you're in the unfinished seating area with Martin and he's always just behind you while you look around, and all the vaguely philosophical lines he spills while you two are walking down the stairs to the stage. Just! AHHHH!

To add to all this on a lighter note, I spent almost an hour wandering around the courtyard and trying to find how to move forward before finding Martin smoking by the Hell Entrance while following the perimeter of the space. I'm pretty sure I passed by him at least a dozen times by that point and it was almost worse then the getting turned around in the Hell Enterance in the begining and not being able to figure out how to get out.

Also, did anyone else have trouble figuring out who was speaking sometimes or was that just me? Coming up from that point too, did the POV start with Clara in the courtyard or did misinterperet that whole begining conversation? Cause it felt like I was playing as Clara for most of the begining of the game then it switched to Martin later when the spooky stuff really started to ramp up. Someone let me know, please!

I'm usually a big fan of arthouse horor types of media but as I've been learning recently, video games are a weirdly different experience in the genre (mostly cause I keep seeming to pick the unsettling artsy games).I don't know if it was the conversations between Clara and Martin, or the possible reappearance of Daniel or the chopping flashbacks to that blanket fort, but something about this game just left me feeling almost hunted even after closing it out.

But that's enough existential horror from me.

Happy dreams!