In Tuesday’s lecture, a phrase that was used to describe the game Curtain immediately resonated with me: sensory overflow. Indeed, from the start of the 30-minute game, the visual presentation of Curtain has been one of the most “overwhelming” that I have ever encountered in videogames. While the graphic style of Curtain is crucial to the construction of the unsettling gaming experience (and I agree), it is also important to mention how other “sensory” elements of the game combined with the graphics to build up this anxious experience.
In the first round of exploration of the apartment, the player is thrown into an unfamiliar space with no hint or clue to direct them, except for the words in the lower part of the screen. The only way for the player to figure out what is going on — and to figure out who yourself are — is through following Kaci’s voice. Kaci only exists in this game as the voice but not visually embodied as a human figure that the player could interact with. In this game of sensory overflow, one important sensory is actually deprived from the player: the player does not have the choice to use visual to examine the character Kaci. Deliberately taking out one sensory element, the game builds up Kaci as this omnipresent voice that would comment on every thing the player see and touch, adding to the insecureness that the player experiences in this unfamiliar space that could be refereed as “home.”
Further on, the inability to distinguish Kaci as a visual form creates a confounding impression to the player (to me, at least) that maybe this voice without form is actually the player themselves. At the beginning when the player is thrown suddenly into this game space, the only clue to rely on is the verbal voice — that constructs the world-building, your self-identity, and the most important elements that impact a person’s self-recognition. Without seeing the person of Kaci, I began to think if all these is me as Ally telling the story in my own mind — which made it even more anxiety-provoking when the voice became hostile. The game takes out the choice of letting the player explore or think independently, but inserts a voice that aggressively intrude every possible way of thinking and creates the uncomfortable feeling that “someone is thinking for me.” In this interpretation process, Kaci’s voice has been partially internalized as how the player views this world and herself; the harm that the words do is also internalized and triggers as self-negation.
Excluding the human form in the game space and leaving the apartment empty of people but full with objects of memory, Curtain turns a familiar space into an unfamiliar space, a debris that is left for excavation. The lack of inter-human interaction (visually) means that it is only possible to retrieve memories and meaning from the objects left by humans. However, the omnipresent voice of Kaci continuously screams the presence of human interaction, which exists somewhere beyond the access of the player. The information gap further aggravates the unease of the player and constantly reminds the player of their lack of control.
While the game provokes anxiety from multiple perspectives, anxiety is vital to the interpretation of the game from the perspective of Ally because it is what tells the player that something is wrong with the space and the relationship. In Heidegger’s comment on anxiety, anxiety discloses the totality of being, and is crucial because it prohibits Dasein to be absorbed into the tranquilized being of others. It is this sense of anxiety that the game establishes that provokes Ally and the player to constantly jump out of Kaci’s voice to reflect on what is wrong in the status-quo and to independently figure out the identity “Ally” herself.
While many say that the game Curtain is visually unsettling, it actually uses the “terrible” visual to take out the player’s visual sensory in connection with any actual human interaction. It is the combination of these sensory elements that constructed the anxious space within Curtain and directed the gameplay.
I really like how you make the claim that anxiety and anxious space in fact provoke the player to reflect and explore independently. I agree that although unsettling, the sensory overflow is in fact also the deliberate construction of a space in which senses can be stripped and dissected at the discretion of the player–thus as I interpret it, a manifesto of the player’s distinct human perspective.