Which is a short 2010 horror game for PC, produced by the independent game developer and animator Mike Inel
. The story is simple: you are trapped inside a shadowy house and you'll have to find a way to open the door that will let you leave. However, escape is not as easy as it seems and you will soon have to make an important decision.
The quiet, eerie atmosphere and setting can be easily compared to the likes of Silent Hill 2.
The game can be downloaded for free here.
This game provides examples of:
- Action Survivor: You presumably play as one since you're completely helpless and have to rely on another character to help you escape.
- Always Check Behind the Chair: You'll need to be very thorough in your searching if you want to find the Heart key.
- Beat Still, My Heart: The heart room has a living, beating heart that the woman can attach to her body. It serves as one of the two items you have to choose between giving to her for the final key.
- Bittersweet Ending: Giving the woman the heart causes her to feel enough compassion towards you to kill herself so that you can escape.
- Broken Bridge: The unlocked exit leads to a chained-up portcullis.
- Camera Abuse: Every time you collide with the woman, she disappears while causing this. Also present in the "Head" ending.
- Chiaroscuro: There are very sharp contrasts between light and dark in this game.
- Controllable Helplessness: In the "Head" ending once you approach the woman in the room where you can leave the house. As she puts two and two together from the images on the wall and then pulls out her knife, you'll find the door to the room is now locked as she moves to attack you.
- Couldn't Find a Pen: Turns out, the Justified Tutorial painted on the wall was this.
- Cute and Psycho: The woman becomes this in the "Head" ending.
- Deliberately Monochrome: Varying shades of black, white and grey make up the game's limited palette.
- Downer Ending: On the other hand, giving the woman the head will cause her to decide you're better off dead so she can leave.
- Driven to Suicide: The woman kills herself in the "Heart" ending.
- Escape from the Crazy Place: The goal of the game.
- Failure Is the Only Option: Not necessarily for the player character, but for at least someone.
- Featureless Protagonist: You know nothing about who you're playing as, nor can you see them. You can only hear their footsteps.
- Foreboding Architecture: A very tight, narrow hallway and starkly empty rooms (except for one) make up most of the house.
- Foreshadowing: Look closely at the images on the wall in Room 1. They will pretty much tell you how this game will end.
- Ghost Butler: The semi-last door in the game will close and lock behind you during the ending.
- Girl with Psycho Weapon: If you look closely from the right angle, the woman in the house is holding a knife. This becomes important later.
- Guide Dang It!: The "Heart" key is hiding in a very unintuitive location, making it unlikely you'll find it on your first playthrough.Where is it?
- The Heartless: In a literal example of this, the woman is missing her heart and will gladly kill you to escape the house if you gave her a head instead.
- Heroic Sacrifice: The woman does this to help you escape in the "Heart" ending.
- Involuntary Battle to the Death: What the player character and the woman are involved in, without knowing it. The only unblocked exit to the house cannot be unlocked if there are two people alive inside at the time.
- Losing Your Head: Our mysterious occupant is somehow able to move around the house and comprehend her situation despite... well, just look at the page image. Her still-breathing head can be found in a toilet inside the head room, though.
- Mind Screw: The game never explains why you are in the house, why only one of you can escape, and who mutilated the woman.
- Minimalism: The game features a simplified plot and gameplay, no dialogue, background music, or named characters, and a limited, abstract setting. You can't even see your player character either.
- Minimalist Cast: Just you and the woman.
- Morton's Fork: Choosing the head or the heart has a bad outcome for either you or the woman.
- Multiple Endings: Well, actually two. It depends on which item you give to the woman in order to have the final key in exchange.
- Nameless Narrative: Neither character is named.
- Nightmare Face: The woman's head can be seen this way, especially as she stabs you to death while staring at you with those cold, soulless eyes.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Giving the woman her head back only makes her stab you many times over so that she can leave the house. On the other hand, giving her the heart makes her do the exact opposite.
- No Plot? No Problem!: The game is about you trying to escape from the house. It's as simple as that.
- Nothing Is Scarier: The game has no colours except grey and white, no sound except static, footsteps and the occasional sound of the player character interacting with something, and there's nothing in the house except you, one other occupant, a wrench and some keys.
- Offscreen Teleportation: The house's other occupant, once you find her. She has a habit of doing this when you're not looking.
- Off with His Head!: The other item. Disturbingly enough, you can hear it breathing on its own.
- Ontological Mystery: How did the player character end up in this house? How did the house's only other occupant come to... that? And since neither seems to understand the writing on the wall in Room 1 at first, who put that there?
- Painting the Medium: The game uses pictures on the walls to show you how to play it and how to progress.
- Rule of Symbolism: It's a story about human empathy and sadistic choices... which features two people (one of whom lacks a heart and a head) in a house which is empty but has signs of other life.
- Sadistic Choice: Except you don't get to make it. You can only decide whether the decision-maker thinks with their head (favouring self-preservation) or with their heart (favouring self-sacrifice).
- Silence Is Golden: There is no spoken dialogue or background music at all, only pictures on the walls to visually guide the player.
- Snowy Screen of Death: As the woman stabs you over and over in the "Head" ending, static fills up the screen.
- Someone Has to Die: Enforced. The pictures on the wall indicate that one person plus a key can leave the house, but two people cannot.
- Soul Jar: The heart room possibly. It contains a living, beating heart that the woman can put to good use since after she attaches it to her body, she apparently becomes mortal as she dies after stabbing herself many times in one ending.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: The other occupant in the house has a very creepy habit of showing up right behind you when you look away for a second and then turn around to look at her again. Bumping into her causes her to disappear as the screen blurs and gets filled with static.
- Stealth Pun: The head is found in the bathroom...the naval term for such a room is, indeed, the head.
- Surreal Horror: The disconnected, dreamlike quality of both the visuals and your objective makes the game feel quite literally like a playable nightmare.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The woman either stabs you or herself repeatedly. Just count how many times she does it!
- Title Drop: Shows up in the ending with good reason.
- Ungrateful Bitch: The woman becomes this if you give her her head.
- World of Symbolism
- World Limited to the Plot: Outside the house, there's nothing but bright white light. If you look back after escaping, you'll see that there isn't even a house, just a doorway.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: There's an unlocked exit a few feet away from where the player character starts the game. If you open it, you find a chained-up portcullis on the other side.
- You Wake Up in a Room: The game starts out this way.
