Laura Michet's Blog

Played Without A Dawn

Checked out Without A Dawn, a pretty affecting horror game which describes itself as "psychological". This is extremely accurate, because the game is just about

this minorly spoiling mental health topic:experiencing psychosis and suicidality.

It uses sound and ASCII art to get the feeling across - it does a lot of fun stuff with SFX and with constantly-animating ASCII art. The trick I most admired was something it tried a couple times: having a figure or object far away from the "camera" gradually approach the camera over the course of a conversation. Watching something emerge from the ASCII soup is really cool and satisfying.

And the sound design is great too! Good stuff.

It's only 30-40 mins long, which means it's the first game I have actually completed in months. I do not know that I need or want anything longer than this for a topic like this - the game is pretty depressing and says pretty much everything it could mean to say in the time that it has, I think.

Anyway, I recommend it. Mega content warning shit, but it's got a craft approach and a level of polish that I found delightful, despite the dark subject matter. Very odd feeling, to find myself playing such an intensely depressing game and to constantly be smiling about the little craft decisions I was seeing...

#games #recommendations