Blank Frame is a “COVID Era isolation” walking simulator horror game developed by Through Tunnel (aka Riku Lempiäinen), a solo developer who according to a Steam review by Sebas-Chan recruited a bunch of his friends to create this singular game as their first title. That’s all I’ve been able to really find persay without doing a fifteen hour super deep dive through their Discord server. However, I can at least tell you how I was able to find the game, and that was mainly through something simple: a friend of mine wishlisted the game and I took a look at it and said “Wow, a short indie atmospheric horror game? Sign me up!”. A little while later, they funnily enough bought me the game, and then eventually I sat down and streamed it for a friend of mine.

The plot takes obvious inspiration from Silent Hill 4, waking up as a man named Henri trapped in his own apartment in the town of Dim River. Going out to his hallway after a loud bang reveals a giant, rusty cabinet blocking both his front door and his bathroom. Exasperated and confused, Henri goes about exploring for ways to escape his apartment when he strikes up a friendship and eventually a flirtatious back and forth with his neighbor Aava. The game’s premise is simple and mostly just revolves around ways to escape the apartment during one really long night, it’s moreso the lore around the game and the symbolism behind it that’s really interesting. Lore reveals graffiti that teases the monsters surrounding Dim River, created by a group called the Lincoln Street Junkies who seem to be a cult that surrounds the town and engage in numerous crimes while worshiping these entities. Henri himself is a depressed loner, and symbolically the game felt like an obvious metaphor for loneliness, from the empty picture frame the guy has to his awkward demeanor talking about his hobbies walking through the woods. It’s a simple premise with decent character building between Aava and Henri about reaching out in hard times and it was enjoyable. There are two endings of course, the good ending (“Euneirophrenia”, aka the peaceful state of mind after a pleasant dream according to Google) and the bad ending (“Valveilla, apparently a translation for Up) which depends on whether or not you open a window for a creature and either leave or not open the window/open the window but slam a dresser on it’s hands. The good ending has you meet up with Aava in person and go out on a date while the other one has a bit of confusing lore but ends abruptly with body pain. Overall, it’s a simplistic plot but one which I enjoyed for the creepy atmosphere and the themes.

I’m sure you could sit down and say that the game is partially a walking simulator, I mean for the most part you just interact with your limited environment and combine certain items together to solve puzzles to move the plot forward. There isn’t really much in the way of “combat” aside from perhaps the final fight in the Good Ending where you have to take photos of creatures in a limited amount of time. I think if anything, I’ll probably have to criticize it a bit for just how confusing it can be sometimes to navigate to certain things? For example, if I hadn’t looked at the guide below I wouldn’t have figured out the code to the television puzzle as I thought you just had to click through the channels to find something. However, it turns out that you have to literally press the channel numbers in the correct order (062 I think?) and the only way you would’ve found that out is by looking it up, brute forcing it, luck or thinking way outside the box (like finding the numbers in your environment). Aside from that and waiting around in certain instances, it’s honestly just a game of exploration and trying to figure stuff out. The only other things I could think of are the fact that getting one of the two endings depends on whether you open a window or not, with some slight variation; also there’s only two places I believe you could die, at this window or the final boss of the game. Otherwise there aren’t any “cheap deaths”, though it is annoying to have to restart EVERYTHING without an autosave.

The steam page for the game advertises this as early 2000s PC/PS2 graphics; an advertisement that truthfully I’m not totally sure about. It feels a lot more in line personally for the Playstation 1 feeling but honestly I’m a sucker for nostalgia anyways so I wasn’t particularly bothered by it, overall I love the old crunchy looking models. However, that’s not what makes this game’s atmosphere interesting. It’s the art design and the color palettes, the atmospheric direction so to speak and what I can say on this end is that this game’s atmosphere is pretty unnerving. For the most part you will only see darker colors, and I don’t mean the fact the game takes place late night/early morning; see you’ll be seeing a lot of darker shades of neon, dim and flickering lights; a sort of feeling that you could see in a sort of Youtube lofi and chill thumbnail that makes it both feel comfy but mixed in with this disheveled and rusty design around you from the rusty cabinet blocking the door or the shady alleyway with the p o r n buildings nearby. If I could assign this game a color then it would definitely be whatever is between purple and black, and it looks great! The actual monster designs are pretty freaky too whenever you see them (which is sort of rare), and mixed with the lower graphical fidelity made me wonder when they would pop out of the shadows surrounding the building. Most of them made me feel uncomfortable except the last monster, which looked like the wooden frame that holds up a canvas but with legs which I guess evokes the Blank Frame symbolism but it’s kinda goofy if anything. Everything else however? It feels like it could come straight out of a Gothcore music video with elongated pointy boots or nose and some straight up monster kaiju designs that feel like it could come from Siren of all things. They’re pretty uncomfortable yet effective and I was always trying to be aware of my surroundings in case they could trigger one of the “kill states” that was advertised.

The soundtrack, composed by Robbert van Bruggen & Johann Hackl (aka Glazers), feels like it could take its influence from the pinnacle survival horror series: Silent Hill. It sounds verbatim to a lot of games that I’ve played in the indie PS1 graphics horror genre but truthfully I don’t see what else this could feel like. Some tracks like Self Condemned Part 1 sound like a straight up panic attack, slowly building as the track’s heart beats faster and faster before fading into this slow-synth sounding string section. Self Condemned Part 2 evokes imagery of solemnly looking into the distance of an alien landscape, wondering if everything was worth it in the end yet glad that the nightmare is finally over. A Theme of Dreams basically evokes the feeling of the title, feeling like you’re stuck in a happier part of a dream while Essence of Death evokes safety and belonging. The game switches between these sort of moods with ease and blends it in easily with the silence as you roam your apartment, making it a sort of mood booster when you do hear something. The sound design in general basically consists of silence, the noise that taps as you scroll through dialogue and random bits and bobs around the environment like doors opening, picture frames smashing and the like. It feels familiar, comfortable yet uneasy and evokes a sort of slow burn horror that I vibe with when I see it, enhancing the environment around you as the tension creeps in. How about voice acting? There is none really, and in those cases I always felt it enhanced the immersion for me anyways so overall, the vibe check with the sound design like the graphics and art design is pretty damn good.

My feeling on Blank Frame going through it was that it was a pretty solid first game for a group of indie developers who never created before. The art direction was creepy and sad if not disturbing and confusing at the same time, mixed with that low poly graphical style that I simply can’t help but utterly simp for. The Sound Design is solid as hell in this territory too with it’s minimalist atmosphere while the soundtrack has this haunting dreamscape quality that sounds comforting sometimes yet utterly unnerving in other times; the only way I could describe it is beautiful. However, when you go into the game you have to be aware that this is a “sit down and play in one sitting” kind of game, with a couple of confusing gameplay sections that I ended up needing a guide and the metaphoric allegorical horror plot that left me scratching my head and trying to interpret its themes. Overall, it’s a solid time and I would think it’s definitely worth the five dollars or so though I didn’t buy it, so shout out to the homie Elephantmonstermcgee for the game! The developers are also seeming to keep at it, with their next game called “A Path That Lingers” being teased a bit on their Discord server.

Links:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2738565131 (Guide)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgoRZkZUAWw&list=OLAK5uy_lGWcTQzgjFuk_sRvn68aIeSYuFEHUK1jA&index=1&ab_channel=Gazers-Topic (Soundtrack)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2So1CCZaeM&ab_channel=TheGameArchivist (Playthrough)

https://throughtunnel.itch.io/blank-frame#:~:text=The%20game%20is%20about%20an,The%20game%20contains%20two%20endings (Itch link)

https://twitter.com/ThruTunl