I was looking for a short game one night, and I found a pretty good one in Detention. The game plays in Taiwan in the 1960s under martial law (under military control instead of civil law by a government). Suffice it to say, these are sensitive times where any suspicious act can lead one to be blamed as sympathizing with Communist China.
You control two students in this game. The first one finds himself alone at school during a typhoon attack after awakening from a nap that he started during class. After exploring the school a bit, he finds another student who is sleeping on a chair. After waking her up, they try to leave the school, but notice that the bridge has collapsed, meaning they are stuck at school. Shortly after, you start taking control of the girl and start to figure out the secret meaning behind this weird night at school.
It turns into a gloomy story of guilt, depression, death and more, but it's best to not spoil anything about that here. All I can say is that it is told in a manner that asks the players to understand a lot themselves. I'll admit, a lot of the things that happened I didn't quite get after playing through it, so I had to look at some explanations online after. I want to say that the game could have made a few things a bit more clear, but it could also be that 1) I am dumb and 2) It was very late and I felt tired, which is why I wasn't quite able to piece things together, even though it was explained clear enough.
That said, there are lots of metaphors and a lot of symbolism used here to explain what is happening and how the characters are feeling. On top of that, a lot of these metaphors and references are from Taiwanese culture, from Taoism and Buddhism, so as someone who has no idea about these references, there might be another reason for why I didn't quite catch everything in one playthrough.
I might have decided to play it again to figure everything out, but to be honest, the one big issue I had with this game was that it turned into a full-on walking simulator in the second half. Walking simulators are a tough sell for me, unless the atmosphere and story are very gripping. So to have a story that is told very mysteriously and to have the horror parts be kind of put aside in the final act made it kind of hard for me to have a very fun time during these walking simulator parts.
The gameplay also consists of puzzles a lot, and the puzzles are all very easy and mostly very similarly designed (find easy item, finish puzzle to get other item, put it in spot X, move on to next building to do the same). So the game lives and dies by its atmosphere and story. The atmosphere is suitably depressing for the most part, so the game mostly does a great job here. I liked the story, but the references and metaphors didn't blow me away as someone who wasn't able to get them all.
So if you're wondering whether you should play this game, think about the topics it references, think about how much you enjoy walking simulators and you'll have your answer. Overall, I enjoyed it for what it was.
You control two students in this game. The first one finds himself alone at school during a typhoon attack after awakening from a nap that he started during class. After exploring the school a bit, he finds another student who is sleeping on a chair. After waking her up, they try to leave the school, but notice that the bridge has collapsed, meaning they are stuck at school. Shortly after, you start taking control of the girl and start to figure out the secret meaning behind this weird night at school.
It turns into a gloomy story of guilt, depression, death and more, but it's best to not spoil anything about that here. All I can say is that it is told in a manner that asks the players to understand a lot themselves. I'll admit, a lot of the things that happened I didn't quite get after playing through it, so I had to look at some explanations online after. I want to say that the game could have made a few things a bit more clear, but it could also be that 1) I am dumb and 2) It was very late and I felt tired, which is why I wasn't quite able to piece things together, even though it was explained clear enough.
That said, there are lots of metaphors and a lot of symbolism used here to explain what is happening and how the characters are feeling. On top of that, a lot of these metaphors and references are from Taiwanese culture, from Taoism and Buddhism, so as someone who has no idea about these references, there might be another reason for why I didn't quite catch everything in one playthrough.
I might have decided to play it again to figure everything out, but to be honest, the one big issue I had with this game was that it turned into a full-on walking simulator in the second half. Walking simulators are a tough sell for me, unless the atmosphere and story are very gripping. So to have a story that is told very mysteriously and to have the horror parts be kind of put aside in the final act made it kind of hard for me to have a very fun time during these walking simulator parts.
The gameplay also consists of puzzles a lot, and the puzzles are all very easy and mostly very similarly designed (find easy item, finish puzzle to get other item, put it in spot X, move on to next building to do the same). So the game lives and dies by its atmosphere and story. The atmosphere is suitably depressing for the most part, so the game mostly does a great job here. I liked the story, but the references and metaphors didn't blow me away as someone who wasn't able to get them all.
So if you're wondering whether you should play this game, think about the topics it references, think about how much you enjoy walking simulators and you'll have your answer. Overall, I enjoyed it for what it was.