Christoph Frey's "Horror Vacui" encapsulates its eponymous fear of empty spaces. Less curious players might simply describe the game as a tedious walking simulator in the screen noise of the television, but the intentional provocation of a sedate walking speed within changing rectangular spaces, sometimes entirely empty and at others filled with an object or two, determines an experimental mode of terror successful in promoting the ambiguous perspective of the comatose patient. Memories pertaining to these objects—childhood and domestic spaces rendered without a complete grasp of the protagonist's age—linger with the persistent ambient noises (like mechanical breathing) and occasional music to punctuate the atmosphere of the unknown, filtered with the screen grain as a means of understanding each room, its walls and doorways. "Horror Vacui" is a ponderous experiment, certainly boring at times, yet entirely evocative enough to warrant the thirty minutes or so necessary to feel the experience as complete—despite how incomplete it must be to surmise a grave existence.

Reviewed on Feb 14, 2024


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