Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms

Content Warning: Descriptive and mild graphic depictions of violence and blood.

“Only this time, it started in a hospital…”

Steve Gabry is an award winning indie game developer and founder of Portable Moose, his one-man developer team. He is most known for his creation of the Sally Face series, which began with a small cult following and has since grown to a classic indie title. “Episode One: Strange Neighbors” is the first episode of the Sally Face series and was initially released in August 2016 on itch.io, and later in December 2016 released on Steam. The game is now available on PC for Windows, Mac, and Linux through Steam and itch.io, and on console for Xbox and PlayStation. The entire episode takes roughly one hour of playtime, depending on whether the player engages with optional routes and dialogue within the game.

The description of the game on Steam is general, indicating an unraveling narrative and dark theme — with tags such as “Dark”, “Psychological Horror”, and others. Despite the limited mechanics of the game itself, it is primarily through navigating the limited map and interacting with character dialogue that the player unlocks routes that provide the opportunity to discover the mystery beneath the world they have entered. 

This is a single-player game that begins by selecting control mechanics (keyboard vs. controller), which gives the player immediate insight into what they are allowed to do within the game: move around, interact with elements, have access to an inventory, and pause the game (Figure 1). I did find this to be slightly misleading, as “WASD” typically indicates movement along an x and y axis, but the player can only move along the x-axis in gameplay, rendering the inclusion of ‘W’ and ‘S’ as control mechanics useless.

During the first scene, it becomes clearer how prompting words mechanically: The game is 2-Dimensional and the player traverses the world by moving side to side. They interact with the world by clicking prompts that indicate how they may interact with an object (“push”, “look at”, etc.), and to progress the story they may receive a self-dialogue option that hints at what they should do next (Figure 2, 3). The limited mechanics allow the player to immerse themselves in the narrative of the game almost immediately, causing the game to be appealing for fans of such a dynamic. Further, the art style changes dependent on the scene, but remains unique and appealing, causing a strong visual appeal to players.

Once the player exits the room, they then must complete two puzzles without any directions. The first, picking the correct order of doors, with a single letter on each, to enter sequentially (Figure 4). This puzzle indicates to the player that they made an error at a specific door by shaking the screen, playing a high-pitched audio, and starting the scene over, stimulating a players visual and auditory senses to indicate something has gone wrong. After a few more brief puzzles the player begins numerous cutscenes that drive the narrative forward. During one of these scenes, it appears that Sally Face has caused the death of his mother and is experiencing internalized guilt or shame. The beginning sequences end with Sally Face in a room with a shrink, revealing the beginning sequence was merely part of a dream. This prompts the player to anticipate the dream as being important to uncovering the psychological underpinnings of Sally Face, or some hidden narrative. These scenes cumulatively add to the intense mystery element of the narrative, and the near immediate introduction of an intense and dark backstory sets the framework for an exciting narrative discovery. Additionally, it sets a strong emotional premise forth and makes the dark themes of the game clear for players who enjoy such narratives.

The game transitions to a new premise where Sally Face and his father have moved into a new apartment. It is through these scenes the player unlocks options for choosing  between dialogue options (Figure 5) and exploring the primary map of the game. Some dialogue gives the player insight into the unspoken backstory — indicating that Sally Face is from Jersey, misses his mom, etc. — or to current events occurring as the game unfolds.

The player learns through interacting with characters that occupy the building that a murder took place the previous night and police officers and detectives are working to uncover what happened. Though Sally Face begins the story merely exploring the complex and getting to know his neighbors, he soon finds himself working with another teenage boy to gather evidence of this crime, and arrest the one at fault. The game occurs through a series of puzzles that allow a player to progress through the narrative and Sally Face’s new goal. Through these sequences, the player sometimes obtains hints through dialogue or game prompting that indicates that certain interactions or objects have a necessary purpose. For example, when attempting to put a recovered quarter in the vending machine, the game hints to the player they may need it for something else, highlighting its importance in uncovering the puzzle (Figure 6).

In terms of the environment, the player has no access to the world outside of the apartment complex — which itself is very small. The game forces the player to traverse floors of the apartment through an elevator, which allows the game to set different tones and purposes for each floor of the apartment (Figure 7). For example, floor 5 is incredibly eerie, which indicates to the player there shouldn’t be any rational person living there. Through traversing the levels, the player learns about the characters that occupy the building and slowly uncover backstories, interweaving the map itself with the progression of the game. In addition to this, the game sometimes limits where the player can go based on what aspects of the narrative they’ve unlocked, such as needing a key card to access the basement, or a ‘wet floor’ sign blocking the other half of a hallway before the player unlocks the necessary dialogue to explore that area. This adds to the discovery portion of the game, as the player must solve and unlock parts of the narrative before being able to discover the rest of the ‘map’.

The game ends back in the shrink’s office with dialogue that sets a tone and premise for the following episodes of the series, even hinting that the conclusion the player came to during this episode has wrongfully convicted someone of murder. This adds to the narrative layering of the game series, and sets the player up to anticipate the next episode (Figure 8). Overall, the limited mechanics available through gameplay encourage the player to instead immerse themselves in the narrative and mystery provided, encouraging narrative and discovery-based immersion. The game successfully appeals to players who enjoy sensory-experiences — primarily visual and auditory — and rich narrative driven stories, particularly those that emphasize puzzling together an unclear narrative through interacting with game elements. There is no win-lose condition in Sally Face, rather, the player simply leaves the game intrigued by the narrative and eager to uncover more.

Ethics Portion: 

Prompt: Think about what accessibility barriers exist in the game you played. Are there any accessibility features that try to mitigate these barriers? What seems to work about these features? What doesn’t work? If you don’t identify as having a disability, try to find firsthand accounts from disabled players to support your position, rather than relying on your own experience.

Players who have visual impairments will not be able to play Sally Face with the features provided in the game alone. The game itself does not provide any accessibility settings, and players have incredibly low mobility in what they can adjust in their gameplay, limited only to changing music volume, sound effects volume, and resolution quality. The game also does not include options to avoid viewing blood, violence, gore, etc. throughout the game, though it does market itself to mature audiences and these themes are somewhat shown in the game description. However, unless players look to netizens, they may find themselves unexpectedly triggered by the inclusion of certain graphic elements, shaking of the screen, or even flashing lights effects. Then, there are significant accessibility features present in the game, causing some demographics to be unable to enjoy the series.

Some netizens have also prompted questions about disability representation in Sally Face. Through reading online forums, I’ve concluded that the majority of people acknowledge that disability representation is important in all mediums, but are unsatisfied with its portrayal in Sally Face. The game itself does not necessarily aim to be a representative experience of disability, nor include it with these purposes, but due to Sal’s use of a prosthetic many have prompted these questions. Some netizens feel that Sal being the only character with a visual disability (facial prosthetic) and being a murderer perpetrates harmful stereotypes about those with facial disfigurements being ‘evil’ (e.g. Freddy Krueger). Others state that him needing a prosthetic and being a murderer is merely an association, since his disfigurement is a result of an event that (allegedly) wouldn’t have changed him becoming a murderer. Netizens also appreciate the fact that the game doesn’t shy away from acknowledging the harmful comments made to Sal due to his disfigurement — namely by including the backstory that he is called “Sally Face” due to being bullied in high school with this name, but decided to own it and go by it so it couldn’t be used against him. However, it is important to note that there is a lack of critical analysis on accessibility in the game, mainly due to it being indie and having a smaller audience. In addition, there is no evidence that the responses made by netizens were informed by them having experiences with disabilities. Due to the lack of accessibility features in the game (and its small fanbase), there was also no publicly available gameplay online of someone with a disability playing through the game.