The Space Between

I'm glad I finally decided to give this game a go; it's an extremely haunting and thought-provoking little work.

The alienated audio and visual design in particular are both stunning, with a subtle but eerie overall texture and atmosphere that wasn't quite like anything I've played before. And, like all good art, it not only evoked feeling and experience powerfully, but also challenged me to think deeply about the themes it was dealing with, and how they relate to my own experience as an autistic person. Its treatment of its primary theme of intimacy has notable intelligence, restraint and maturity, I'd say, which is nice to see in an interactive work in particular.

It isn't perfect. Taken as a whole, it does perhaps feel a bit limited and underdeveloped, both by virtue of being very short, and by virtue of its minimal, scripted interaction and narrow focus that, at times, did make me wonder whether the story it was trying to tell might have worked better as a short film or short written story. There's also some slight stiltedness to the dialogue and progression. But, by and large, I thought its design and execution worked, particularly given how the first-person perspective and direct connection to the gameworld that you have as a player heightened the uncomfortable sense of being watched and known. It also does a very good job of using horror aesthetics and dread to evoke the similarity between the fear of intimacy and fear for your actual bodily safety, as Julie Muncy touched on in their review for Wired.

Ultimately, this is a work with quite a narrow, artistic focus, which means it'll likely be divisive. But, with that said, I still didn't find it to be pretentious, as some works with self-conscious artistic aspirations can be. There's too much sincere feeling and experience, and too much conviction of vision, to just dismiss it in that way. With that in mind, I'd definitely recommend The Space Between to anyone with an interest in interactive fiction, or interactive artistic works more broadly.

This is a short narrative game about intimacy, and how uncomfortable it can be to experience. It’s like that meme, the mortifying ordeal of being known in game form. And it also reminded me of how David Cronenberg’s movies, like Crash and Dead Ringers get at intimacy in a very round about way through eroticism. There’s nothing in this that is as explicit, but there is stuff in here that seems erotic. And maybe it isn't really erotic, but that it is confusing and unfamiliar feels poignant. Which I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game try to do, so for that alone I can recommend it, but I can go further and say that it was a cohesive and moody experience that is worth spending just shy of an hour’s worth of your time to either be confused by or, maybe, feel a little seen?