The Static Speaks My Name

From the moment I noticed the locked door I knew where the game was headed. It wasn't being too particularly smart about what it was setting out to do. The ending sequence was quite interesting for the brief 15 seconds or so that it lasts. If they expanded on that it would have added a bit more depth to the experience, but only a bit.

The blackest of black comedies. The Static Speaks My Name falls in line with any unutterably bleak, uncomfortable chuckle you've ever conjured, calling both Black Mirror and Salad Fingers to my mind during its playthrough. Its very short playthrough, incidentally.

And that, really, is the only compliant I have. You start the game by walking into a ball of light suspended in space, which gives you a person's name, age, and cause of death, and you then play out the last few minutes of their life. You end the game by being presented with another two balls of light, both of which have the same information on other people - but this time, when you walk into one, you get a 'Thanks for playing' message. I was genuinely disappointed that we only got one segment of this, because the tone is gripping enough to sustain itself over at least three or four more people's lives - and the game would still only have been an hour long, which I think would have felt about right.

One person is all we get though, and the playthrough of his life is outright twisted. It's a first person exploration game that feels like Gone Home (in mechanics and scale, not in mood), and the game gives you six tasks to do, one after another. The first - 'go to the toilet' - is basic, essentially a tutorial on movement and interacting with objects. The second - 'find something to eat for breakfast' is confusing at first, but dark as hell once you work out what you actually need to do (this is the bit that specifically reminded me of Salad Fingers). The third - 'chat to some friends online' - is quietly horrifying for reasons I won't outline here, but will be immediately obvious once you've played it. The fourth - 'clean the microwave' - is only there to lull you into a false sense of security, before the fifth completely flips the entire setting on its head. It's at this point, while trying to work out what the hell is going on, that you'll find yourself exploring the flat, finding notes and doodles left by the protagonist, all of which build the tension and flesh out this person's life. It's a ten minute run, but what a gripping ten minutes it is.

I won't lie - I laughed while playing this game, and I kinda felt like crap about the fact that I found it funny....but I enjoy that. It's that kind of experience that sticks with me. And The Static Speaks My Name will definitely stick with me. I just wish there was more of it.

I might as well get the two good points of The Static Speaks My Name out of the way:

1. It's free.
2. It's short. Exploring everything the game has to offer will take, at the very extreme, half-an-hour.

Beyond that, this game has nothing good to offer. It tries to position itself as deep and thought-provoking, attempting desperately to get you to consider the game's emotional themes and how they weigh on people in the real world. But it ultimately means absolutely nothing, because the game can't figure out how to handle them with any care beyond a sledgehammer and smashing it into bits.

You play as an individual in their home who is "implied" (it's very obvious, trust me) to have severe depression and other assorted mental health issues, with an obsession for painting. This is all the game will bother to give you in terms of characterization. But how does the game, in its very short time with you, handle its issues? Spoiler warning for the game after this, but...

This person keeps an individual in a cage, whom they presumably have kept for a while. You can torture them (which is just electrocuting them basically) and kill them, or leave them alone (which is also implied to inevitably result in their death) before you go to your closet and hang yourself. Fun! Do you get what the game is trying to tell you yet?

Really, beyond the very quarter-hearted attempt at addressing any of its themes, there's nothing else good about this game. The graphics and aesthetics are ugly and dim, which may suit the game well on some level but doesn't help it out in any event. The sound design leaves much to be desired. And while the shortness of the game works in its favors, if the game was actually treated with more care as opposed to feeling like it was sloppily made at a very amateur game jam, it could have benefited from a longer play time. There's also very very little involvement from the player's end beyond moving the character and feebly interacting with objects, making this able to earn the legitimate derision of the title "Walking Simulator".

So yes, everything about it is a mess. Could this have been better? Probably not, but the game's bare structure seems to have had potential, which is ultimately the biggest disappointment of the game.