Escape: The Narrative Triumph of Masked
Videogames have made me feel a lot of things over the years. Happy, angry, afraid, grossed out, empowered, confused; some have even made me feel nothing at all. However, in all the years I’ve spent playing videogames, very few have ever succeeded in making me feel uncomfortable.
Masked, by Lewis Denby, made me feel very, very uncomfortable.
It is not a game that evokes a sense of dread or fear. It is not overtly sad, dripping with despair. It’s not even excessively difficult, stymieing you with endless frustration as you struggle to solve the game’s puzzles. No, Masked made me so uncomfortable because it is so real.
Masked is a game about escape. You begin the game in the room that will be both setpiece and plot, and while the point is exactly driven into you, right away the notion of “escape” is there. There’s something off-putting about the dirtiness of the room and the forlorn familiarity of the masked lady who occasionally speaks to you, and it all speaks to the knowledge that this room is not somewhere you want to be.
As you search the room for components to aid in your escape, you realize that you are not just trying to escape from the room, but also from your past, the details of which you either cannot or will not remember. As the masked lady intermittently regales you with her own smattering of half pieced-together memories, she slowly paints a picture of the events of your lives that have led to you being trapped in a room being spoken to through a television screen. Realization sets in that your circumstance is a direct result of your actions, and all your forgetfulness has failed to stave off the consequences from coming full circle, whether you understand them or not.
Functionally speaking, Masked is not a game so much as it is a meditation on its themes; in that sense, it is very reminiscent of a visual novel or interactive fiction. The setting is unchanging throughout the whole of the game, and yet its narrative still manages to evoke very real feelings of confusion and helplessness, fear, sadness, and despair, all within the confines of one room. Ultimately, the game is not so much about the experiences of the main character, but rather merely a tableau against which we must confront our own painful memories.
While the masked lady shares a history with whoever the main character is (it’s insinuated that the masked lady was a former love interest, though beyond that we’re told nothing of her captive), it is generic enough, and the feelings of scorn and resentment she espouses universal enough that she could very easily be talking to any one of us. Masked does not enable us to inhabit a protagonist so much as it uses its setting to inhabit us; in working through the game’s scenario, it is difficult to not also view the game as a lens through which our own choices and consequences are examined.
To this end, the puzzles serve as an effective and complimentary way of moving the game forward, a counterbalance of structure to give weight to the otherwise wistfully reflective nature of the game. It is, after all, a puzzle, and its solution serves not only to progress the story but to ground the game’s internal conflict in something concrete. Locks require keys, hatches require levers. Even the game’s interface – the classic point-and-click “examine” and “interact” options are telling, offering even a basic way to exert control in a game that is, at least thematically about stripping you of control.
Masked is a very short game; indeed, in the time it’s taken to write this, several playthroughs could be completed. Yet its short length belies a tight marriage of its narrative and formal elements that may not have been possible with a “feature-length” title. There is no filler; everything that happens and every puzzle you solve serves strictly to extricate you from the room in which you are held, just as every piece of dialogue from the masked lady serves to further situate the game’s context. There is no “meaningless backstory,” since Masked is essentially all backstory.
This idea is faithfully maintained all the way through to the game’s ending. Most games culminate with a boss fight or other type of final confrontation. The player plays through and achieves victory, and then the credits roll while sighs of relief are heaved and feelings of accomplishment are felt. Not so with Masked. Its climax is not inevitable like a showdown between Mario and Bowser. Rather it is revelatory; it is the moment where you finally figure out why you are where you are and, more importantly, what you have to do to escape. There is a definite final beat to the game – and then it ends. No credits, no “Thanks for Playing” – the game window literally closes. In a game about coping with the past and moving forward in the face of an uncertain future, the statement that the game’s closing makes is utterly final.
There is nothing about Masked that is openly fantastical or unbelievable; you are simply stuck in a room, and you must find your way out. And yet all throughout the game is dogged by an unshakable feeling that is both eerie and ethereal. It is there, just below surface level, like listening to a violin that is just slightly out of tune. You barely notice it at first, but by the end of the playthrough it has really started to subtly affect you.
Perhaps one of the game’s most eerie features is the fact that, unlike most videogames, there is never an impending sense of danger. You’re trapped in a room, yes, but there is no immediate threat or reason to need to escape. There is no game timer, no countdown to doom, no gun to your head. In fact, the masked lady seems perfectly fine with letting you stay in that room for as long as you’d like (indeed it almost seems as though she wants that herself). The desire to leave, that drive to conquer the past, break free of the walls of apathy and push forward decisively into the future must be completely self-directed. Of course we would be free to remain in that room, with the masked lady keeping us company, indefinitely. True, no immediate harm may come to us. But the cost of that complacency is that we are stuck, ever to sit there in despondency on the wrong side of a heavy, rust-caked door.
Masked was created and released by Lewis Denby and can be downloaded for free here.
(Editor’s note: In the interest of full disclosure, Masked’s creator Lewis Denby is the Executive Editor of BeefJack, where Pixels or Death editors Adam Harshberger and Patrick have published work. This article is an unsolicited editorial.)
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