SIMULACRA : An Awkward Game with Great Ideas
The following post contains spoilers for SIMULACRA
I’ve been meaning to write about this game for a very long time and sometimes, every so often, a game comes along and perplexes me for a very long time for a reason I can’t put my finger on. Simulacra is one of those games.
Sidenote: A simulacrum is a reflection or imitation of a person or a thing. It is often used to describe imitations that pale in comparison to the real thing. Jean Baudrillad, in his book Simulacra and Simulation alluded to the idea that “Simulacra” is an imitation of something that has no original or, that the original no longer exists. Baudrillad welshes on the idea that society has become oversaturated with simulacra and that are lives had become so oversaturated with social construct that all inherent meaning was becoming vapid as a result of being “infinitely mutable”
If you weren’t aware, Simulacra is a horror game designed by Malaysian developers Kaigan Games set on a mobile phone which is a spiritual sequel to the praised Sara Is Missing. A text-based mystery where you use a missing girls phone to find said missing girl (Anna) with the help of scattered clues in e-mails, text messages and social media. The main cool thing about this game is that you can play it on your own phone to give yourself an immersive experience that is probably unmatched by definition.
You then find out through various shenanigans involving blackmail, white-hat hacking and living out a fake lesbian fantasy with Anna’s best friend for your own amusement, you find out Anna’s true self has been sucked into the void in favour of her social media image taking over her vessel.
Yep.
A List Of Positives
The idea of making a horror game around the concept of simulacrums is pretty clever and original especially by horror game standards and their method of execution deserves to be praised as well. They make an accurate commentary on how social media personality is severely different from the actual person and conjure the concept of that personality taking over due to it’s “superiority”. So having you look through a phone as a kind of mirror into the twitter-world is a fantastic way to make a point regardless if they presented it with 100% accuracy or not. Obviously, to satirize or to parody something, a certain amount of exaggeration is expected (at one point, you get a private text conversation with a big social media influencer because you solved a really easy puzzle) but for the most part, it’s more accurate than most of the media that paints the internet as being the big spooky evil which is a big plus.
The main psychological horror and tension is found through a lot of little things. Throughout your prying into Jabbr (fake Twitter), Anna will continue posting in the generic social media fashion that we are familiar with if you’re still friends with all the millennials you went to high school with - even though you have her phone. In a bizarre moment, you are forced into helping her potentially abusive boyfriend break into her home to find information but suddenly, the phone goes into a reset mode where you have to answer security questions on a timer (I know... I know that isn’t a thing that really exists) and you are wondering who was really responsible for doing that. It sounds cheesy when you write it down but because of the immersion of the mobile phone, you are fully taken in by all the scooby-doo ghost nonsense.
The extra little interactions with the phone are cute as well. Just for no reason at all, you can go on Spark (fake Tinder) and just start talking to random strangers and each time, you get a pithy bit of dialogue based on your average speed-dating fodder. The phone itself isn’t too gimmick-heavy which I like in some ways because it is supposed to be an investigation game so you don’t want so much stuff slowing you down when you’re looking for clues. Some people like gimmicks but I would describe this development decision as ‘sensible’.
A Litany of Little Letdowns
What lets this game down is the acting, obviously. It’s really easy to pick at bad acting especially when it’s clearly very amateur but in a lot of instances, the awkward delivery in phone calls distracts from the horror. It’s a shame really because the makers of this game wanted to try and make it as real and as immersive as possible within reason and it is a bold decision to make with an ambitious project. They also go to the effort of having photos of all the actors nonchalantly hanging out but they all look too well photographed so it just comes off as phony. I feel generally with found-footage horror in this sort of vein is more effective if they don’t go overboard in the camera department. One of the problems (among many) that I had with M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit was that it was so clearly professionally rigged when you’re supposed to believe it’s children holding old hand-me-down cameras. That being said though, this is a bit of a nitpick that can easily be overlooked if you don’t really care about photography which isn’t really this game’s target audience.
I find that text message-speak in this game leaves a lot to be desired along with the supposed choices you get given which don’t have a fantastic amount of impact although this game does have more endings than Life Is Strange. The main gripe I have with the choices is that it looks like you’re about to go down a completely different path altogether but the game’s dialogue seems to unreasonably railroad you into the same thing with no reason. I know it’s old hat to poke at the old ‘choices matter’ chestnut in games from the previous generation but it is still frustrating. Especially when it offers you point-blank to save a certain character at the end but it doesn’t actually matter at all who you pick because the game just arbitrarily picks a character to save based on unclear choices.
Yes, the jumpscare trope is in this game. It’s more effective at spooking you because most of the time it is dead silent because you are just holding a phone and there is no music but that doesn’t mean it’s good. There is no real internal video game logic as to why they happen either, the game just wants to scare you. The main character doesn’t even make comment on it either.
It is one of the better horror games and I do have to give A+ for effort because it is there. It’s just a bit of a shame that the games amateur nature doesn’t really add to the charm the way you might think it would. It’s still a game that resonates with me personally and still has it’s moments.