When I played Curtain, I was struck by the pixelated bright-colored art style. It made the environment difficult to make out and actually hurt my eyes sometimes. It essentially made my vision blurry and blind to the reality around me which is how Ally must have seen the world. I already found the environment to be unsettling before I got to something that made me feel much worse, the constant emotional insults from Kaci. I kept finding myself become very upset each time she would say thinly-veiled insults and be emotionally abusive. Kaci always had something to say whenever you did anything. It was easy to hope that Kaci would change but also desire to be away from that apartment at the same time. Curtain was very good at enticing these conflicting feelings out of me and making me feel trapped physically and emotionally. The shower location was a huge relief to me where I was glad to get away from Kaci. It was Ally's only place where she could think for herself and contemplate. The mechanic of the shower being like a portal to some time in the future was clever. It represented that if Ally stopped and really thought about where their relationship was headed and what she wanted, she could see that it was going to get much worse. The second apartment's environment really showed that as it was scary red along with Kaci's comments getting worse and worse. After discovering what will happen in the future, Ally is finally able to leave in her current reality. However, it's not a happy ending because domestic abuse stays with someone for a long time, as depicted in the last mirror scene.
Curtain was an incredibly emotional game that impacted me a lot more than I thought it would. I believe it accurately portrayed an abusive relationship with content and feelings. It made me feel a range of emotions in a short amount of time, about 30 minutes. It made me feel like I was the victim and it didn’t need realistic graphics or any character models to do so. The in-game feeling of entrapment also translated to me in real life. I have a lot of respect for games that can accomplish this feeling in the player.
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