Compared to Braid, Problem Attic does not employ the “princess gets saved by the knight/male/Tim villain” trope. In fact, it does not really use gender all that much in its representation of the avatar we must use to navigate. Although the avatar changes from black to white with two bouncy protrusions from its head resembling pigtails, this does not mean that the avatars are gendered. Interestingly, the thought that I had about the black avatar being “male” and the white avatar being “female” deeply disturbed
me because of how easy it was for me to just assign gender, adding another level of imprisonment for the avatar as if the levels were not hard enough to pass.
Liz Ryerson attempts to convey her imprisonment due to family conflicts and her experiences with being transgender unexplicitly. Regardless of whether the avatar has no gender or was meant to represent a transition, Ryerson created this game as a reaction to Braid’s world of beauty, gender tropes, and John Blow’s hypocritical anti-feminist sentiments as presented in Ryerson’s “The Other Side of Braid.” Stripped of the damsel in distress trope (no matter how twisted Braid presents this trope), Problem Attic has an avatar that tries to save itself from the imprisonment with inconsistent and rough mechanics that can reflect real life for trans people. In my opinion, the violent shaking when the plus sign and glitches are encountered emulates the small and large traumas respectively in Ryerson’s life. However, the plus signs and the glitches lead to desirable outcomes of either being able to ride the plus to the top or transition into another level. For the player, the shaking can be really annoying for the eyes, but also acts as a mechanism that says “wake up,” almost as if someone were to shake another’s shoulders.
The glitchy shaking not only demands attention, but also adds to the many frustrating aspects of this game. The variety of colors and blocks that do not act as platforms is confusing, reflecting the unreliability of support--or the people that can provide support in Ryerson’s life. The only way to know which platforms can support the avatar or even allow the avatar to pass through with extra force comes from trial and error, and error, and error once again. Accompanying this, there was acute frustration and anger on my behalf. However, this made me empathize with Ryerson’s experiences, even though I do not know about all of them explicitly; she allowed me to feel the nonspecific frustration that she must have felt. This is a very different visceral response that I had to Braid which was more concerned with longing that I could reverse moments in time. With Problem Attic, I do not long for any part of that experience.
The last text that comes at the end of the game is “You’ve hurt me tremendously, but that’s ok.” Although Ryerson does an excellent job constructing a game that makes us feel hurt, frustration, and anxiety as players, the text “but that’s ok” has deeper implications of forgiveness/acceptance, indifference, or defeat. One cannot be sure. The only reward is that the game comes to an “End” without an epilogue that is the antithesis of Braid.
After watching Hannah Gadsby's "Nanette," this post makes me rethink Problem Attic. We know after reading about Ryerson's intentions for the game that she wanted to express her experiences. But I wonder if we were ever supposed to empathize or even relate to them.
Gadsby is a comedian. She speaks about her own experience being a lesbian woman and in doing so, she makes a point to say that laughter can unite a room of strangers and diffuses tension that the joke creates, while anger can unite a room of strangers but can't defuse the tension because it is a tension.
It's no secret that there is tension riddled throughout Problem Attic. It comes across in the frustration, like the…
You note that the game's extremely visceral frustrations allowed you to empathize with Ryerson. I definitely agree that one of the game's strong points is the way mechanics reflect real mental states. In particular, the cross-shaped platforms that must be ridden evoke to me the idea that one can overcome frightful anxieties, which helped anchor my interest during the game's more unpalatable moments. That said, I wonder what it would say if the main draw of Problem Attic were in its capacity for vicarious living. We discussed in class the dangers of completely reducing the themes of the game to its mechanics, and to an extent, I agree—mechanics are ultimately the easily-digestible forms that Liz Ryerson tried to condense her…