Problem Attic is problematic

Problem Attic’s unresponsive and imprecise controls, nonsensical spaces, occasionally arbitrary game design (e.g. collecting 13 M’s???) and lack of rewards aid the project in prompting feelings of helplessness, entrapment, and dissatisfaction for the player, while simultaneously removing any reason a person would have to play it. The point of this game is its problem.

The way I, and I’m sure many others, read this game, was as an abstract and interactive depiction of the developer’s journey through life. Each room represents a snippet of the developer’s life and the emotions that came with that experience. She confirms this was her intention in her autobiographical article (“The Other Side of Braid,” 2015.)

Based on the article, feeling helpless, trapped, and dissatisfied, was a through-line in her life. The fact that she is a trans woman suggests she felt trapped in the wrong body before her transition. She also mentioned that she lived in places where she had no money (i.e. no ability to move), no support, and where, apparently, there was nothing better to do than drink (…seriously?). Hence she spent a lot of time trapped alone in her room listening to the same album over and over again. She was also haunted by memories of having been abused. She felt like she couldn’t escape them, and imagery of sexual violence is recurrent in the game. The developer writes on the game’s page, the game is about prisons, real and imaginary. She wants this game to reflect her life experiences and emotions in an abstract way.

Problem Attic, in my opinion, does succeed in making the player feel trapped and helpless. As we talked about in class, movement in video games can induce a sense of “vertigo,” and in most games, this feeling is designed to be pleasurable. For example, driving a sports car at top speeds across San Andreas feels thrilling and freeing, as does performing triple jumps in Mario 64. While your character in Problem Attic can jump enormous heights, jumps feel floaty and imprecise. Most frustratingly, jumps are occasionally delayed. Furthermore, the character continues to slide forward after you have stopped pressing the key, as if the platforms were all ice. Yes, this game induced a feeling of “vertigo,” but instead of being pleasurable, as it is in games that are fun to play, it felt sickening. The movement in this game strips the player of control, inducing a sense of frustration and helplessness. Levels are harder to complete because of the unresponsive controls, which contributes to a sense of entrapment.

With the exception of the “garden level” and a structure that resembles female reproductive anatomy, the spaces in this game do not resemble anything familiar. One might say it is because of the game’s limited graphical capability that it would be difficult to create spaces that are anything but abstract to players. I’d point that person to the Atari game, Adventure, which has the same if not more graphical limitations, yet the spaces don’t feel overwhelming. They imply directionality and feel familiar enough to make sense of. In Problem Attic, the massive spaces filled with different colored blocks (some of which have collision detectors and some you can simply pass through— you don’t know which it is until you walk into it) feel unnavigable and devoid of meaning. Furthermore, it is often unclear which direction the player should move in as the goal is typically obscure. The yellow and red tiles that serve as the teleporter back to the hub world, blend in with the surroundings. I did indeed feel lost in several of these spaces, so by extension, I felt helpless and trapped. Once again, the game has succeeded in this respect.

Game design. The game’s unique mechanics, like using units of M’s and F’s (Males and Females? Oh right, this game has something to do with gender!) to transverse walls or being able to navigate negative space or switching the pull of gravity, were interesting but also appeared out of the blue and didn’t require me to do any of my own thinking to use them. (PROCEDURALISM!) The only mechanic that felt organic and satisfying to discover was when you used those annoying crosses that shake the screen and bump you when you touch them, to ascend in a space without platforms. That wasn’t an obvious solution, yet it wasn’t impossible to figure it out. Discovering this solution felt satisfying. These moments were rare, though. The beginning of the garden level when you’re climbing the “tree” is a good example of a task that was difficult but not because it challenged your brain or even your platforming skills. In this section, your character must jump onto platforms that are hidden behind intangible blocks. When your character is behind these blocks you can’t see it. It’s just a frustrating process of trial and error— no skill or problem solving involved— to get to the top of this tree. And finally, the most egregious example of tedious trial and error processes is when you are collecting the M’s and F’s, which you previously used to teleport across walls to navigate the space, in the next section you have to rack up 13 M’s to progress. Why? How would anyone know to do that without by chance racking up 13 M’s? Did this make me feel lost and helpless in this game? Yes. Oh, also, you can’t die or return to the hub world without finishing the level or do anything out of sequence— aspects of the game that further revoke player freedom and control and make the player feel entrapped in the game.

Finally, Problem Attic provides no reward for progressing except to continue playing this frustrating game. There is nothing to collect (no points, no items), there are few real puzzles or fair platforming sequences (due to the horrible controls), so it doesn’t feel satisfying to overcome most of the challenges this game presents. I suppose feeling unsatisfied was a part of the developer’s life that she wanted to portray also.

So she made a game that made me feel lost, helpless, trapped, and dissatisfied, as I suspect she attempted to do. However, I can by no means say this project is successful as a video game. While I do believe video games are art and can convey profound emotions and experiences in an abstract way, I also believe they must be a satisfying experience for them to be worth playing. After all, I am spending a good chunk of my free time on these experiences.

I believe achieving a middle ground is possible— a game that abstractly represents a unique aspect of the human experience while being a rewarding and meaningful experience for the player. Braid is an example of such a game. It has abstract spaces and mechanics, but they are familiar enough to navigate and make sense of. The game offers rewards for completing puzzles in the form of collecting puzzle pieces that can eventually be assembled. There is also a story, which evokes emotions because of its content, not because it blatantly (and without context) says, “Go fuck yourself” or “I don’t know who I am.” (How angsty!) Braid was thought-provoking because of its story’s ambiguity and the subtle signaling interspersed throughout its original and satisfying gameplay. Problem Attic relies on one-to-one symbolisms (e.g. a male symbol that says “I hate you” next to it, beside a female symbol) and angsty outbursts like those quoted above to convey its “story arch.”

There is another game I have heard of that marries an abstract depiction of the human experience and rewarding gameplay. It is a critically acclaimed game called Celeste. From my understanding it is another 2D platformer, in which the protagonist’s goal is to get to the top of a mountain. The game subtly conveys that it reflects the experience of being depressed. As the protagonist progresses, the mountain becomes increasingly difficult to climb (i.e. the platforming becomes more difficult because it requires more precision and skill to navigate spaces with high densities of hazards). The increase in difficulty is meant to reflect the experience of being depressed, for as the disease of depression progresses, it becomes harder to achieve goals that were not as hard to achieve before the disease worsened. I’m sure this game had its share of frustrating moments too, because all challenging and satisfying games do, but a game with the main purpose of frustrating the player is barely a game at all. (I suppose it still could be considered one in a technical sense, but “game” since the dawn of the term has implied “fun.”)

I realize this is a very long post, and I doubt my posts will be this long in the future, but this game made me think about a lot of things… Thanks for reading!