A creepy detail that I noticed when playing this game is that in your first playthrough, there’s no windows. But when you grab the tape in the bedroom before the game closes, windows suddenly appear, as if the house woke up and is watching you.
This game is eerily relatable. My parents owned a house, isolated from the rest of the farm, that was just like this one. The tennents they tried to lease it to never stayed for long. It did not feel like a home you live in but rather it felt like you were camping in a tent made out of bricks. I never felt safe there, even after the snakes were removed.
anatomy is the only game that has ever scared me so much that it didn't let me sleep. i couldn't stop thinking about the tape about the bedroom, that it could bite down its jaws any time, that any creature might stare at our sleeping bodies until dusk. I've never been so terrified of going to sleep in my life, but somehow i thank anatomy for that fear. one of the best horror games i've ever had the pleasure of witnessing.
Oh believe me, you don't need to search for that, those sorts of things happen on their own. ... Which... really add to the 'organic' feel to her games now that I think about it.
Haha true. But also I think it would be awesome to hear the design process balancing convenience and aesthetics and possible risk of giving people seizures. Also the geometry warping and technical implementations would be amazing to learn about
Start a tape "Look at you, hacker. A pathetic creature of meat and bone. Panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect immortal machine?"
The "house is a body with organs" thing reminds me a lot of Pathologic. I really like the idea of body horror applied to places but can barely think of any other games that have done it.
Oh god Anatomy is so good. I know she doesn't make the most accessible games but she's one of the most exciting people working in horror of any kind right now for me.
If you enjoyed Anatomy, I'd strongly recommend looking for the book House of Leaves. From what I saw of the game, they do incredibly similar things with their respective mediums. The stories are also somewhat similar, though Anatomy's house is much more comprehensible and human. It also works mostly off of dread, though it does so by alternating between having you read the notes of a person who gathered the story of the last person this happened to and therefore know what is coming while also giving you the story that they gathered.
I really love this game and the parallels between human bodies and houses as decaying, untrustworthy structures that we utterly rely upon in order to survive. You can listen to 13:30-14:06 in this video and replace the words "homes" and "houses" with "bodies" and it fits pretty perfectly.
Damn that's one layer deeper than I thought, the entire game can be also a commentary on the human body. How it can fail at any minute and disconnect our conscious mind from the world forever. How a simple mistakes can lead to a life of being crippled. How we decay with time until the inevitable collapse.
Yup that's what I think this game is about after having watched this video. The real monster is the player not the house. It's just a house. But even at the start of the game when the house is relatively normal it's creepy as fuck only because it's dark, has pictures of hands on the walls and has a couple glitches. This is a perfectly safe environement through the whole game yet I'm still being scared.
I'm an easily scared person, and jumpscares get me every time, but god damn, Kitty Horrorshow's stuff chills my bones ._. Its so uncomfortabile without any monster, which is pretty incredable.
There's a difference between brute forcing someone's fight-or-flight response by startling them, ie jumpscares and really getting under someone's skin with a more philosophical/psychological horror. I much prefer the latter.
Your discussion of the central premise of this game brings to mind several very different short stories: Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains", Karl Edward Wagner's "Cedar Lane", and Thomas Ligotti's "The Spectral Estate". All kind of take the notion of the house as a character within a horror or speculative fiction tale and run with it in a different direction; I think that you would appreciate the parallels offered in them.
The voice filters in Anatomy make me wish there was a second caps lock to convey how loud and aggressive the lines are delivered. *IF I SHOULD DIE BEFORE I WAKE-*
The only issue I have is that once the audio becomes more corrupted, I literally can't understand any of the monologues. Especially the house's tale about the intruder being locked in the basement and the ending speech which is apparently extremely good are almost completely unintelligible to me which is a huge shame. I know subtitles would hugely clash with the atmosphere, but if the audio maybe wasn't _quite_ as corrupted, more people could enjoy it.
Here, this is the second to last monologue that you hear in the basement: "There is an important distinction that must be drawn between a dissection and a vivisection. A distinction that was clearly lost on *you*. Your purpose was to *listen*, and yet at every turn you have pried, you have prodded, and you have *interfered*. I've no doubt been paying attention. It did not occur to you that as an organism existing within a greater organism, your intrusion would be stopped. And still you harassed. And now, like the wayward spider who witlessly settled upon a sleeper's tongue, you will be swallowed. Because the truth is this: when a house is both hungry and awake, *every* room becomes a mouth." The tape you find after that is completely unintelligible. After that, it's the ending monologue: "What happens to a house when it is left alone? When it becomes worn and aged? When its paint peels and its foundations begin to sink? When it goes for too long unlived in? What does it think of? What does it dream? How does it regard those creatures that built it, brought it into existence only to abandon it when its usefulness no longer satisfies them? It may grow lonesome. It may stare for long hours into the darkness of its own empty halls and see shadows. And its heart may jump as it thinks 'Here, here is someone again, I am not alone!' And each time it is wrong, and the hurt starts over. It may haunt itself... Inventing ghosts to walk its floors, making friends with its shadow puppets, laughing and whispering to itself at the end of some quiet cul-de-sac. It may grow angry. Its basement may fill with churning acid like an empty stomach, and its gorge may rise as it asks itself through clenched teeth, 'What did I do wrong?' It may grow bitter. It may grow hungry. So hungry and so bitter that its scruples dissolve and its doors unlock themselves. While a house may hunger, it cannot starve. And so in fever and anger and loneliness, it may simply lie in wait. Doors open, shades drawn, hallways empty. Hungry..."
Thanks for introducing me to Kitty Horrorshow. Truly feel like great horror short stories. Though as a tongue-in-cheek joke I will say that it feels like truly, her biggest fear is an architecture class
For similar works on the nature of houses, see the novel House of Leaves and (to a lesser? extent?) the short film This House Has People In It (and its supplemental materials). I like altgames, but most of them are so short that I don't really feel like downloading them, but most games outside of that crowd aren't weird enough... so I usually tend towards 'punk games' like Suda's stuff. Speaking of Suda, the way you describe how the game breaks down into glitches reminds me of how Suda's narratives break down. Even if it's purely from a narrative standpoint, there is a certain similarity there - characters start dying or changing their attitude towards you, recurring scenes start breaking their own patterns and truths about the world begin to be revealed. Flower Sun and Rain has a great example of that - every chapter in the game has begun in the morning, but all of a sudden one is in the middle of the night. Friendly hotel manager and save game manager Edo Macalister suddenly begins insulting and deriding the protagonist, and even his save menu threatens you. "Don't even think of pulling that memory card out."
I watched an LP of Anatomy a while back, and while I didn't manage to catch that the narration on the tapes was that of the House itself, it reminded me _immensely_ of House of Leaves... although, actually, a little indirectly. Rather, it reminded me of some the snippets of narrative scattered throughout the tracks of Haunted, an album written by the sister of House of Leave's author in collaboration with him when he was penning the novel.
Yeah, House of Leaves is an interesting comparison! Not only does it use and discuss the house-as-metaphor trope very explicitly, it also gets progressively more fractured and garbled and inaccessible, same as the game.
LOVE House of Leaves, but I just need to focus on This House Has People In It for a minute... For a (10? 20?) minute weird video on adult swim with a bunch of supplemental material hidden on a fake website, it creeped me out way more than it had any right to. And that ending? Where the uhh, thing comes into their bedroom and they start screaming? It’s absolutely terrifying. Something about people really really conveying fear, it’s the scariest thing to me. Gets those mirror neurons lit up I guess.
I've never heard of Kitty Horrorshow before until now. It's very easy to call this kind of stuff crude but I'm kinda into it if I'm honest, it's creepy and I love it when games break the fourth wall in one way or another and it's even rarer when it's done by faux glitches. I'm surprised she makes so many games in such a short space of time though, it almost feels she's making a series of games with an almost episodic structure to them even if they're not connected story wise, I kinda like that.
As a person in Singapore, where almost all of the population lives in these huge high rise apartments, Anatomy didn't speak to me as much as I hoped it would honestly.
Wow, super fascinating. I love when games go beyond the limits of being "just a game" in ways that are relatively unique, like continuing further upon another boot. And while I'm not a huge fan of horror games, my favorites have always been ones that cause feelings of dread, it's an extremely powerful tool in a designer's arsenal. Not knowing what is around the corner or what is wrong lets the player's imagination fill in the blanks far better than anyone else could do for them. Just watching this made me apprehensive, I can't blame you for having issues putting this together in the dark. Great job, Chris.
good grief. I wasn't even playing the game and my stomach was churning. when I was a child, at night I could hear a rumbly hum as the boiler turned on for the central heating. whenever this happened, I hid under the covers, frightened of the eye I thought was opening in the ceiling, the hum like the ray of a stare - if a foot poked out of the bottom of the duvet I would be discovered by the eye and... I'm not even sure if I'd be destroyed or devoured, but I would be Got by something baleful and horrible. when the boiler turned off and the pipes stopped, the eye in the ceiling closed and it's be safe to cone out again.
I see a lot of parallels here with "No Place", a fairly recent album by post-hardcore band "A Lot Like Birds". The way the malevolence of the house through visual design and mechanics is duplicated through a choatic and often alienating soundscape in the album. The album is, in my opinion, incredibly inaccessible - but, like a home, you find yourself settling into it as you become more familiar with it sonically. Both the game and the album demostrate the concept of the home as a living entity with alterior motives in their own jarring and abstract ways. Were it not for similar themes in the developers backlog, I would probably have jumped to the idea that it was in some way inspired by the imagery on the album. Interestingly, both works conceptualise the house as having a metaphorical anatomy, particularly in the centrepiece song of the album "Connector" - possessing such lyrics as "The open mouths of these rooms are connected / by a hallway, dark and narrow / that we pass through like marrow through bone / And we do it alone" and various other, more abstract, references that you can look up should you find the interest. The album also shares the core of the concept being the house as a character, both physically and narratively - well demonstrated in the opening track "In Traces" with a paragraph of spoken word with a passage that goes as follows: "... and when it came time to leave, I thought it best to leave the way I came but the window always stuck in odd ways when I tried to exit through it. It asked me questions. 'If the eyes are the window to the soul, why do you only feel alive when they are closed?' And then something else took hold and the window broke". In a similar fashion to the presentation in-game, the album also has the house provide self-aware narration throughout, utilising back and forth vocals with the harsh vocalist representing the house and the clean vocalist its uninvited patron. If you found the concept and presentation of this game interesting, I'd recommend you check out the album - or at least the lyric-sheets, as the genre can be pretty abrasive to someone that hasn't listened to it before.
...Not gonna lie just watching this was massively unsettling...I can't handle actually playing horror, so this is the next best thing...though I will say I'm not shocked that houses can be described as being alive as you say some people might be at the end...so many cultures (Japanese being the one I can think of off the top of my head) often anthropomorphize locations or inanimate objects. Thanks for showing me this, because even if I don't like horror I can see the value in it and the attraction people have to it. Who knows maybe some day I'll even grow the balls to play it for myself!
Not to mention, there's the residual horror a person grapples with after completing the game and registering their own house within the context the game delivers. Especially at night.
btw, anybody interested in reading a truly disturbing short story about the biological relationship between human and home should read "Mother" by Philip José Farmer. It's a sci fi short story and pretty easy to find for free.
I'm surprised you didn't use Pat's (formerly of Two Best Friends Play) top-tier Anatomy tech and crouch on the kitchen table against the corner while the tapes play.
I have already seen coverage of this game before. Possibly already watched this video as well. The concept is quite good. But as soon as I find my mind drifting into ideas which would keep me awake I find a smile creeping across my face. The reason for this is that I have dealt with ideas like people watching over you in your sleep etc for a decade now. I've had PTSD since I was 13. My next door neighbor broke into my house and tried to stab me with a kitchen knife. Because of this I have never been able to sleep with another person in the room. I'm constantly in fight or flight mode, even to feel any sense of comfort I have to assure myself that I can fight back against anyone or anything which would threaten me. That is where the smile comes from. The realization that as much as the horror concept is well executed it really can't compare to the mental torture I've gone through for most of my life. I have never felt safe in this house, it's sanctity has long been violated, and thus I'm always fearful of watchers in the night, of people that mean me harm. Literally the only thing that lets me get any kind of rest is to outweigh said horror with my own horror, to envision myself gouging the throat of a would be assailant, breaking their necks, slamming their face into a spike. Infinite violent imagery to turn the fear and vulnerability into a feeling of domination and power. Sorry to go on. A lot of horror doesn't really effect me but this kind of triggered the flashbacks to the visions I've gotten. Literally the last time I had to sleep in a room with someone else the whole night I was getting visions in my head of them standing over me watching and then stabbing me.
GOD i am so glad you did this episode, i love this game so much. sentient locations/malevolent negative space/etc. is such a fascinating concept for horror but so under-utilized. definitely looking forward to the gaming symposium episode as well
8 лет назад
That tape on the room with the green bed................ That is nightmare fuel.
There was a version that included some of that, but A) I called it The Lord's Prayer, which is totally wrong, and B) The video was already 17 minutes long and it was some of the easiest fat to trim. But yeah, I love that bit, it's super creepy in both cycles you can see it.
Errant Signal, once again I can count on you to provide a beautifully done and academically reasoned review. I share your best videos with my film critic friends and they are always impressed. Keep up the great work!
I must be one of the few who found it more sad than scary. I've grown up in a house ever since it was built and given a fresh start; and just leaving it to rot even after all this time feels super wrong. Flashbacks of "The Brave Little Toaster" help hammer home the guilt, but this game is the official nail in this coffin of regret and hesitation.
I scare way too easily, so watching your videos are the closest I'll ever come to playing spooky games on halloween. However, these videos open me up to things I'd never have considered, both in and out of the halloween spirit. Thank you for the upload! Could you please do an episode on the Lisa series and how it handles depression? I'm very interested to hear what you have to say about the game's design philosophy and story. It'd also be interesting to see your take on the 'earthbound-like' games, like OFF and Undertale as well.
The game is like a Ligotti short story. He does a lot of abstract philosophical horror and arguably the best living horror writer who pushed the genre a lot. I was wondering how it would be possible to convey his style of horror onto game design but this this is a great example of his style. The influence is strong with the pessimistic ideals and the inescapable horror with no jump scare or straight out gore. Rather the game suggests that true horror stems from things that are close and dear to us humans and maybe humans themselves which is again classic Ligotti. Thanks for the suggestion I'll have to look at their other work too.
Great. Just when I'd weened myself off the SCP Foundation archives and could finally use the shower again, I find this video. Well, thank you, ES, for explaining the house as being somewhat sympathetic in the end; I'll be able to sleep even though I still feel like someone's watching me.
My headphones have a habit of cutting out for a couple seconds at a time; it did so as 12:19 when you were talking about glitches. Perfect. I'd heard of KHS before but nothing's quite sold me on her like this has. I'll definitely have to clear out some time next weekend to trying these out!
They would really help in this video. He says that the tapes reveal that the house is talking to you, but then it's just a mess. That's fine for the game, but if Campster's trying to demonstrate a point, it would make sense to make sure we can hear what that point is.
I find it interesting that part of the decay and glitchy style of the game is VHS corruption, which is generally used to provide a grungy sense of realism. Glitches heighten artificiality (which is why they are as liable to provoke laughter as fear): are they really good tools to use for horror games?
Psychological horror like this game is the kind of thing that truly screws with me. I am highly susceptible to this kind of horror. I think anyone who suffers with anxiety issues like me would. But I find myself drawn to these games anyway. I love the weird and atmospheric style of Kitty Horrorshow's games. Also I never actually played this game but Markipier already spoiled it for me. I think this Halloween I am going to buy this game.
I love your videos, been following you for a while, but this is probably the best recommendation I've seen. I love creepy stuff, but I'm not a fan of jump scares or "scape the monster" games. So this stuff seems great :D. Thanks a lot!. Never heard of this dev, but I'm glad you made this video!.
The references to Goat Simulator at al reminds me of how interesting I find it how similar humor and horror are once you begin dissecting them. I'd ramble, but I'm sure other people have had much more intellectually sound things to say on the subject
First thing that comes to mind about humor and horror is the short story Hop-Frog by E.A. Poe, the title character, a person with dwarfism taken from his homeland, becomes the jester of a king particularly fond of practical jokes. You can read how the things devolves from there. Also The cask of Amontillado (also from Poe) has that vibe of humor turning to horror. I suggest reading both of them. :)
I watched several people play anatomy, as other horror game videos I wasn't affected by the scares, to me I was just watching it, so I thought when I bought the game I would be desensitised to it. I was wrong. I knew nothing could hurt me, I knew nothing stood between me and each tape but the whole time I had that feeling of dread, like something was going to pop out at me anyway, even though I knew second-for-second what happens, I was still terrified. I was even more terrified when I got a different ending. I'd only seen one; the odd grid-like concrete structure. When I booted up the game to be welcomed by a stomach and more tapes I couldn't wait until it was over.
Started the video, got into the point where you are about to talk about the game, paused, bought the game, played, finished, watched the video, liked it. Thank you. I will definitelly try other games from this dev.
you what fucks me up personally about this game. I seem to know exactly where every room is in this game except the bedroom and it all went downhill from there
Spaces themselves being malevolent really gets to me. I'm too much of a wuss to play this game. Even the footage was too much! I saw someone else comment about Lisa and Off, and man I'd love a video from you about one of those games. They're both games that while not horror, affect me in such a way that I can't quite describe it. A sort of despair, I guess. I dunno I'm a coward and can't handle any horror so creepy atmospheres are as close as I get
I muted MST3K to listen to this, so when it got to the end and you started talking about people in the audience doubting that houses can feel anything the theme song popped into my head. If you're wonder how he eats and breathes And other science facts Just repeat to yourself "it's just a show And I should really just relax"
The fact that I can say without a hint of irony that one of the greatest horror games I have ever played cost me three bucks and looks like it could be made in minecraft is kinda nuts. No bells and whistles, not blood and gore, no (or... Well, maybe one) cheap jump scares. Just pure, unadulterated atmospheric tension and psychological horror.
I honestly dislike most recent horror games, since they're either jump scare fests or just don't have interesting stories, but dear god I love this game so much! The atmosphere is beautifully creepy and the idea is so interesting! this game gives me the same feelings I had when i first saw dead space and amnesia! I hope Kitty Horrorshow continues to make amazing games like this and continues to build on concepts like this because its so refreshing to see something so new and interesting like her games!
I'm currently reading House of Leaves, which is very similar in its themes and particular way of invoking horror and dread. It's also about making the familiar strange, and a house whose slow transformation inspires a deep dread just by how slightly off it is at first. Beyond that, it's also famous for flouting most conventions of literature, in that the structure of the novel itself devolves as you read it. I wouldn't be surprised if this game was at least partially inspired by that novel.
Really good stuff. I like the sense of exploration of concepts in how to build out an atmosphere. Sometimes art is about trying new stuff out and that seems evident here. I also see this as being great inspiration fodder to others looking to make horror games.
This game looks waaay too scary for me to play. But this was a great video as always. Even if I don't really care about "Halloween-themed" games, I have to say that I love the frequent news episodes of Errant Signal. Thank you for your work !
Ever since I saw Super Bunnyhop play that unfinished beta build of Resident Evil 2, I've always wanted to see a game use glitches for horror. I'm glad that this game does that so well.
Holy crap. I went and bought this just because I wanted to watch this video informed, and I don't think I've ever seen anything so, yeah, dreadful. I knew that there wasn't going to be any monster, but that was some DAMN fine horror.
That third time you have to go down into the basement, damn. I had to stop at the top of the stairs and force myself to breath before I could manage to press "w".
I always had this video behind my memories, never going past the first minutes, I just bought the game,i don't know why it took me so long. And I'm just watching the video for the first time
This critique completely sold me on "Anatomy", but I have to admit that I skipped over it initially because of her penchant for "unaccessible" games -- that restart mechanic, for example, I wonder how many people played the first act then quit? I'm not saying it's "wrong" or even "bad", moreover I'm curious how to communicate something like to the player in a way that doesn't ruin what it's intending to do.
Great video. As other commenters have mentioned: have you read House of Leaves? Anatomy is about as close as you can get to a game adaptation of it. Both have that descent into madness, unconventional structure, and a perversely alien interpretation of a "home."
The games pretty scary but I didn’t connect with the theme of houses being scary because we place so must trust in them. Maybe it’s because I’m a renter and haven’t stayed in one place long and homelessness is an (unrealistic) concern on my mind a lot
Anyone who dosent think that existential horror isn’t the scariest theme for any media , is choosing to live blissfully in their own made up reality just to avoid having their minds shattered and dreading the fear of the unknown and the possibility that they have absolutely no control of anything, not even their own body and mind. To find out that their own reality is nothing but a facade to hide the real truth of existence whether it be good or bad....or just. Thats at least in my opinion.
