Liminal Spaces and the Source Engine 

I feel like VR has so much untapped potential for this type of game. The immersion factor is unreal, literally and figuratively.

Your description of being alone in a house normally bustling with members of your family at 6:19 really struck a chord with me. I had a very similar experience around a year ago. Throughout the couple days I was alone in the house, I spent more time in places I usually just passed through. I let the ambience of the house really sink in. During times when I would try to distract myself with video games or movies, I always found myself peering over my shoulder at the empty house around me. It was eerily quiet. Your line mentioning how the silence was always louder than the TV was particularly true for me during this time. The lonely, empty atmosphere of the house was suffocating, and no false company from RU-vid videos or anything else could cut through it. That part of the video really brought me back to that time with your vivid descriptions. Really well done.

0:47 We're no strangers to love You know the rules and so do I (do I) A full commitment's what I'm thinking of You wouldn't get this from any other guy I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling Gotta make you understand Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you We've known each other for so long Your heart's been aching, but you're too shy to say it (say it) Inside, we both know what's been going on (going on) We know the game and we're gonna play it And if you ask me how I'm feeling Don't tell me you're too blind to see Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you We've known each other for so long Your heart's been aching, but you're too shy to say it (to say it) Inside, we both know what's been going on (going on) We know the game and we're gonna play it I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling Gotta make you understand Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

Some of the long stretches of Half Life 2 give me this feeling. The "resistance" feels spread extremely thin most of the time, and you can get pretty lonesome flying solo between encounters with friendly NPCs or outposts. Many places give that "off" vibe, and the feeling of former occupation.

exploring vast gmod maps is one of my favorite things to do now. these maps are pieces of art and i’ll spent hours staring at two tables and some chairs.

Growing up at the tail end of most source-era multiplayer games, and just not being a very social kid, I realized the liminality and eerie isolation in games like Garry's Mod were my normal. Whenever I'd load into a popular map, there wasn't a feeling that I was once there among friends, but it felt like I was walking around some quiet tomb of people who came before me.

I love it when youtube just randomly recommends awesome&small channels like this. Very good video!

I don't know if it's because I'm familiar with source, but I've never felt anything like this on any map. I usually just ignore anything with the word liminal in it because that's usually a red flag that means "very low effort, cookie-cutter empty rooms and halls with poor texture work". (especially for Gmod) Neat video though

Half-Life 2 was released the year I graduated high school and it impresses me how well the Source engine has held up after 20 years. My custom built PC, which was new at the time, could chug along at 30-45 fps on medium - high settings. The liminal space feeling of exploring multiplayer maps wasn't apparent to me then, either. But when I think back on a different game, Delta Force 2 (released in 1999), which was all outdoor maps, there was one multiplayer server (provided by the developer Novalogic) named "Doormat" that could host up to 50 players. You heard guns blasting and bullets constantly whizzing by your head every second. You could run away into the infinite and repeating outer perimeter of the spawn points and snipe, if you were lucky. As years went by, the servers were taken down as the game lost its popularity and now all you can hear is the ambient sound of wind and the occasional vulture or eagle when you explore the maps on your own, waiting for players to join. Now that's an eerie feeling especially since it was a very pixelated game.

im an old man and that kid kane really did a good job on all his videos so far.

I used to work for a major fruit-processing company in California, and every so often it was my turn to be the manager on duty for 3rd shift weekend sanitation - saturday night/sunday morning, I mostly caught up on paperwork and drove the golf cart around while the weekly cleanup of the plant was going on. However, being the manager on duty meant that I needed to be the last one out of the building. That facility was 20+ acres *indoors*, and I needed to do a lap to make sure the lights were shut off and everyone was out. THAT WAS THE SCARIEST THING I'VE EVER HAD TO DO. It's been more than a decade since I worked there and it still makes my skin crawl.

0:48 god damn, didn't expect to get rickrolled there

What I don’t like about many of the videos and games about the backrooms is that they often treat it like horror. It is not, and it should not. It should not scare you, it shouldn’t be terrifying. It should simply be uncomfortable. These ideas are especially incompatible with the idea of the backrooms, which relies on the idea of being expansive but featureless, which doesn’t work well with any form of entertainment.

Years ago I was afraid to play GMOD alone on a map. I'm still a little scared.

With a video of this quality i expected away more subscribers but wow, you deserve more subsribers

I love seeing peoples videos on this topic, getting to see what others feel about a topic i love is amazing. ive went on some liminal maps on gmod in vr. reminds of this time i was in a liminal map, opened a door and then forgot i was in vr for like 2 seconds, an amazing feeling.

Playing this game in VR would probably give people panic attacks.

No way I'm getting recommended someone making really high quality videos at only 150 subs, you're gonna have a lot more really soon

Small correction correction: It's still correct to say that Source is a heavily modified version of the Quake engine, since it's a heavily modified version of GoldSrc, Valve tends to base their engines/games off of previous engines/games. Technically Half-Life Alyx is a Quake mod.

Hey, man, just wanted to comment that your content is great and I hope your channel gets the attention it deserves. :)

Well this channel is about to blow up

glad i was recommended this! i’ll be subscribing, hope you make it big one day! :)

so when i was already working and playing half life 2 you were a 1 year old baby??? man i feel old 🙁

This doesn't feel like something that is made from a 500 subscribers channel hot damn, really underrated channel.

Games are some of the most immersive form of media and I feel sound and ambiance has a big part in that! That game looks real! It looks just like the video! I've been exploring this type of topic and it's crazy how much stuff out there can be creepy. Maps in games while alone especially! Sound is part of that too!. The ambiance, man! That's probably why the backrooms thing is so popular at the moment. Our imagination takes the wheel and we fear the uncanny and eerie unknown. Good stuff, man! 😅👍🏻

0:47 something is not going to give me up here.

I really hate that everyone's first answer is "it's weird because you are remembering the community". I just got my wife into gaming (I've been playing games since the early 90s) and she got into an empty TF2 lobby and commented how weird it all felt. Like she was being watched the whole time. She has never been a part of a game community. Barely even played games at all, but she felt it. It's gotta be something deeper.

I only feel nostalgia and a want to explore with these things

0:46 oh god damnit

how does this not have hundreds of thousands of views

Kenopsia only makes it clear how we humans actually evolved to live in community and with company... not only emotionally, but also biologically (genetically, neuronal, chromosomal and everything you want to add to it), we are designed to NOT BE ALONE and Being alone for too long just MAKES YOU CRAZY. I think the longest we can really be alone, even if we hold out... is a year (but I'm not sure if that's correct or real).

Oh, I´m really glad that I found you this early on your way to greatness :D I enjoyed the video, hope other content will come out soon enough. 😬

0:47 Isn't this the set from the "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video?

You wanna play the true king of liminal spaces? Try Trespasser from 1998.

How do you *not* have more subs? oml

how was the camera of that game so right feeling, other than when you stoped moving your mouse it all almost looked like a handheld recording

this channel only has 230 subs?? i expected so much more from the quality of these vids

Portal radio loop 10hr

I'll be honest I've played the source engines games without friends for an actual dogs age so I don't really find it's games very scary.

@0:47 never gonna give

0:47 never gonna give

Source games have a feeling; i came here to listen to you talk about that feeling. What i got was a review of a scary game & honestly i'm not dissapointed. It gives me retrospective on what could make a good game or movie. Thanks Benjy

somebody let this blud know of the half life series 💀

This is truly content

What's with the liminal space thing in source??? i've seen like 50 videos about this recently, at least every video touches on different things

0:47 Subtle rickroll.

Wait so you're 18!?!? Dude we're the same age :3

you need more views, and subscribers, and likes

0:47 Bro -.-

1 year and 2 days later

Yeah I liked ya costume

spoopy

nice

youtube is starting to recommend small channels it seems

Wow man you have the same age of me !

0:47 ?usu

i agree

yet another youtuber is milking this topic, seriously? yall should make the video about aesthetics of source movement because it gave lots of gamemodes like bhop, surf, hns, kz, trikz, propkill etc.

genuinely surprised to see this channel is so small. can’t wait to watch it grow

how do you only have 196 subscribers? i clicked on this video expecting hundreds of thousands of views, you're severely underrated

5:43 Source was not made from the Quake engine. You're thinking of GoldSource (GoldSRC), the engine that the original 1998 Half-Life runs on. GoldSource was a modified Quake II engine (not a modified Quake I engine).

Gordon freeman is the most traumatized character in hl2 so they made source engine scary to make player feel like Gordon freeman

I'm always happy to see more people making content in the source sphere, and your style is definitely promising but, this topic has really been done to death man. I can see this vid will probably do well but I really would love to see you tackle something a little less worn out.

Honestly half life 2 gives me this feeling way more then portal, once you are out of city 17 seeing the world completely still and abandoned, with the only constant signs of life being combine, who are practically not human anymore, and also zombies and headcarbs is really unnerving, I especially get this feeling on highway 17 and water hazard

wow man, what a video, rarely i feel engaged so much when someone is explaining a situation or a particular feeling, you’re such a good talker and from what i understood you were born in ‘03 just like me! So even more points from me xD

great video, keep making these. you deserve way more subscribers!

Damn this is high quality. I hope to see your channel grow in the future

btw the complex was made with unreal

I... don't understand. I love horror concepts in general but no matter what I do, I cannot understand the "kenopsia" effect you guys are affected by. I've played Source games throught all my life and I love them. When I load a gm_city like you did, I feel at ease exactly because there are background sounds. Feels like there are people somewhere, out there. It feels like an alive city. I love the Ratman dens on Portal because you know there have been other people around. If anything, gives me hope. So I swear, I don't feel the same you guys do about backrooms and etc in general. I'm confused, to say the least.

I think it also has to do with the assets themselves. The vast majority of Valve's games have dirty/grungy models, textures and sounds. When these assets are used by the community you end up with maps like rp_downtown_v2. It's a town with fully modeled interiors, there are ambient sounds that indicate that there's stuff going on just out of reach, and most of the surfaces around the town are really dirty as if there were people living there until you arrived at the map. Compare that to the maps in S&box, which usually use mediocre custom assets or Facepunch's own assets instead of Valve ones. It feels like a sterilized, roblox-ified version of gmod lol.

It's kind of neat that everyone lately's had this same feeling towards source I know of- ever since all the 12-year-olds got a hold of the backrooms concept and essentially ruined it with lore and creatures and extra floors where it needed none, it's always good to see alternatives pop up that actually understand that the absolute loneliness and that feeling of total dread and suspense is a far creepier and fulfilling experience than being chased for three miles by what just kinda looks like a lamp post covered in wires

Your channel reminds me of a quote, dress for the job you want not for the job you have. Your quality is as good as any channel with 100k subscribers .

wow the storytelling in this video was really good, i didnt want to skip in any parts but just to watch from start to end - very nice))

yeah for gmod I spawn an NPC in just so I can keep my mind off the loneliness

That was source but can goldsrc be like source with this liminality?

kinda like loading a singleplayer tf2 map on 2fort

We are all alone. But at least we are alone together.

Ur artstyle is so cute ur getting a sub :3

I actually liked this video a lot bruv

Lots of effort in this video, u definitely deserve more subs :))

How do you only have 351 subscribers? You deserve much more!

Glad to see one of your videos blow up :) keep it up

for some reason i clicked for liminal spaces in source only got a bit of it

Well made video

you have potential, keep going

A113!

I've been alone all my life. it feels good and it's not as dramatic as many people think it is

Man’s never been home alone before 😂

The first FEAR game was really good at this I think, empty offices after work hours, the night sky above the silent city with only distant sounds

2:24 bro got scared by The Complex: Found Footage it's just liminality, there's one part at the beginning to make you think there's a monster but it's just nearly endless wandering

when it's late, everybody goes asleep nobody is in any room and it's dark with few lights anywhere.

Honestly, the most eerie feeling I ever got playing source games was when I played alone on gm_construct in gmod, I don't know why, but that map is just unsettling, something feels wrong

reminds me of this film i watched 11 years ago on the horror channel about a woman who was afraid of looking into open areas but that had jump scares i think. she would stay indoors and keep her eyes glued to the wall as she ent from room to room in her house. maybe is a false memory, idk i remember it being scarier before the reveal

how do you only have 586 subs thats crazy

i feel not enough people mention of empty it feels play the first 2 doom games i mean you turn off the music and walk around the empty level when you finish everything

I’ve gotten used to the loneliness of gmod. Mainly because I have one friend and my computer is not good enough for multiplayer

Another day, another video about liminal spaces and Source - that's 2022 alright.

My dad died when I was ten so im only with one person in my home usually and yet i still feel extreme kenopsia when im home alone

0:48 Did not expect to be Rick-Rolled. Bravo to you.

You were blessed by the algorithm. Congrats!