“It tries to unnerve rather than terrify”
Detention is a moody, beautiful indie horror game
THIS MONTH
Held his breath and wondered where everyone went.
ALSO PLAYED
Owlboy, Conan Exiles
Aboy falls asleep in class, and wakes to find the class empty, and the school haunted by strange creatures. As far as hooks for a horror game go, that’s pretty good. Detention is a point-and-click adventure developed by a small team based in Taiwan. It’s set there in the 1960s, when the country was under martial law, an episode I don’t think a game has touched before. The localisation does a good job of explaining some of the more obscure references, but really this is just a good old-fashioned ghost story with a sinister, subdued atmosphere.
You can’t fight the creatures. To get past them you have to hold your breath, but can only do so for a limited time. Hold it too early and you might exhale right next to an enemy, often a deadly mistake. But it’s the puzzles that really test you, recalling the obscure riddles from early survival horror games— particularly the first SilentHill. The boy teams up with a partner and the pair desperately try to figure out where everyone is, why the river outside the school is running red with blood, and why the only bridge out of the grounds has been mysteriously destroyed.
The hand-drawn backgrounds and characters are beautiful, similar to the work of Japanese horror master Junji Ito. There’s an understated elegance to them, and it’s remarkable how much atmosphere the artists have managed to squeeze into a 2D plane. After a slow-burning first hour, things begin to get much weirder. Disturbing imagery, a haunting Akira Yamaoka-inspired soundtrack, and a rumbling sense of unease make it a disarmingly powerful horror experience. There are few, if any, jump scares, which is refreshing. It tries to unnerve rather than outright terrify.
school’s out
Detention was released without much fanfare, but word has been spreading ever since, and the game currently boasts an “overwhelmingly positive” user rating on Steam—and for good reason. It’s a fairly standard point-andclick adventure, but it does wonderful things with atmosphere, tension, pacing, and world-building. And of the many horror games I’ve played over the years, this is the first in a while to channel the distinctive feel of the early SilentHill games.