“There’s nothing as frightening as an ex who can’t let go”
The horrors of being a woman on the internet in Sim ula cra
There’s an old saying that we’re at our best when we’re in love. But unless you’re very self-assured in a relationship, you can easily feel possessive and emotionally needy, constantly checking your phone to see if the other person has messaged you and feeling hurt whenever they spend time with someone else. Going through a breakup can be even worse. There’s nothing as frightening as an ex who can’t let go. Horror game Simulacra perfectly captures the feeling of a breakup, and the fear of trying to meet someone new. Kaigan Games designed Simulacra to look like the interface on a smartphone, which you discover belonged to a woman called Anna. Anna is in the throes of a messy breakup with Greg, whom she caught cheating on her after looking at his texts. Anna has gone missing, and it’s up to you to piece together the clues on her phone and work out what could have happened to her.
Greg is the ex who just can’t move on. His messages to Anna go from cool and superior (it was really her fault for looking at his texts in the first place) to outraged (how dare she treat him this way). He is a man who manipulates every interaction to cast himself as the victim.
Before she went missing, Anna also joined a dating app called Spark, a play on Tinder where you swipe left or right on potential matches. If you’ve ever tried a dating site, or been a woman on social media, you’ll empathize with the messages that flood Anna’s inbox. The cheesy jokes and failed attempts at flirting are bad enough, but the sexual aggression (one man talks openly about wanting to eat her out) is chilling, and casts a shadow over Anna’s hope of meeting someone who will treat her well.
This distrust of men slips into real life, too, when you find out that a colleague of Anna’s has been sending her inappropriate messages about the way she dresses. When Anna calls him out on it, his response reveals a disconnect with the way a woman would feel. “You’re making a big deal out of this. I can’t even tell you you’re pretty?” Nothing could feel more relevant in the time of #MeToo.
A glass darkly
Just playing the game makes you feel like a creepy ex. Poring over each message and lingering over her photos plays into the internet’s most voyeuristic urges: Social media allows us peeks into who someone is, but to see what they keep private cracks open another layer. It initially feels good, and then just feels sickening.
At its most basic, Simulacra is a horror game about a missing girl, but it says so much about being a woman on the internet, especially at a time when stories of abuse are being shared. Are people who we think they are? And how do we move on from a relationship when the other person is always watching?
Just playing the game makes you feel like a creepy ex