The Rats in the Walls [Shilov]

The Rats in the Walls is an adventure game by Shilov.

It's an adaptation of the Lovecraft story (with The Cat, you know, though he makes no appearance here) of the same name, as you might expect. As an adventure game, it is entirely about walking, though it tries occasionally to trick you into thinking it's about the story or the occasional non-narrative fetching it requires of you; luckily, the walking is neat.

It's also a game with a strangeness to its controls; one moves with the arrow keys, interacts with the F key, and continues with the space bar, always accompanied by the SPACE TO SKIP prompt. There's an obvious way to streamline this -- which is taken advantage of (to a degree) in Shilov's cancelled followup adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness -- which, in its obviousness, creates the illusion of intention. Or, at least, the tension of mediums, or the reflection of Lovecraft's own purple tendencies in the implementation of the adaptation.

There, too, are, in this game, the restrictions imposed by assets; particularly, art. It is a game of static environments in which the avatar breathes, which itself is worth watching. And the walking is neat. But this labor intensive stasis is perfect for the tale, especially in the ways it fails it. Which is, perhaps, the lesson.

[10/23/2014]