The following contains spoilers for ANATOMY (2016).

Kitty Horrorshow’s first-person “walking simulator” horror ANATOMY (2016) remains a masterclass in subverting use of space in horror games. It is a horror game that has a thesis, and a theme! It does not want to distort itself with a lengthy runtime, extra characters, or irrelevant monstrosities. Rather than focusing on the potential monsters that lurk in broken homes, ANATOMY transforms the home itself – the space and structure and form of video game exploration itself – into horror. The game is centered around collecting tapes from around the house, and collecting them all grants you access to a short, fun little argument about what the modern space is.

The game argues that “[t]he anatomy of the house is such that this analogy is less superficial than at first it may seem. To carry it further, if we were to dissect a house as we might a human cadaver, we would find ourselves able to isolate and describe its various appendages and their functions in a decidedly anatomical fashion. There is even a fair number of direct comparisons to be drawn between those organs of a house and those of a human body” (transcribed by whereismywizardhat).

This direct comparison of the human body and the spaces that we explore is a powerful one, and it is powerful in ways that many other creators have examined in countless interesting ways. ANATOMY is a well-worn subject of critique. It’s also not hard to think of other games that use spaces in this way – Silent Hill (Konami) is an obvious contender, as is Pathologic (Ice Pick Lodge 2005), and The Void (Ice Pick Lodge 2008). When it comes down to it, the body we have is, well, the only body we have. We might be able to change it a bit, but it is the thing that sticks with us for our whole life, and how we navigate space and society changes a lot based on our own understanding of our body.

ANATOMY’s criticism, first and foremost, is about how spaces have the capacity to become haunted or monstrous based on the amount of time they lie abandoned. Anatomy’s house becomes bitter and feelings of abandonment and frustration swell up within it. What did I do wrong, the house asks, why was I not good enough?

The house’s appearance, at first, is innocuous enough. Aside from the fact it’s pitch black in its cavernous hallways, it seems like a fairly regular suburban house, with truly inspired interior decorating skills going on. Images of skeletal cats hissing at each other, Gothic-era paintings, and what looks like scraps from a zoologist’s handbook hang from framed pictures on the walls as you wander around. Some doors can’t be opened until you’ve listened to the right tape. It’s a linear exploration game, goading you deeper and deeper into the house, until, as the last tape snaps and hisses to a close, the game abruptly ends.

I am left reflecting on how spaces can tell us about ourselves, can reflect our worst fears. One of the game’s blurbs on the store page reads:

“I don’t sleep in my house anymore, because I’m afraid of what it’s going to do to me. [… Anatomy] scared me in a way that no video game ever has.” – CoolGhosts, “ ANATOMY: The Best Horror Game Ever”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j92V4RqnoIY

The link to that website no longer exists, but their YouTube video still stands. Is ANATOMY really the best horror game ever, as the video title claims? It’s not scary in the traditional horror game sense. There’s no grand reveal, or a sense of catharsis that comes from confronting a visible monstrosity, something that we can at least see as being defeatable. I think the above quote dips into the hyperbolic – “I don’t sleep in my house anymore”? – but it does speak to at least part of what Anatomy is getting at. The house is such a predominant modern construct. We all have, I think, our own relationship to what it is that a house, or a home, means to us. So when that space is unsafe – or at least when we recognize the capacity for feeling unsafe in one’s home – we are unsettled. Those who have never considered not being at home in a home are suddenly confronted with the misery of ANATOMY’s broken house, that desires a person to fill it.

In ANATOMY, a person’s individual understanding of the home is likely to be deconstructed or subverted, and so is one’s idea of the horror game as a vehicle for jumpscares. ANATOMY strings us along, building and building but never ever allowing the tension to deflate with a scripted jumpscare or a hideous but predictable monster. ANATOMY forces you to soak in its dread atmosphere. One player I showed the game to said that it didn’t look scary when watching, but when playing, it was genuinely discomforting. They didn’t want to play anymore after about ten minutes. The genuine uncertainty as to whether or not something is about to happen is upsetting. When replaying it this year, it reminded me of CONCLUSE (a game I hadn’t thought about in years) which is just slathered in darkness. Both work to make the player excessively paranoid, wanting nothing more than to just quit the damn game before something happens. It’s never clear what that something is, or even if something will happen, but nonetheless, that paranoia is there. Most people just quit the game or hand it over to another player in a group setting. When the game quits us out, do we dare advance the story by reopening it? The game decays more and more as we play, emphasizing the living ruin that is the modern home, the safe structure slowly wearing away the longer we inhabit (or don’t inhabit) it.

ANATOMY positions the human being within the home as ultimately subordinate to the space’s layout. We cluster in the living room; we are blood cells in the hallways; we cloister in our bedrooms, isolated and alone with our thoughts, and with the house. Space, ANATOMY argues, dominates our thoughts and pervades our fears. We have a tenuous, complex relationship with the spaces we design, the things that we create – and the ways that they can slowly begin to take us over. ANATOMY asks the question – what if there is nothing in the dark except our home? It makes us fear the idea that spaces are sentient in some way, or that spaces can grow beyond us. It makes us fear that our own minds can manifest horrors greater than anything else anyone else can imagine. The fear of the void, that eternal enemy, is everywhere. ANATOMY capitalizes on that at every opportunity, to make us afraid of space and people at the same time, even if we don’t bump into a single soul. 

You can buy ANATOMY from itch.io.