Where They Live

Introduction

Where They Live was created by a husband and wife team as an entry for the 2015 Write a Game Jam. The goal of this jam was to create a short game under 20 minutes in length that dealt with the themes of emotional abuse, fear of abandonment, and living with mental illness. Sadly, Where They Live doesn't address some of these topics very well for a variety of reasons.

For starters the game is far shorter then it needed to be. According to the rules of the contest every entry in the contest should be under 20 minutes in length so that they judges can play through the entire game in order to judge it with a recommendation for shorter games if they contained multiple branching paths. As it stands Where They Live clocks in at under eight minutes in length and doesn't contain any branching paths which makes the short run-time of the game rather odd in my opinion. I suppose the team behind this game were worried about running out of time or misunderstood the rules, but the short nature of this game makes it difficult to explore some of the themes in a way that can be understood by the player.

Theme - Emotional Abuse

As mentioned previously this game struggles to comment on some of the themes very well, but the one it addresses the best is emotional abuse in my opinion. The game starts out with James standing outside of the house listening at the door while Melanie's parents yell at her for being hateful and selfish. While this scene on its own doesn't establish a history of emotional abuse. Some of the other content in the game seems to hint at the parent's being Christian fundamentalists or Christian scientists that are abusing their daughter for taking the "Devil's medicine" to treat her condition when she should be relying on the power of prayer to cure her.

Though even this theme feels a bit weak since none of the Bibles are open to passages about divine healing or the unmitigated power of prayer. This is made even worse when you realize that not everyone is aware of cases involving parent's that killed their child by relying on prayer over modern medicine. So some people may be unable to draw a connection between the opening scene and the parent's religious affiliation.

Theme - Fear of Abandonment

The game doesn't really feel like it addresses this theme at all. While Melanie's parents make a comment to James about giving up on her. It's never made clear if Melanie is even aware of her parent's decision to abandon her much less that she is worried about her parent's simply dropping her off somewhere and never returning for her.

Theme - Living with Mental Illness

Much like the previous theme the game doesn't really feel like it addresses this topic. Maybe the various enemies in the game are meant to serve some sort of symbolic purpose, but what they symbolize isn't clear in my opinion. So much so that I didn't even think about them being symbolic until I read Corfaisus's review.

And, I'd argue the only reason it's clear that Melanie's medicine is for treating mental illness is because of the game's summary. If it wasn't for that I would be easily justified in believing that she was taking medicine for diabetes or HIV.

Conclusion

Where They Live doesn't feel well told in my opinion. While the game claims to address the topics of emotional abuse, fear of abandonment, and living with mental illness the game doesn't really feel like it brokers two of the three topics. As it stands I'd only recommend this game if you were looking for a short title that you can beat in under ten minutes.