I have written at length about horror games , what makes them work and not work , and how, every time I play one, I feel like I’m rolling the dice. It makes me generally avoid the genre, because, while the highs are very high, the lows are very low, and it feels valid to want to avoid subjecting myself to some of the worst games out there.

But the highs are so very, very high.

Always a promising start to any game.

Detention is a horror point and click, a combination that should have left me running the other way, and yet which is potentially the best execution of both that I have ever played. You play as a girl named Ray, trapped in a Taiwanese school, and trying to figure out what’s going on as things become more and more unsettling around you.

The challenge of this game is not in its mechanics. The mechanics are straightforward point and click mechanics, with Ray accumulating objects through exploring the world, and then using those objects to move into new areas and make new discoveries. While there are enemies, these are closer to set dressing than actual combats, helping set the mood and establish this game as a uniquely Taiwanese one. No, the thrill of Detention comes not from combats or any particular gameplay element. Instead, the thrill of this game comes from following Ray and uncovering the horror of her world and why she’s stuck in this school.

The art style is fantastic, by the way. Not sure if I said that yet, but I do want to call that out.

Detention takes place during the White Terror, a forty year period of Taiwanese history marked by martial law and the violent repression of those deemed “enemies of the state.” Throughout this period, thousands of people were executed as suspected Communists, or for expressing opinions in opposition to the leading political party, the Kuomintang (KMT). It, like so many other repressive regimes, is a horror in and of itself, and exploring it through a game has an innate potential.

Detention absolutely understands and uses this potential to its fullest, coupling the horror of an authoritarian regime with Taiwanese folklore to create a uniquely Taiwanese tableau of death and destruction. This, and the exploration of what living under this sort of regime actually meant to the people in it, is already a fantastic combination.

Detention, however, doesn’t stop at showing the player the horror of authoritarianism. It instead humanises the experience by having the player see it through the eyes of a teenage girl, and in so doing, drives home the absolute existential horror that a regime like the White Terror actually is for those subjected to it.

Okay, but teenage girls are still melodramatic.

In my Arruyo review, I talked about how part of the horror of a game set in a time of atrocity is reckoning with the role any given person played in that atrocity, and what actions - or lack of action - they chose to take. We are all accountable for our own souls and our actions, but that doesn’t change the inner turmoil that seethes when addressing this past. Much like the legacy of the Franco regime in Spain, the Taiwanese response to the White Terror has been a culture of national forgetting, and of sweeping stories like this one away into the misty haze of the past.

It’s perhaps in that desire to forget that a story like Detention’s takes on an extra layer of meaning. As we’re guided through the tragedy and horror of Ray’s story, it’s with the knowledge that this is a story that a larger narrative would prefer to stay forgotten, because in forgetting, it’s possible to erase. What we’re presented with, though, is a deeply human story, as worthy of understanding and being remembered as any other. Detention humanises the great horror and shows the inner turmoil that happens when our actions have consequences, and leaves its players asking who the true evil is, and what they would do were they in the same position.

That’s the true horror of Detention. It’s in knowing what’s happened, and not knowing if we would do anything differently. It’s in seeing the inevitable, and being utterly and abundantly powerless to stop it. All we can do is acknowledge, and even that feels like an act of transgression.

There are bright spots.

Detention is nothing short of a masterpiece. While its horror may not be the traditional jumpscare more commonly found in games, it replaces that with a masterful execution of creeping, sinking dread and the quiet, non-judging accusation. We’re left to follow the journey of a girl who we understand on a human level in a fundamentally inhumane space, and in so doing, are forced to explore ourselves. The use of Taiwanese folklore and the phenomenal art style add just that extra little bit of flair that make the game utterly unique.

Detention is that rare game that sticks with you well after it’s done, quietly reminding you to think, and letting you know that, no matter the consequences, you are and always will be human.

Developer: Red Candle Games

Genre: Horror, Point And Click

Year: 2017

Country: Taiwan

Language: English

Play Time: 2.5 Hours

Youtube: https://youtu.be/dL0JSRzjBgw