Black Room
🖤 GDC/IGF 2019 Nuovo Award winning game!🖤
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"Black Room," is a browser-based, narrative game about falling asleep while on your computer, on the internet. You play as an insomniac on the verge of sleep, moving through shifting states of consciousness. Hallucinatory, pixelated visions of landscapes filled with sprites ripped directly from the arcade/NES/SNES video games of your childhood appear and disappear as you click through fragile internet spaces. Point-n-click mini games are scattered throughout the narrative. Often interrupted, you continually return to the Black Room, a meditation technique your mother taught you for falling asleep, visualizing black flowers in a black vase on a black table in the center of a black room.
This game, conceived as a feminist dungeon crawler, features a majority women cast of video game sprites from the 1970s-current day. This work seeks to bring these characters together to form new narratives: Chun Li reposes elegantly in a desert oasis filled with flamingos; Catwoman languidly cartwheels across the nighttime beaches of Coney Island; Jennifer Simpson, the lead character from Clock Tower, runs endlessly through the brightly pixelated fantasy landscapes of the Oregon Trail. These narratives appear as “Strange Visions,” to the player, induced by shifting stages of wakefulness.
https://rhizome.org/editorial/2019/oct/29/cassie-mcquaters-black-room/
https://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/cassie-mcquater-black-room
http://thatsnot.fun/black-room/
https://contemporaryartreview.la/cassie-mcquater-at-transfer/
https://blackr0om.netlify.app/interview
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/336846/Road_to_the_IGF_Cassie_McQuaters_Blac...
https://hyperallergic.com/424211/a-game-takes-you-into-deep-dreaming/
https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/01/22/a-mind-bending-journey-into-black-room/
http://the-editorialmagazine.com/cassie-mcquater/
Development log
- 🖤🎉🖤Black Room wins the 2019 Nuovo Award at GDC/IGF!!!🖤🎉🖤Mar 25, 2019
- 🎉🔮🎉Black Room nominated for IGF's Nuovo award!🎉🔮🎉Jan 07, 2019
- Black Room wins a Rhizome microgrant! ✨Nov 20, 2018
- 👀 Mai Shiranui 👀 + boobs that know no bounds!Aug 07, 2018
- 🌪️ A fighter named Spin 🌪️ + a very, very tiny thong.Aug 03, 2018
- Blaze Fielding + cackling dentures!Aug 02, 2018
- Saying hi! + more to come 🖤Aug 02, 2018
- ~Page of pages~ for Black RoomJan 07, 2018
Comments
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make it downloadable ples
I have a collection on Itch I use as a queue for games that I've found interesting or have been recommended to me. Sometimes it takes me months or even years to get to a game. I have no recollection of when I added Black Room into it. I played it over two nights way past midnight while dealing with some insomnia. I feel like that was the ideal experience.
This was great! I especially liked your reflections on playing alone as a kid - the way that expands your world by so much when so much else tries to shrink it (or at least that's my takeaway). I also really appreciated your devlogs - read them post-game and it's nice to see your thought process behind some of this, though a lot of it is felt through the game. A shame that even now the industry sees no meaningful change. Lots to unpack here and I suspect this'll be on my mind for a while. Thank you for making this!
Really like the surreal disjointed pixel vibes on this one. Unique and bizarre.
Playing this for class, and... Whoa. Thanks for the most bizarre and clearest representation of how it feels to be up at 2am in front of your computer, even if your bed's inches away.
i've got absolutely no hold on symbology or anything other than superficiality, but by golly, what an experience. i don't feel like i need to know anything about it, it's its own life and that's what it delivers to me. i am content to become its atmosphere, only breathing this and nothing else.
WTF no purpose at all....
bummer!
ciupis
This was super cool, congrats on the award too! I did a full playthrough on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlxZek2EIxkle_gqpR5ww1nK0ylWy6pTk
yay, thank you! can't wait to check this out! <3
I'm stuck on the third level, the puzzle (?) with lights and insects. I can't seem to move anywhere or click anything and the hint isn't helping terribly. Any clue what I'm missing?
try moving the browser up, from the bottom :)
Congratulations on winning!
thank you! <3
That was such a great interactive experience. Thoughtful and creative. I loved every minute playing it! I'll be rooting for you at the IGF awards :)
thank you! so glad you enjoyed it <3
Hey. You're shortlisted for the New Media Writing Prize 2018. :) http://newmediawritingprize.co.uk/2018-shortlist/
oh yay! thx for letting me know! :)
Hi! I'm playing the game but it doesn't seem to have sound/music. If anyone could help, I'd very much appreciate it. I remember it being so soothing!
hi! if you're using google chrome, it's auto play update has broken a lot of games/sound lately, and i am still trying to find a satisfactory work around to fix. i'd rec trying firefox! hope this helps. :)
This really was a surreal experience, and I just still can't quite believe how amazingly ingenious the concept is. I don't think I've ever played such an intricate in-browser game with so much story hidden between the sprites and minigames.
Being led from one scene to another, and drip fed thoughts and memories in the midst of a weird, wonderful and also worrying set of landscapes was an altering experience, and when I got to the end of the game it took a while for me to snap out of being jarred by the whole thing (in a good way!).
This is definitely a game that throws up many ideas and theories and I really do love the way you've been talking about sexism in videogames and counteracted that with this slice of amazing work. I honestly loved every second of this, even if I do seem a bit bewildered at times haha! Keep being awesome! =)
thank you! <3
So many cool details and variations. A strange mix of calm and spookyness, a great little late-night discovery :)
so glad you enjoyed it! <3
Gorgeous and unsettling.
I love to be unsettled.
<3 <3 ty!!
This is exceptionally beautiful and I want to float round in it for ever.
Thank you!
This game is unlike anything i've played. It seamlessly manages to be a walking sim, platformer, point and click, visual novel, zine and more - but you don't even notice because it's designed in a way that keeps you exploring. The storytelling, music and art is abstract, calming, dark and nostalgic all at the same time. Highly recommend!
thank you! <3
for sure, loved it