At the Extra Life gaming marathon last weekend, I played a good amount of the indie game The Binding of Isaac. Several of us played together, taking turns fighting bosses and watching (often, with horror). This game is straight up disturbing. But, I find it disturbing in a different way than, say, Barbie Fashion Designer (I don’t hate you, Barbie Fashion Designer; you’re just such an easy target). So I thought I would write a series of blogs about the different ways I find particular games disturbing. I will look at 3 different games: The Binding of Isaac, Viva Piñata, and . Each one represents a different kind of disturbing, and I think that is 100% fascinating. So, here it goes.
Why do I Find The Binding of Isaac so Disturbing?
Reason 1:
The imagery. Nothing pushes a mediocre game into the category of disturbing like some good visuals. The Binding of Isaac pushes the grotesque to a new level. The protagonist, Isaac, fights monsters that are made up of only butts, that are aborted fetuses, that are piles of flesh and blood, and that spew blood. Much in the vein of the theater of the absurd, the developers draw these horrific images in the cute (but disturbing in a different way) animation style that is reminiscent of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The images themselves are simple, not even having much shading or complex coloring. For example:
Each character shown here is violating norms in some way. Most are blobs (except Isaac in the middle). They don’t have traditional limbs. But what I find the most interesting is the emphasis on the distortion of the faces. The mouths are missing teeth or have teeth shaped in a non-normative way. The eyes either are closed (as reminiscent of a drawing of a corpse) or, more often, one eye is exaggeratedly open and one is closed.
Reason 2: The storyline
Here is a video of the opening of The Binding of Isaac, which sets up the story:
‘Nuff said.
Reason 3: The Gameplay
The gameplay is unlike anything I have experienced. The game is randomly generating, which means that no two playthroughs are alike. I say it’s disturbing (though I totally dug it) because it violates several of the evolutionary elements that games have undergone in the last 10 years: saves, repetitive levels, tropes. Rather than (as one would expect) making it easier to start and stop and play through and guess what’s next, the player is never able to anticipate what’s around the corner. I played for hours and never saw the same room configuration, and I was constantly confronted with new monsters and new mixes of and twists on previously encountered monsters.
This may not have a specific gender lens, but I think it’s worthy to talk about games that violate our expectations in interesting (and even disturbing) ways. I applaud indie games for pushing the envelope, and I hope this kind of work continues. Even though I find it completely disturbing.
