The Liminal, Queer Horror of Kitty Horrorshow
What do you know about pain? You’ve felt it, most certainly. A stubbed toe. An awkward conversation. A pulsating wound. A broken heart. There are so many ways that pain manifests in this earthly experience. However, few artists are so capable of evoking that bitter feeling as the works of indie game developer Kitty Horrorshow.
Her unconventional style makes her stand out in a sea of jumpscare-laden indie horror. Body horror, psychological torment, and liminal spaces are a staple in many of Kitty Horrorshow’s works. She also happens to be a trans woman, and some of her works reflect the unique horrors that come with that identity.
Anatomy, Kitty’s most popular horror game to date, details the slow descent into madness of a house. Set in a derelict residence, the player explores the dark depths of this abandoned home. There is nobody else but you. Throughout the house, you’ll find tapes, each with a monologue describing the house as if it was a living organism.
There’s an almost perverse sense of unease as you go deeper into the house’s secrets. You are intruding upon a place that nobody should ever have come across. Yet you keep going anyway, hoping for some form of closure at the end of this journey. That sense of wrongness could be interpreted as someone coming to terms with their severe dysphoria.
After all, a house is somewhere you’ve lived all your life. Someplace to be safe and calm. And yet in Anatomy, the house is anything but. The place you thought you were so familiar with starts to feel wrong. You don’t understand why you feel this way unless you start looking deeply into yourself to find out. Anatomy isn’t just the liminal vivisection of a house.
It is the vivisection of your body and soul.
Another game in Kitty’s Gallery of Terrors is Seven Days. Like Anatomy, Seven Days takes place entirely within the confines of a house. Unlike Anatomy, which could quite simply be interpreted as the tribulations of an eldritch abode, Seven Days is quite blatant with its horror being focused on the trans experience. There are seven “levels” to Seven Days, each corresponding to a day of the week. If it’s Monday where you are, then Seven Days will play the Monday level.
Within each level, you’ll find notes detailing the unnamed protagonist’s day-to-day life. Sometimes, the note details mundane victories. More often, they paint a bleak picture of the life that our protagonist leads. A painting that portrays a dystopian world full of biomechanical nightmares eyeing every living human. A world where the holes, in reality, are treated the same as any hurricane one might encounter in real life. Terrifying, sure, but that’s just how the world works.
The house in Seven Days is a manifestation of the player character themselves. The notes are always related to whatever nightmarish location you find yourself in. When the notes say you’re “stuck inside”, all the exits are locked, leaving you to peer through windows for clues to your current location.
When the notes talk about being outside, such as on a train, the house itself is on a track, speeding impossibly through dark tunnels.
There’s no secret ending for the player to reach. Once you’ve finished the titular “Seven Days”, you boot up again on Monday and there’s nothing new. The week simply starts over. Rinse and repeat. They are stuck in a vicious cycle of anxiety and imminent destruction.
As for how Seven Days represents queer horror, it’s best seen on the Thursday level.
The game plops you out on the front porch, only instead of facing the entrance, you’re met with a cavernous sewer. Sickly, gray water flows right underneath your feet, and every surface is bathed in a coat of harsh red light. You pick up the first note and it reads as follows:
This note confirms that the protagonist is trans. The chore of taking hormones isn’t treated with any sort of horror. In fact, it’s charmingly mundane, as if someone forgot their keys in the morning. The distinction of making treatment normal is important, especially because of what happens as soon as you close the note.
I didn’t even notice these shadowy figures for ten whole seconds as I walked around the house looking for notes. Only when I looked out the window did I realize my unexpected visitors and the realization made me jump. I had gotten so used to the flow of the game that I didn’t even think of the possibility that “others” could show up. And yet there was no loud “stinger” announcing their arrival.
None of them made a grab for me as I walked the halls of the lonely house, even as they had me surrounded. All they did was look into my windows and stare. The revelation of who these enigmatic shadows are is given in the second note:
They aren’t eldritch invaders. They’re people. Sad and angry people hurt others for having the gall to exist within their sight. The protagonist simply wanted treatment, and all of a sudden, life becomes a living hell. Despite how terrifying the experience was, the final note ends with an unremarkable encounter.
Even as the world splinters, as ancient beings wake, there’s always that one anchor to the reality that reminds you that while the game isn’t real, those feelings of pure dread are. You have to find a way to cope with these fears while also dealing with the mundane problems of everyday life.
The dying embers of a house long abandoned could be that time you reminisced about a childhood friend you’ve long since forgotten. Those shadowy figures in the sewers could be the silent judgment of your peers at some gathering. What Kitty Horrorshow does is extract those normal feelings and amplify them to a sickening degree.
I adore horror that steps outside the typical boundaries of the genre. There are so many ways to experience fear, and so many experiences to draw it from. Why not queer experiences? Strange as it may seem though, Kitty Horrorshow’s games also warm my heart between the dread. It’s comforting to know that the dark feelings I have stewing inside me aren’t just me. There are other queer people out there going through what I have.
And they made some pretty awesome horror games.
Kitty Horrorshow has a Patreon if you wish to gain access to some of her smaller projects, or just want to lend your support.
Categorized:Editorials
