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In paranoia pot-boiler Gangstalk you are the person chasing youFinally, hard proof that I am indeed my own worst enemy
Finally, hard proof that I am indeed my own worst enemy
Image credit:Lithodelphis
Image credit:Lithodelphis
GANGSTALK: A Horror Game from the POV of Your StalkersWatch on YouTube
GANGSTALK: A Horror Game from the POV of Your Stalkers
As the game begins, Cam has infiltrated a secret PANDO company town, Kudzu Vale, which reminds me ofThe Blackout Club’s ghoulish chunk of suburbia. There are hauntingly empty carparks, hauntingly empty shopping markets, and haunting pieces of high-concept scenery, like piles of smouldering TVs or gaggles of marionettes who definitely won’t move when you look away. Active threats include predatory phantasms called Datamoshers, who look like Slender Men made of VHS crackly bits. But the intriguing part, again, is the whole “you are your own stalker” conceit.
In lieu of a generic camera system you will watch Cam “through the fragmented perspectives of CCTV Cameras, Devices, Agents, and the enigmatic Datamoshers”. Sometimes, you’re peeking through a CCTV camera in the corner, with the view rotating jerkily to follow him/you across the room. Sometimes, you’re the horror chasing him/yourself, wobbling along as he/you disappear around corners, whereupon you’ll presumably have to wait for yourself to catch up in order to keep… escaping from yourself.
While showing a soon-to-be victim from the killer’s vantage is a familiar tactic, I feel like Gangstalk is trying to push beyond that clichéd cinematic device. It’s teaching you to fear your own gaze, which poses a fun practical dilemma. Presumably, you’ll have to walk the line throughout the game of beingjustvisible enough to retain control.
The Steam pagecontains a note warning about “strong depictions of anxiety and paranoia”, and this is certainly one of the fancier takes on such things I’ve stumbled on in a video game. I can imagine some ways it won’t measure up to its potential, mind you. Perhaps the “stalker POV” stuff will just boil down to classic survival horror fixed vantage points, much of the time. Perhaps it’ll just be laughable in practice. Perhaps it being laughable is the point. We’ll find out sometime next year.
