These begin to feel less like his wishes and more like compulsions. There is no food in the refrigerator, so when Jacob is told to eat breakfast, he must resort to eating his pets. Jacob, unable to deny or ignore his objectives, is compelled to complete them even when they have to be accomplished in uncomfortable, roundabout ways. The objectives begin to conflict with the desires of the player and, ultimately, of the character. The illusion of normalcy fades quickly, though. The apartment appears to be relatively normal, and the player, upon waking, is greeted with a familiar prompt on the top of the screen. The player sees the world through Jacob’s eyes, from the moment that he wakes up to his eventual death. It is a cold and lonely space, reflecting the experience of those isolated or cornered by life’s circumstances. In both instances, a man’s life is represented by a monochromatic planet sitting alone in space. This opening scene is reminiscent of the opening of David Lynch’s Eraserhead. The shape, appearing like a planetoid made of television static, seems to be a portal into the final day of one Jacob Ernholtz, a 31-year-old man who met his end due to asphyxiation by hanging. The Static Speaks My Name, developed by thewhalehusband (Jesse Barksdale), opens in a dark, space-like void with a single flickering, white shape suspended in the distance. The near-ubiquitous objective-based gameplay mechanic lends itself surprisingly well to the story of a schizophrenic (or, more likely, individual suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder with psychotic symptoms) caught in a tug-of-war between his compulsions and desires. We recommend playing through The Static Speaks My Name before reading on. What if I told you that a free, 10 minute long horror game delivers on BioShock’s medium-defining twist even more memorably than the revered Irrational game?
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