As the 70th anniversary of a bloody political purge in Taiwan looms, a new horror video game set during the island’s « White Terror » is winning rave reviews.
« Detention » was created by Taiwanese developers and takes place during the crackdown on opponents by the ruling nationalist Kuomintang, when the now democratic island was still under martial law.
The nightmarish 2-D game starts with the disappearance of a teacher, with players acting as two high school students trying to solve the mystery.
One scene shows a classmate hanging dead in the school auditorium. Another sees one of the students consoling her sobbing mother before entering a room with portraits of faces bleeding from their eyes.
Gamers have praised it as an « emotional and educational » experience—it made the top 10 of popular gaming distribution platform Steam after its release last month, and is still on the bestseller list.
Developer Yao Shuen-ting said his team tried to capture the pervasive fear of a time when family members and colleagues were going missing.
« We want to let players experience the atmosphere through the characters’ perspective… to come to the conclusion themselves that this was a time when you could die from reading a book, » said Yao.
