Visual Storytelling in Detention

Detention is a horror adventure game that was released by RedCandleGames. It follows the story of a girl who has been plunged into a desolate and horrific world with little to no explanation. The game is filled with Taiwanese folklore and history. What we will be focusing on here is the visual aspect of the storytelling throughout Detention, as it is a brilliant example of how game visuals can tell a story.

Examples of Detention's Visuals

The first thing to understand is that much of the visual storytelling throughout Detention tells a story that otherwise could not be conveyed. The player is a character who has suffered from trauma induced amnesia due to the experience of betraying her school to the authorities. The story occurs in the character’s own mind-scape as she tries come to terms with her actions. Much of the visual storytelling is expressing the nature and extent of the trauma that the character is facing without ever having to say it.

The Lingering

With that in mind, The Lingering, the first enemies that the player meets in the game, are a prime example of how the character’s subconscious is brought out through the visuals. The Lingering is depicted as a schoolgirl, similar to Ray (the main character), who is stuck in a ghostly limbo. The similarities between Ray’s model and the Lingering is no accident. The importance of this is two fold. Firstly, it places the Lingering as a representation of the classmates that Ray condemned by ratting them out, as Ray herself is a student. Very early in the story the player can begin to parse that the students have not simply escaped, but are in a much worse position, and that there may be some animosity towards Ray regarding this. That animosity is shown by the fact that the Lingering attack Ray. Given that this is in Ray’s mind, their animosity is not simply a byproduct of their behavior, but something that Ray’s subconscious thought was appropriate for the classmates to feel (and also for the Lingering to feel).
The second point about the Lingering’s appearance is how similar they are to Ray herself. By having the first enemy in the game look so similar to the player, the game brings up the question of why a depiction of Ray would be attacking her. The player can begin to parse why this might be the case in the beginning, but it is best understood when put within the context of the ending where the mind-scape and narrative is revealed to the player. The Lingering stands as a metaphor for the psychological struggle that is being played out throughout the story. Ray is constantly being attacked by the realization of her own actions (the Lingering being the physical form of those realizations) and she has been trying, from even before the story, to sidestep and avoid those realizations in her mind.

Ray's Home Life

Moving away from The Lingering, there are two scenes related to Ray’s family that really bring the cleverness of the visual storytelling into full view. The first of these scenes is the fight between Ray’s parents. This scene is played beautifully with neither of the parents being shown while still conveying the severity of the event. Beyond that, there is a metaphoric element to the scene. The purpose of even showing the fight is to convey what Ray’s home life was like. When the player compares the previous image of the parents sitting sadly around their table with the image of no one fighting, it conveys a deeper message about the family strife in Ray’s household. The ruptures in the family occur out of sight of her. Her parents fight when she’s not there, being conveyed by the fact that Ray cannot see her parents in this scene. However, her parents attempt to present a semblance of familial unity, as shown by her parents at the dinner table. Through simply omitting characters in a scene, the developers expressed a far more complex idea than could be expressed otherwise.
The other scene in question is when Ray’s father’s affair is revealed. It is never stated directly, but is heavily implied by notes up to this point, that Ray’s father is cheating on her mother. The scene that states directly that this is the case does so with no words. Instead, the parent’s bedroom is shown draped in lingerie with Ray’s mother nowhere in sight. It was certainly an impactful scene and conveyed what would commonly be communicated through words. In fact, the visual storytelling is so strong in this scene that I would venture to say that any person who sees the scene without context could guess what it was about.

Comments on Creating Strong Visuals

Just from these few examples it can be seen exactly how powerful the visual imagery is in Detention. Visual storytelling is often quite difficult to do well. Dialogue is so commonly the king of story when visual imagery could be much more powerful. So, with that in mind, how can a developer set up visual imagery of the magnitude that Detention succeeded in?
The first thing that a game needs in order to pull off visual storytelling is to have a clear aesthetic. Another game that has similar levels of storytelling is Psychonauts. The game succeeded in expressing the mental issues of each character that the player has to deal with by giving every mind-scape its own specific aesthetic that relates to the character. Detention does a similar thing in that it maintains a clear semi-horror, folklore aesthetic. By creating a solid aesthetic the developer is stating a clear intentionality in their visuals and setting a norm by which the player can compare. The intentionality is fairly clear. A garbled aesthetic could cause important visual aspects to be brushed off as accidents or aesthetic mistakes by the developer. A clear aesthetic shows the everything is there for a purpose.
The latter aspect, giving the player a norm, is also key. Detention has its horror, folklore aesthetic, but it deviates from it on a few occasions. One is the use of bright colors in the scene where the father’s cheating is revealed. The other is when Ray experiences the cinema. Both are examples where the otherwise dark and drab aesthetic are brushed off in favor of a colorful aesthetic. They both express a feeling of indulgent pleasure. One in the form of lust, the other in a combination of lust and forbidden knowledge. Either way, the emotions are expressed so clearly because the visuals are juxtaposed to a backdrop of fear and dread in the drab aesthetic. The visual opposites (bright colors versus dark) mirror the emotional opposites (happiness versus fear) that are being conveyed through the scenes. Creating the visual norm, which is mostly done through consistent aesthetics, can create a tool that the developer can use to express visual storytelling.

The visual storytelling in Detention is an example of how more games should strive to convey their stories. Gaming has a variety of means to tell stories from dialogue to visuals to mechanics. To really see the pinnacle of this medium, all of these aspects have to be brought into play. At least, for now, we have a grand example of visual storytelling to examine.

Works Cited

Double Fine Productions, Psychonauts. Majesco, Apr 19 2005.
RedCandleGames, Detention. Coconut Island Games, Jan 12 2017.

Essay in Video Format


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