Normally, I'm fairly lighthearted when it comes to my reviews. I try to keep the tone relatively light even when I review games that deal with dramatic content. That will not be the case with "The Static Speaks My Name," as it is a game that needs to be taken seriously. This review has started off pretty grim, I know, but this game deals with subject matter that is not to be trifled with. Before I get started, I should mention that I believe this game is still in development, as it is only about 10 minutes long at most and there are other levels advertised that aren't yet available. With that in mind, I won't be giving this game a score. Rather, I will just be discussing it, and at the end, I will tell you if you should go and support the creator of this game in his endeavor to finish it. There will be spoilers in this review because I'll be discussing every aspect of the game, but you know the ending right from the start, so there really isn't anything to spoil. If you really just want to experience the devastating events of this game for yourself, then do not continue reading. However, I don't believe that knowing the events beforehand makes much of a difference, as it is having to do it yourself that brings the game its power. One last thought before I begin: since I played this game on my computer, all the images are from my own play through, not from any third party.
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"The Static Speaks My Name" is a small first-person indie game created by someone named Jesse Barksdale. In it, you play a man utterly trapped in his depression on the day that he commits suicide. We know this to be the case right from the beginning, as we get a short blurb with the man's name, age, and method. This doesn't make it any less devastating, however, and it isn't even the most disturbing part about this game.
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The man we play as has boarded himself in his apartment, removing all contact with the outside world. His many televisions play only static, and he has no actual friends to talk with on his computer. However, he keeps busy in his studies of a painting of two trees on an island in the ocean. His fascination with the painting has turned to absolute obsession. He runs the painting through different types of lighting and even makes alterations to it trying to find out what the hidden meaning is. This is one of the major details of the game, and it serves to show us just how empty this man's life is. He has been so unsuccessful in finding meaning in his own life that he becomes obsessed with this painting, trying to find a meaning that just isn't there.
Besides the painting, there is just one other thing that this man finds joy in: his beloved pet shrimp (plural). He has them in a large aquarium, and the only other picture hanging on a wall in his apartment is a picture of all five of his shrimp. The picture of his shrimp is hanging next to their aquarium, and it has the caption "my babies" printed on it. This man adores his pet shrimp more than anything else in the world, and he dotes on them more than anything besides the island painting.
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Now that I've set up the premise for you, I'll take you through the story. The pronouns are going to be a little confusing, because I'm going to be alternating between "the man," "we/our," and "I/my," but all of these mean the main character. The man's alarm goes off at 3:22 AM, and the first thing he sees is his ceiling poster: a man surrounded by hearts and a blurb reading, "today will be a better day." As the man, we turn over and roll out of bed. We are then presented with our first objective: use the bathroom. We accomplish this task, and are then presented with our next one: eat breakfast. This leads us into the apartment for the first time. The first thing I noticed was that no lights were on. The only lights seemed to come from the static-filled television screens and the aquarium lights. We trek down the hallway, perhaps going into the side room filled with all of the man's research on the painting as well as instructions on opening his secret door. But eventually we end up in the kitchen and we walk to the refrigerator. As we open it, text pops up on the screen: "Still empty...I guess it's shrimp again." The only way to progress, then, is to go back to the bedroom and have the man eat his beloved pets. This is the first time that Barksdale shows us the depths of this man's despair. His sadness is so overwhelming that he can't face the outside world, even if it means that he has to eat the pets that are so precious to him in order to survive.
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Before I continue with the story, I feel the need to take a small break to talk about one of the details that Barksdale includes at the point in the story I will discuss next. Without this detail I'm about to discuss, we might just mistake the man for a psychopath. Many actions of his (as we will soon discover) signify that kind of condition, but without this detail, we might think that this man takes joy from eating his pets and the other things that he does. But Barksdale made the intelligent and horrifically depressing decision to show us the suicide letter that the man intends to leave his mother. I don't know if you can see the picture at the start of this section well enough to make out any of the words, but it reads as such: "Mom, I guess I'm supposed to write a note? First off, I don't want you to blame yourself. And with Dad gone I'm sorry I have to leave you too. Please don't be angry with me..." and there are a few places that are crossed out in favor of the final text. It was at this point that I had to stop for a second and breathe in and out a few times. It absolutely left a knot in my stomach for the rest of the day.
Let me take a second to break out of talking about the game. I made this exact same kind of speech when I reviewed "Depression Quest," but this example is so much worse. I don't know who reads this blog other than some family members and maybe the occasional friend, but let me tell you this: I and many people that I know have lost more than one person to suicide. Most of the time, nobody can even tell that a person has reached that point because people get so good at putting on the "I'm fine" mask, and when they need help the most, they have been trained not to ever ask for help so intensely that they can't bring themselves to take off that mask. If you are at this kind of place in your life, the only one who can choose for you to live is you. People
want to help, but they don't know your innermost feelings, and they can't extend a hand if you don't give them some indication. In the aftermath of this kind of event, there are always those who say "If I had just known..." or, "How could I not have known?" I imagine the same thing happened after the events of this game. All of this is a way of saying that it takes far less time to dial the phone number of a loved one or the national hotline (1-800-273-8255) than it takes to write out a note telling your loved ones not to blame themselves. The possibility for life to go in a better direction is infinitely closer than the alternative. Obviously I don't know everybody's situation, and I may not even know a fraction of the people who are reading this review, but what I'm asking you to do is just to keep trying and to reach out. It is not a show of weakness to ask for help; it is survival, and that is just about the strongest thing you can do.
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After eating the shrimp, the next task is to "chat online with friends," but the man doesn't have any online friends. So, he opens up a chat with a spam-chatter (just...look at the picture...you'll get it), in other words, with nobody at all. The game then gives you some options as to what you can say. None of the options are things you want to say (again, see the picture). No matter what option you pick, the man doesn't actually say it. The man is so desperate to have somebody listen to him and care about him that he opens up a chat with nobody at all, and even then he can't bring himself to put into words what he is going to do. After a while, you get your next task: clean the microwave. You get a paper towel and clean the microwave; making sure that you aren't leaving anything undone. It is then that you get the most unexpected objective..."Decide what to do with the man in the cage."
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This one is a little more question-raising. Essentially, the man has another man locked up in a dog cage with a little bowl of shrimp for food in his "secret room." You can choose to let him out of his cage or kill him with electrocution. This objective was a sharp change in tone that I didn't really care for. My theory was that this caged man was the painter responsible for the island painting, as there was an article on the fridge stating that the painter had gone missing. It would make sense, given the protagonist's obsession with the painting, but I just can't force myself to approve of this particular choice. Up until this point, we have been feeling sorry for this man, we have been agonizing over how horrible his life is. But now we learn that he has a man locked up naked in his apartment. This ties into the one qualm I have with this game, which I will discuss at length in just a little bit.
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After you choose what to do with the caged man, you receive your final objective: Return to your room and let your body rest. Essentially, this is the point in the game where you are expected to kill yourself with a noose. You walk into the closet of your bedroom, go up to the noose, and press the right button. You are then forced to watch your head slip through the noose and listen to the sounds the man makes as he dies. This was another point in which I had to stop and steady my breaths. We knew that this moment was coming for the entire game, but I don't think anyone could have imagined just how devastating witnessing this moment would be.
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Like I mentioned, I believe this game is still in development, as after you finish this man's story, there are a bunch of other names and methods that you can walk to, but once you do it goes to the credits. So, is it worth playing as it is now? Is it worth supporting so that it can reach its full form? I only had one problem with this game, and it is a problem big enough that I would say "no," unless it is fixed in later chapters. The problem is that I don't know what kind of message I was supposed to get from this. Were the part about the caged man not there, I would have taken this game as a way to help players understand the crippling effects of depression by way of placing them in this protagonist's shoes and forcing them to go through with the events of the game. But with the addition of the caged man, I stopped being so sure. Was this man we are playing as just a total psychopath the whole time? Did he really enjoy eating his beloved pets? Does he really care about his mother's feelings, or does he want her to suffer so much that he is willing to die for it? These are the kinds of questions that arise from the addition of the caged man. If the answer to all these questions were yes, then it would still be a compelling character study, but as it stands, the game doesn't seem like it means to be like that. This game seems like it wants to tell us about the suffering that people go through, but its message is totally skewered when it includes a man being held hostage in a cage and possibly electrocuted. My advice to the developer for later chapters is this: try to make it more clear what you're trying to say, otherwise this game could become entirely tasteless.
My final verdict for "The Static Speaks My Name" is this: It is worth playing as it is now, but unless some serious changes are made to the message delivery in later chapters, it is not worth supporting to the end.
Be very careful, Jesse Barksdale, be very careful.
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