Yo I wake up to the sound of rain hitting the first floor window. Feeling groggy after a few ill-advised midweek beers, I turn around with a groan: it’s only 7am. As I stare at the ceiling, half-lit by the unholy blue hue of my laptop, I feel the deadline for my paper approaching. With a sigh, I shuffle half-heartedly into the kitchen, reluctantly pour myself a coffee, and start another day.
That’s what it’s like to play Apartment Story, a Sims-style narrative thriller about a British games journalist named Arthur. It’s not often that a video game makes me feel discordant, but this was exactly my experience while sitting at my real-world desk, looking into a cramped virtual apartment, ordering protagonist Arthur to shave, wash his hands, write, and make himself a boring dinner. It’s the antithesis of the typical gaming power fantasy, an adult-themed voyeuristic life simulator, and it’s fascinating.
The brainchild of Glasgow solo developer Sean Wenham, this replayable thriller depicts Arthur’s lonely life as he becomes embroiled in a rapidly escalating situation. The suspense element left me baffled. Instead, it was watching Arthur dance, go pee, and peek into his absent roommate’s room that made me want to come back for a second playthrough. This is a disturbingly well-observed adult spin on the life simulator idea. The meters keep you aware of Arthur’s basic needs: one for hunger, one for tiredness, one for hygiene, etc. I found a perverse joy in embracing the monotony of his existence.
With a charming low-polygon art style that sits somewhere between PS2-era Grand Theft Autos and 2000’s The Sims, this two-hour game takes place almost entirely in a genuinely modest apartment. Boxes of DVDs lay scattered on the cheap Ikea shelves. Knick-knacks adorn the dusty mantelpiece, and as you assess the contents of your refrigerator in search of anything resembling a suitable meal, it’s an uncomfortably familiar facsimile of modern twenty-something existence. The 27-year-old protagonist spends much of the day writing, cleaning and worrying about paying his bills while looking out over a perpetually rainy UK street.
A tap on a directional button displays incoming messages and your dwindling bank balance on your phone’s broken screen. As you toss away dead plants and ignore incoming text messages, there’s an eerie sense of dread in the pandemic-era home that Apartment Story emanates, a quiet hum of foreboding. You can choose to shave Arthur, get him drunk, make him walk around in his underwear, watch pornography, or even uselessly rearrange his belongings. As I diligently washed the virtual dishes in Arthur’s sparkling kitchen, I became painfully aware of the truly messy dishes lying unkempt on the counter in my periphery.
However, as other characters are introduced and Apartment Story delves into over-the-top thriller territory, it loses some of its monotonous magic. What begins as a thought-provoking reflection on modern existence begins to unravel when Arthur is quickly dragged into a dangerous situation by his former roommate, Diane. As the threat increases and a hidden weapon is discovered, authentically observed recreations of modern existence fail on the brink of farce. There’s an increasingly implausible growing threat and neither of the other two characters in the game are convincing. It’s a shame there isn’t a more satisfying combination of suspense and life simulation narrative elements. Perhaps the best course of action is to ignore the story entirely, ignore the doorbell, and continue cooking, smoking weed, and vibing to the music.
Apartment Story is a medial feature film about loneliness, repetition, and adulthood that is unlike anything I have ever performed. With a little more time and scope, a little more access to Arthur’s broader life, this could have been a cult classic rather than a cult curiosity. However, when an independent debut manages to capture such a miserable mood so effortlessly (and for less than the price of a London pint), Apartment Story still seems like an easy recommendation.
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