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Video Game Itch.io log 12/8/21: RoomooR (2021) by ParkMinJoke

In RoomooR you take the role of the child abuser who is trapped in a claustrophobic room - your sole purpose in here is clear: to escape by any means necessary.

What ParkMinJoke lacks in effective bug testing - as navigation can be quite difficult as you're constantly clipping into objects rendering your character immobile - they make up for in effective and engaging story telling.

While the exposition of the story, as it was originally intended, can only be found through responses of ill-found detractors, it is still very clear through the gameplay if you look hard enough. 

The room is a clear metaphor for the vitcim(s) that he had abused: a smiley face that commonly adorns test papers in grade school, a piggy bank - a child's first interaction with understanding economics, a television, and headphones¹, alongside a variety of other things that may be common in a child's room.

While this may seem like your average room escape game at first glance the creator, ParkMinJoke, plays with the audiences expectations by repeatedly putting the player (child abuser, for those keeping track) back into the same room that they had seemingly escaped. Perhaps this is an homage to the now defunct P.T. (2014) in which a player repeatedly is thrust in the same hallway over and over having to solve various puzzles by understanding the minutia of the hallway itself.

In a Sisyphusian manner the player repeatedly finds themselves in the room of the, in my understanding, child they had abused. What's interesting here is ParkMinJoke's dual purposed use of mixing up the layout of the room, first subtly through misplaced keys, then very noticeably as the room shifts and bends beyond what is concretely possible. It is not a stretch to say that perhaps the player (child abuser) is living inside the psyche of the child they had abused; that they are inside the mind of a fragmented child as their reality starts to fracture due to the trauma.

Of course this happens over a period of time, as most trauma tends to affect the brain. It is not until the child fully starts to understand the gravity of the trauma that the room becomes heavily distorted. Interestingly enough studies have shown similar gaps in memory by those afflicted with PTSD and those who have Alzheimer's - there's also a connection between the central motif of RoomooR and The Caretaker's Everywhere at the End of Time.

In both pieces of art a person's mind is gradually fragmented to the point of no return. Whether or not this was intentional on ParkMinJoke's part is uncertain to me, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless.

As the player (child abuser) progresses through the psyche of the mind of the child they had traumatized a figure starts to appear - a long slenderman-esque character with a smiley face mask. Perhaps this is a reflection of the player (child abuser), first coming off as a friendly person only to be a predator underneath, a wolf in sheep's clothing as they say.

It goes without saying that clearly this game is one that brings to the front the player's own moral ideology. Should the child abuser stay endlessly trapped within the loop of the mind that they traumatized? It is not until the very end that the subtext becomes text (spoiler warning) as you hear over a loud speaker that you (child abuser) are to be put to death as a criminal. This retroactively gives context to the situation beforehand - it is not the mind of the child that you are in but rather your own mind. That you are trapped in the hell that you believe you deserve before you are put to death for the crimes you have committed.

This is interesting, as it draws forth a moral question, is capital punishment a worthwhile cause? For ParkMinJoke I believe the answer is no. The player (child abuser) in face of the death penalty creates a fragmented hell for them to exist in, a punishment beyond the state's. For the player (child abuser) being relinquished onto oblivion is not fair punishment,  it is the absence of punishment, it is absolution of their sins. The Sisyphusian hell that they would be in is only stopped in the presence of the state and capital punishment, being put to death.

In this ParkMinJoke draws an interesting comparison between punishment as seen through a Christian lens (I must be punished for eternity) and a Western - that is to say American and Totalitarian - lens (I must be punished equal to my crime). We see this in the way the game fundamentally holds punishment as one of its main themes. In some sense the player themselves are punished by being forced to listen to weird music and play a game with controls that aren't the best! Perhaps, in this sense, ParkMinJoke is creating a post-structuralist critique, using the medium of video games themselves to comment on morality, punishment, and Christian understand of those two.

Overall I'd rate this game a 3/10.

¹ The use of a giant television and headphones in the room that represents the child's fragmented mind is beyond clever to me. Not only does this game come face to face to very pressing moral questions, but it critiques society at large. Was the child not already abused? In these two objects we have incredibly organic storytelling: a story of a child who is neglected by his parents, parents who care much more with giving their child distractions rather than actually engaging with them. Perhaps the player (child abuser) was able to so easily coerce the kid because the kid is lonely due to being neglected by their parents - a bit of speculation on my part.