The interplay of intimacy, space, perspective, and barriers form the moody horrors of Frey's The Space Between as surrealism pervades the opaque normalcy of a world turned into hell, accompanied by a descent necessary for this transformation. Protracted sequences of dialogue and walking affirm the intensity of spaces between player and game, spectator and spectacle, audience and actors, which dread the enclosing fragmentation of existential anguish and death: walls not made out of matter. The designer's score, too, sees advanced development from his 2012 "Horror Vacui" to suit the less experimental but no less artistic form Frey's horror becomes in this exceptional game. A deserving Nuovo Award winner, The Space Between enters among my favorite games of 2019 for achieving in 40 or so minutes what most games need 10x or more time (let alone that in resources for graphics, gameplay mechanics, voice acting, etc.) to replicate.

questa esperienza mi ha colpito profondamente e per questo sono rimasto sorpreso. non voglio sbilanciarmi troppo perché non voglio scrivere nulla di personale, ma ho apprezzato molto il modo in cui questa breve storia è raccontata, anche se è sicuramente per molte persone una modalità frustrante. ogni tanto è davvero tutto troppo lento, tra sottotitoli e movimenti; ogni tanto, quando il personaggio è libero di camminare, lo spazio vuoto degli ambienti diventa immenso...credo che entrambe queste dinamiche siano esattamente quello che lo sviluppatore desiderava costruire. una cosa è certa: questo gioco richiede un personaggio che va su binari, e qui è quasi così ed è un'altra cosa che ho molto apprezzato. ogni tanto questo gioco è descritto come horror: non lo è; ogni tanto è descritto con l'aggettivo "surreale", non lo è assolutamente: questo gioco parla di alcune riflessioni molto comuni che attraversiamo in momenti speciali della nostra vita, momenti in cui qualcuno improvvisamente si ritrova lontano da noi, diviso da uno spazio che non è attraversabile. qualcuno, infine, potrebbe trovarlo pretenzioso per come la storia è raccontata: a queste persone vorrei chiedere quanto coraggio ci vuole a non nascondersi dietro ad allegorie cercando di raccontare tragedie irreversibili, e se hanno mai pensato di andare a teatro.

In 45 minutes, the Space Between proves to be thematically rich if somewhat handicapped in delivering those themes throughout the whole experience, forcing play to be summoned with an interaction set that is winnowed bones in contrast to the meatiness of its imagery and dialogue. A Brechtian inversion of audience observation and role turned away from the revolutionary ideal to a stagnation of the overly analytical and endlessly metatextual, The Space Between is a wonderful marriage of and meditation on player connection with systems through imperfect substrates, human connection through imperfect language acts, and bodily connection through imperfect differentiations between our ‘owned’ fleshes and that which we separate ourselves from with concrete and rebar. The organ walls of each line uttered are eroded, swindling their speaker, partner, and player together into wondering if what was said was from the assumed perspective, place of truth, or pertinent source to the scene - hiding the natures of any given scene in no less transliterative feat than what the impeccably modelled and designed architecture does in concert with the electricity haunting pooled dark does for every space crawled through.

So there's this thing I sometimes feel when going into modern art museums, in which I feel like the intended meaning behind a piece of art is nigh incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't have not just an art history degree, but is an artist themselves. It's this sense that people are talking in a coded language specifically as a challenge to the viewer, to see if it is possible for the viewer, through training and access to this language, understand the meaning of the piece of art before them.

And since the majority of people do not have art history degrees, they inevitably fail. I usually really enjoy modern art exhibits, but I think a lot of this enjoyment has to do with the fact that I usually get an audioguide to go along with me, helping me contextualize the pieces in front of me. And sometimes, I think to myself, "why was this context not a part of the work itself?"

Playing The Space Between was like that.

The game itself is an extended meditation on the nature of separation, on who we are and the barriers we place between us and others, and whether true intimacy is actually possible. It decides to represent this by an extended analogy of reaching and touching someone from behind a sheet and wondering whether it is them or the sheet that you feel. Dialogue is painfully slow, although obviously deliberately so, and blends together as you, an architect named Martin Melanson, meet a woman named Clara, and proceed to show her the theatre you're building, specifically the "hell" that you've created for yourself underneath the stage as a personal room.

In about an hour, this game manages to fit in childhood trauma, a strange murder intrigue, meditations about whether actors or audience are really the ones able to see each other, and more, and it all simultaneously feels like it is drowning for lack of space and sparse beyond belief.

This is a game where interactivity adds very little, beyond to blur the fourth wall of who your character actually is. Dialogue's insistence on not delineating who is talking, you or Clara, increases this confusion, and that confusion becomes almost the entire point of the game. And it's just... Allergic to telling you what it wants to say.

The whole experience is one of feeling like the author has deliberately put up barriers to comprehending the game, which is obviously part of the theme considering how much of the rest of the game is deliberately blurry, from the text to the VCR aesthetic the game goes for. But like some of those modern art pieces, I ended up wondering why this context was placed outside of the game, why the confusion was something worth creating.

It is elitism to the highest degree, which is ironic considering the game looks deliberately like it had a 2000 polygon limit. Maybe I'm just too smooth brained for it, and I absolutely hate that this is my core criticism, but when the game is deliberately trying to opaque, I don't feel bad about criticizing it for its opacity.

Catherine Brinegar has a decent 3 part analysis here: https://www.rebind.io/tearing-down-the-house-an-exploration-of-the-space-between-part-1-1467/
https://www.rebind.io/burning-down-the-house-delving-deeper-into-the-space-between-part-2-1480/
https://www.rebind.io/cleaning-up-the-house-deconstructing-the-space-between-part-3-1495/

The Space Between didn't land its ideas on me. I can see that it tries to elaborate a cryptic story about death and love. I can see the symbology that the curtains and the holes have. However, it just felt like a poor intent of build up an evocative story.

I started to play the game in Spanish and I had to close the game when I was amidst the 1st chapter to change the language because of how shitty the translation was. Once I finished doing that, I opened the game again and it turns out that it doesn't have save data, let alone a chapter selection. What a joke, as if the pace was fast enough to start quickly enough from the beginning again.

I ended up watching the rest of it on YouTube. I put the x2 speed and I felt asleep (no joke). Then, I tried to rewatch it and, even in x2 speed, it felt tedious and slow. For a game that only lasts 45 minutes, it truly felt longer than the film Out 1.

Beyond the terrible pace of the story, it doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be as bad as its pace, right? Haha, I wish. The game felt like "I'm 13 and this is deep". The gimmick of displaying the text slowly and making the character to move slowly tries to make the game feel more disturbing than it actually is. The mixing between the conversations and the slow elements make an artificial experience that doesn't feel personal to me. The idea exposed at the very beginning caught my attention, but I don't see how it relates to the development of the plot at all. It wound up feeling like an insipid and pointless experience to me, with nothing interesting to say or show.

The scattered plot development didn't feel adequate. I don't understand the relation between the girl and Martin. Actually, I don't know why the girl is relevant to the plot at all.

I have to say that I liked the reflection on the actors and the public. The PSX graphics are neat and the ambient music is generic but fits the atmosphere of the game.

Overall, I think that this game is hit or miss. Obviously, it wasn't made for me and my experience with it felt rather a burden than an enjoyable experience.