The Dark Side of Escapism
Escaped Chasm is a game about loneliness, escapism, and striking the balance between real life and fantasy.
Escapism is a powerful and yet difficult thing to achieve. At age five, it was a skill nearly all of us could once summon with barely any effort at all. We could conjure up an imaginary friend, transform the living room into a lava pit, and go on an adventure without even leaving the bedroom. This becomes so much more difficult over time, as life takes its toll and weight of reality dawns on us further.
Videogames help here, because unlike most created and imaginary worlds, gaming allows us to, pragmatically speaking, physically touch a space via an avatar. It comes as no surprise that nowadays 30-somethings make up a larger section of the gaming populace. With the way things are in the world now, we need escapism more than ever, but then at what point does it go too far and start to unravel against us?
Escaped Chasm follows the adventure of a young girl isolated in her bedroom.
She is carrying so much fear of the real world that simply getting to the front door of her house is an uphill battle. While she isn’t a gamer, she still has the ability to conjure up a fantasy world of her own, a world she is often able to visit in her dreams. Sleep appears to be her primary means to escape her depression and her life, a life which she tries to make sense of on her own, and all while not knowing why her parents haven’t been home for a long time.
In a tiny Game Boy Color inspired playing field, Escaped Chasm poetically captures the feeling of isolation and loneliness that comes with being trapped at home, and above all, being walled in by one’s own fears. Her fantastical world provides her a sense of respite, provides her a place where she can be free from herself and fears. That is… until it doesn’t.
Escaped Chasm portrays the ultimate tragedy for the dreamers and escapists, many of who are gamers: the tragedy of the fantasy world, the escape itself, suddenly turning against you.
As the brief but memorable narrative unfolds in the game, our protagonist suddenly finds herself betrayed by the very fantasy that was once her haven. Depicting an experience many of us have encountered or will eventually encounter at some point, when the ideal fantasy and the imperfect reality suddenly intertwine and merge into one crushing catastrophe.
Sometimes the fantasy goes beyond more than just being a made-up magical world, sometimes it’s also a made-up version of the person we wish we could be. Unfortunately, this unattainable person we hope ourselves to be can only really exist as part of the escapism. This is where videogames become compelling to us, allowing us to not only be brave enough to get out of bed, but also be powerful enough to stare a dragon right in the eye.
Ultimately, Escaped Chasm gives players a choice: submerge oneself into a fantasy to the point where there is no coming back, or fully ground oneself within the bleak reality of their existence in a state of utter resignation.
Perhaps most of us are somewhere in the middle, often finding our very dreams suddenly transforming into a nightmare before we know it. But even then, there’s one comforting question left by the game:
Do we dream of the butterfly, or does the butterfly dream us?
Written by Jahanzeb Khan for Vista Magazine.
