Untitled (Underground)

an idiosyncrasy of found footage horror is that the video itself is a diegetic element; someone must have recorded that footage, and, the more complicated facet, that footage had to have been "found." if the cameraman dies, gets stuck in an alternate universe, or if the camera gets abandoned, there still must be some process where the footage gets retrieved, uploaded, and shared with us, whether that be by the cameraman themselves or a third party (the more worrisome option). the story extends past the final frame of the video.

i played for two endings, (Spoiler - click to show)where the player respectively always selects "there is something" and "there is nothing" when deciding if the looping hallway holds anomalies for aisling. these endings show the different implications of how this footage is found: in the "nothing" ending, they escape with the librarian and sign off their vlog with a "see you next time" - they still have autonomy to edit their journey to tell this story how they please; they have a choice as to whether it gets uploaded at all. in the "something" ending, rather, they wait for help that never comes, with a long train of ellipses that eventually stops with a message of the footage's end[^1]. this ending leaves us with unknowns: what is aisling's status? the cover art for this project is the thumbnail of this video on aisling's youtube channel. who uploaded this?

[^1]: (Spoiler - click to show)for a moment, i expected that the ending was going to be that infinite loop of waiting, and i think i got myself excited by this prospect - aisling is still waiting, the video never ends, this "found" footage may not have been found at all. but alas, i was stubborn enough to have reached that final end screen.

the physical exit 8-like subway seems to be an allegory for the internet: the subway itself is called the ailing broadband underground station; aisling is a 'tuber and refers to the subway as the "tube"; when aisling complains about the "the woman at the front desk" misdirecting them, the librarian says "i believe the algorithm was changed so that what you seek is always out of reach," saying the receptionist is a metaphorical or literal youtube search query. my interpretation was that (Spoiler - click to show)the loop itself is the social media algorithm, its looping nature reminiscent of dark patterns and addictive design that keep people scrolling in tailored feeds. when there's nothing in the loop for aisling, when there's no content in the algorithm, they escape its grasp and move on to their next project. but when there is content, aisling is stuck, maybe as a passive viewer or maybe as a content creator who's chained to these trends in hopes of growing their channel. aisling had no conclusion amidst the content. the content subsumes aisling? in this case, the uploading of this video carries a much more pessimistic undertone: the video, the content, must persist, whether or not aisling or other creators are consumed in the process. the machine grinds on.

this being my read of the project, i think the execution could have been tighter to support these ideas. being a backrooms purist is not a title i care at all to defend, but i found its premise most effective at conception, where the horror was the liminality and uncertainty of the never-ending yellowed rooms instead of the inevitable tendrilled spooky monsters that jumpscare you around the corner. (Spoiler - click to show)for this reason i found the "nothing" ending of untitled (underground) more compelling; aisling has to reckon with their internal conflict of what compelled them to this place. i think it could have been more impactful if it leaned into more play with the spatial horror of a looping hallway, or with a similar uncanniness from the medium itself, and left the fellow traveller transmogrifying into a scary beast for the different ending, as that feels much more like trending content material. the long train of ellipses in the "something" ending was one of the most interesting parts of the piece to me, and i would've loved to see something like that here in its absence.

i also wish there was more exploration with the aesthetics of found footage. i don't think any urban explorer-adjacent youtubers in the 2020s would be filming with 00s digicams that print the time and date in the bottom left corner, how gauche would that be, but maybe adding in hints of glitches or corruptions could look apt. there's ideas of a mixed media presentation going on: aisling and the travelers are full sprites, the librarian is a scanned illustration cutout, the backgrounds are photographs. i really enjoy nulla's chaotic graphic design, like in the cover arts of violent delight, nothing in my veins, the sand at the end, etc, and i think pushing this multimedia style in that direction would lend itself well to this commentary about the internet and its deluge of fleeting trends.

something i missed on my first playthrough was that the black screen for the spectator's dialogue is not pure black, but a very darkened photo of a barren office(?) space. this background is shown in the cover art of the game, aisling's video thumbnail, where it appears as an inverted reflection of a subway window. i like how this imagery is a play on the different meanings of the word liminal: it blends its literary definition (a temporary, transitional state, which i attribute to physical places like hotels, airplanes, subways) and the more popular aesthetic of "liminal" (of regular places that feel uncanny due to abandonment or architectural oddities, like barren storefronts or office spaces). this journey is both a possible transition for aisling as a creator and a mark of their loneliness. as algorithms curate content For You, they isolate everyone else.

I’m still in the middle of playing this game, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be done.

In this story, our focus character Aisling slogs through an endlessly looping tunnel. The setup evokes Exit 8, but with solo-Danganronpa levels of psychic torment. Point is, it’s a trap that Aisling was destined for, and proactively sought out, but does not deserve.

Something interesting is happening with perspective here. We observe the narrator as they observe Aisling’s struggle, which is also content Aisling is creating for their audience, based on someone else’s content they watched once and have been searching for. Later we learn the narrator created this experience for Aisling, without their consent or understanding. Does content have a value, or a cost? Is it good or bad to be watched? Is there a risk in consuming all this content—content like the video Aisling was looking for, which doomed them; content like the video Aisling is making right now? The arrows point in all directions.

I’ve made four loops and each time I ended up somewhere different. Every time I restart the game I notice something new—sometimes because something is slightly different based on my choices, and sometimes because nothing is. A couple times I clicked through the dialogue too fast—did something change that time? But I can't go back. Despite that this story has a straightforward script with occasional binary choices, the gameplay mirrors the setting. I’m lost in the maze. (This is a good maze.)

Nothing feels concrete, but as I look carefully, the details get clearer. I find references to a past audience being spectators to someone else’s public trauma. A ghostly figure appears: did they shed layers of themselves until they became transparent? Can we really learn from watching someone else’s struggle, or is it just gratuitous and damaging? Can I get to the bottom of this after a few more loops? Maybe there’s a path that will let me achieve the satisfaction of a True End or a 100% completed decision tree. Or maybe the paths will keep changing so I can never find what I’m looking for.

I will play at least four more times to find out.

Adapted from a Review-A-Thon 26 Review

Style: Visual Novel
Played: 7/21/26
Playtime: 25m, two playthroughs (second kinda quick)

For much of history, story-telling has been constructive, in the sense of architected to a climax. Its dramatic beats tightly coupled, practically engineered to resonate with satisfying if-then consequences that come together dramatically and often surprisingly. Originally in service of a moral lesson or thematic exploration like Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Inevitably, humanity decided words were more powerful than that, and could convey vibes and abstract concepts. Decided that dissonances and non sequiturs would trigger our pattern-searching brains to make something MORE of them.

UU is decidedly a modern work in that sense. There are two narrative threads intertwined here. Most superficially, an internet influencer is documenting his discovery and exploration of a liminal space hidden in a subway station. Layered on that, the narrator positions themselves as creator of the scenario (though not necessarily the characters?), and reflects on childhood dynamics that led to THIS creation, of animating THIS work. There are plenty of “author messing with character” post-modern narratives out there. What I find fascinating is that so few of them (at least that I’ve encountered) interrogate the CHARACTER CREATION role of the author. They often, as here, seem preoccupied with the PLOT and SETTING they craft, but treat the characters as victims in some sense. Which is wild, right? It’s not like authors are not creating all of it in whole cloth. The purpose of this focus sometimes seems to be to examine moral questions behind voyeuristic entertainment. Other times, it can be to examine the craft of writing and its grasping for emotional relevance. In these cases, it deliberately or as a side effect puts its characters in agency-free subject roles.

I didn’t really get those vibes here though. Oh, the fictional protagonist is VERY MUCH an agentless target of narrative. But in service of what was harder to pin down. His reaction to his circumstances was muted, dominated by concerns with his parasocial impact over physical safety. That’s kind of a resonant modern dynamic. But other than the fact of it, it doesn’t really mature into much. Our protag encounters enigmatic NPCs that are more off putting than threatening, and then after a while is rescued by a deus ex libriana.

Interestingly, the PLAYER is no more effectual in the work. It is mostly a visual novel, with one choice repeating itself as the protagonist explores. (I’m just calling the influencer the protagonist out of convenience. There is an argument that the NARRATOR is actually the protagonist, but let’s leave that for the moment.) After playing twice I can state there is no discernible effects those choices have on the narrative. Maybe a more rigorous exploration of the choice sequences might reveal something, but my playthroughs had identical feel both times despite different selection scheme. This raises the prospect that the narrator/author is also playing with US. That we have no more agency than the poor protagonist.

Protagonist, check. Player, check. Which leads us to the remaining of the gameplay troika: the narrator/author themselves. They periodically inject themselves (cued by nameless white text on black background) at first to comment on the proceedings, but increasingly to present unconnected musings about their life and artistic journey. The whole vibe is melancholic and relaxed. Like their motivations in this creation are little more than a pleasant boredom, a way to fill the time. If it sounds like I am poo-pooing it, I’m not. It was a fascinating mood to meander around in. I found it wonderfully reinforced by the graphical language of the thing. It hued from the Amazing World of Gumball school of design: a collection of COMPLETELY different artistic styles mashed together as a disjoint whole. This palette (including a female character with a male representation) seemed to underline the narrator’s enuii. Almost like they couldn’t be BOTHERED with a coherent visual palette and instead plopped down whatever placeholder flashed into their mind, so long as it was expedient. It really coalesced into a casual, reflective atmosphere, much more relaxed and ad hoc than the poor protagonist’s journey.

Along the way, there are some fun and confounding sound bites. I laughed out loud at “thank Google.” I was puzzled, and ultimately frustrated by trying to parse “reflection leads to addiction (and then death)”. But one in particular crystallized my experience of this work into something I could hold onto (paraphrasing):

“I don’t have a point. I just want to spend time with somebody.”

That sad, insightful line really summarized the experience of this narratively slight but emotionally evocative work for me. I don’t think Grimm’s Fairy Tales could accomplish THAT.