Three Mile

For the first minutes, Three Mile is utterly unremarkable. You and some friends are on a midnight trip towards a haunted road. There's the usual characterisation of the protagonists (the couple who aren't happy together; the socially awkward guy; the girl he's in love with). There's the linear interaction mechanic, which basically just involves clicking on the text to see a new piece of text. Any tension is the tension of anticipation. What will go wrong? What horrors will appear in the night?

And then things change. And I continue behind spoiler tags.

(Spoiler - click to show)The horror never happens to us. The horror is us. Of course it's an old trick to give us only fragments of a story and make us guess at what happened -- what we vaguely imagine is always more horrifying than anything spelled out in detail. And using technological breakdown to create this fragmentary nature is effective, but also a well-worn trope. But what makes Three Mile original and powerful is the fact that the protagonist-author is a manipulative, creepy bastard; and we know that he (he's probably male) is writing and rewriting with the specific goal of manipulating us. This gives everything that we read or see, and every act of interpretation that we perform, an added element of dreadful doubt. If this is what we are shown, if this is the bast face he can put on it, then what really happened? Psychological abysses open up before us.

One more thing: take the trigger warning about self-harm seriously. It's not really the focus of the story, but when it appears it has impact.