Habeas Corpus

I think there’s something incredibly fascinating about places which are abandoned. There were people once, living, breathing people like me and you, and suddenly, the air stays still, the rooms are silent, and everything is falling into disrepair. You know, weight of history and all, maybe twisted sense of nostalgia, maybe awe in the face of decay that will, one day, get us too – there’s just something about it. So I was definitely curious about how Habeas Corpus will tackle it.

It’s another word-limited work, this time with a limit of 1000 words, which is definitely more forgiving than 500. We play as someone with no memory, waking up in an abandoned moving fortress. From here, there are two endings: the Lotus-Eater ending in which we end up falling into forever sleep (neat reference, by the way), and Firmament ending, in which we end up escaping together with another fortress resident, a harpy.

Again about the visuals: I feel like this particular author never misses with those. The striped background reminds me of scan lines – with the pixelated font, it brings to mind an old monitor and that adds a little layer of strange nostalgia to the mix. I don’t know how to explain it but those visual choices simply make choice to me.

We wake up with no memory – only a rough feeling that we belong where we are. All is still within but moving outside. There’s rust and broken things all around. Maybe this reflection is yours, maybe it’s not. It’s strange to explore this place and try to piece together its purpose, and maybe our purpose. I’m still thinking of how to put all of this together. Perhaps it says something about imprisonment. Habeas corpus is the whole procedure that is used to determine if someone’s detention is lawful (if I understood things correctly. I’m not a lawyer). The fortress is powered up by a phoenix-like harpy, and weren’t harpies the creatures which snatched people away and put them before Erinyes, punishers of crime? The harpy is imprisoned itself, voicebox torn out, and there’s something so powerful in this imagery. It has no say in anything, made into a power source for a decaying building – a fortress made for war, judging by the armory. When we bring the voice back to the harpy, are we proving our innocence or are we atoning for what we’ve done in the past?

And when it comes to the dream ending, weren’t lotus eaters imprisoned in their own company? Didn’t they live a dream of absolute apathy, forgetting everything about themselves? The one ending where the fortress keeps on going, the ending in which we’re meant to stay imprisoned forever, is the one in which we choose to give up and give into nothingness, and…

Yeah, in case you can’t see, Habeas Corpus gave me a lot to think about. It probably won’t surprise you to say that I enjoyed it a lot. It just happened to hit some of the points that get my brain going in just the right way. So, maybe go ahead and experience it for yourself, if you want to see what I’m talking about.