Habeas Corpus

This one had me at “explore abandoned spaces”—but this isn’t your average abandoned building; rather, it’s a Howl’s Moving Castle-esque fortress, forever roaming. The second-person protagonist wakes up with only a vague grasp of who they are or why they’re here, putting the focus on what you do in the here-and-now rather than your backstory. Explore the accessible rooms; discover the few remaining inhabitants. As you do, you’ll uncover a rough idea of the purpose of this place, and what happened to bring it to its current state.

The heart of the game, though, is the creature that appears to be powering this massive, semi-organic(?) vehicle. The first room I visited happened to be the one containing them, and their description is evocatively disturbing:

“A creature perches upon the dais, clawed talons curled around the edge of the platform. Fire engulfs their body, consuming their feathered wings, but the blaze appears to spare their flesh. Other than the flutter of feathers burning and growing in perpetuity, the harpy is motionless, upright but unconscious. …No visible bindings hold them in place, yet they cannot move.”

After trying and failing to communicate with the harpy, I continued my exploration, but remained intrigued and troubled by this trapped figure. A (Spoiler - click to show)soon-discovered discarded voice box appeared to be the key to freeing them, but (Spoiler - click to show)upon returning, I didn’t see a way to give it to them. So I (Spoiler - click to show)returned to the room where I was promised deep, dreamful sleep, and so found my first ending.

Of course, (Spoiler - click to show)giving the voice box to the harpy is, indeed, what you’re meant to do, which I discovered when I played again. To get that option, you have to go to the engine room, click the “approach” button, then click the “examine” button. On my first try, I’d stopped at the “approach” level. I’m trying to decide whether I consider this a design flaw or a perhaps-intentional way to channel players toward getting the “Lotus-eater” ending first. Because on my second playthrough, having initially failed made it more exciting when I discovered that I actually could provide the harpy with the means to communicate, and then escape with them.

Stories about kindness in the face of grim circumstances will always get me. After my second playthrough, I looked up “habeas corpus” to refresh my memory, and found it a fitting title for a game where we play as the judge vested with the power to set a wrongful prisoner free.

Habeas Corpus is a short game submitted to a jam with the rule of being no longer than 1,000 words. It is a surreal story about finding a way out of a decaying place, and yet this is not a typical escape game. I have a habit for writing excessively long reviews so I will try to do the same thing here!

You awake in a decrepit moving fortress, unsure of who you are. Even your own reflection is unfamiliar. All you have are five rooms to explore: Dormitory, Armory, Engine room, Concourse, and Nexus, where the game begins. The gameplay predominantly uses the “approach,” “examine,” and “talk” command that are available in certain rooms. Some rooms seem to be merely atmospheric. While this game is largely exploratory, there are some small puzzles about searching your surroundings to finding clues about your whereabouts.

There is minimal exposition on the story. It's ambiguous but no means incomplete, either. We are not sure of why we are in the fortress or the protagonist’s backstory. It left me with some questions. For instance, (Spoiler - click to show) is the dying body in the dormitory supposed to be yourself? Are you dead? That was my initial impression. But for a game of no more than 1,000 words it does well in sewing together a story out of a surreal concept (although I know the jam gives you more wiggle room than other jams that only allow 100 words).

The game’s description explains that there are multiple endings. I only found two: (Spoiler - click to show) LOTUS-EATER and FIRMAMENT, the second appearing to be the “good” ending. It’s a nice ending enough ending about (Spoiler - click to show) escaping with the harpy that effectively concludes the gameplay.

The appearance is snazzily stylized. The text is white with an angular font. Links are either dynamic animated black 3D boxes or glowing peach colour links. The latter bounces when you click on it, cycling between two to four words that provide extra descriptions. The background is horizontal black and dark grey stripes. Meanwhile, the top of the screen is a panel of red and dark red horizontal strips with a grey border. Slowly, these panel colours change as you explore. The panel has buttons for each room, next to each are door icons. I’d say this is a polished and clever design!

It is not a particularly memorable game or one that I would play again, but it is one that I enjoyed and replayed to find the endings. Some of it even has a few Porpentine vibes. If you are a fellow fan of Porpentine or of G.C. Baccaris’s other works (be sure to try Heretic’s Hope, it’s quite a thrill), Habeas Corpus is a fun option.

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.