Curtain

Curtain is a short narrative game set in Glasgow, Scotland in 2013, where players experience the abusive relationship of Ally Harrison, a queer woman, and her punk bandmate Kaci Hudson. From a first-person perspective, players explore the couple’s apartment over several days, with Ally’s internal thoughts and Kaci’s controlling comments displayed simultaneously, immersing them in the oppressive atmosphere of domestic abuse through simple pixel art and visual novel elements.

Curtain: A Semester in the Life of a Pixelated Nightmare

Introduction: An Uncomfortable Mirror

In the vast, often-sublime library of video games, few titles achieve the rare alchemy of being simultaneously potent, painful, and profoundly important. Curtain (2014), a half-hour interactive narrative from the one-person studio DREAMFEEL (Llaura McGee), is one such artifact. It is not a game about fun, empowerment, or escapism. It is, in the words of its creator, an experience about being “overwhelmed” and “stifled.” Set in a grimy, pixelated Glasgow apartment in 2013, it places you in the worn sneakers of Ally Harrison, a queer artist and bassist in the punk band Kaci’s Party, who is trapped in an abusive relationship with the band’s volatile frontwoman, Kaci Hudson. What unfolds is less a conventional plot and more a relentless, claustrophobic excavation of coercive control, gaslighting, and the slow, grinding erosion of self. Curtain’s legacy is not one of commercial blockbuster status or pervasive cultural saturation, but of extraordinary critical reverence and a stubborn, vital insistence that the medium can—and must—hold a mirror to the darkest, most normalized corners of human experience, particularly within queer communities. This review argues that Curtain is a landmark of “interface horror” and phenomenological game design, using its extreme formal constraints—visual, textual, and mechanical—to translate the psychology of abuse into an embodied, unforgettable player experience. Its simplicity is its devastating strength, making it a cornerstone of arthouse, queer, and “empathy” game discourse.

Development History & Context: Punk Ethos in a Unity Engine

Curtain emerged from the singular vision of Llaura McGee, operating under the DREAMFEEL moniker, an Irish developer deeply embedded in the online queer games milieu of the early 2010s. This was a period defined by a grassroots, anti-commercial ethos: the idea that “anybody can create a game” and “anything can be a game” was a rallying cry against the escalating costs and AAA homogeneity of the era. Platforms like itch.io were fertile ground for raw, personal, and politically charged work. McGee has stated the game was partially inspired by the experiences of people close to her and, subsequently, by her own intense personal trauma—a relationship that “consumed my entire life.” This autobiographical core, filtered through a punk sensibility, is fundamental to its authenticity.

Technologically, Curtain was built in Unity using the Fungus middleware, a plugin designed to facilitate visual novel and dialogue-heavy games without requiring extensive programming. This choice is telling: it prioritized narrative expression over complex systems. The resulting visual style—described by McGee as intentionally “ugly and rough and garish”—was a direct rebellion against photographic realism. She wanted something “alive, even when you’re not doing anything. That its skin is slowly crawling.” The pixelated, neon-drenched apartment, rendered in jarring primary colors, was not a technical limitation but a deliberate, affective design decision meant to evoke discomfort and disorientation.

The 2014 release placed Curtain within a specific indie landscape. It arrived after seminal “walking simulator” experiences like Dear Esther (2012) and Gone Home (2013), which proved first-person exploration could carry profound narrative weight. However, Curtain subverted the exploratory freedom of those games. Where Gone Home used a lovingly detailed space to tell a story of queer discovery, Curtain uses a deliberately confusing, oppressive space to tell a story of queer entrapment. Its acclaim—winning AMaze 2015’s Grand Prize and the Best Game Script award from the Writers Guild of Ireland—signaled a recognition within festival circuits and writing circles that its approach was groundbreaking. It existed at the crossroads of the art game, the queer game, and the narrative game, refusing to be neatly categorized.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive: The Banality of Control

The narrative of Curtain is structurally simple but thematically dense, unfolding over a few key days following a gig. Its genius lies in its dual-text mechanic, which becomes the primary vessel for its psychological horror.

• The Dual-Text Architecture: The screen is permanently trisected. The top third (usually white) displays Ally’s internal thoughts, addressed in the second person (“You feel…”, “You remember…”). This is a crucial formal choice. By making the player the “you,” the game collapses the distance between player and protagonist, implicating you directly in Ally’s perceptions and failures. You are not observing Ally; you are forced to be her, thinking her thoughts.
  The bottom third (a perpetual, oppressive blue) is reserved for Kaci’s commentary. This is not dialogue in a traditional sense; it is a relentless, real-time stream of consciousness from the abuser. She critiques Ally’s observations, dismisses her memories, insults her art (“lazy lump”), isolates her from friends (“I don’t like Rebecca”), and weaponizes intimacy (“Let me kiss, you know you like it”). The middle sliver is the blurry, pixelated 3D environment you must navigate to progress.
  This interface is the game’s central metaphor: Kaci’s voice is an inescapable, omnipresent layer of reality, permanently imposed upon Ally’s—and the player’s—worldview. There is no mashing a button to skip it; it is as constant as the air in the apartment.

• Characterization as Pathology: Ally is not a traditional hero. She is in a state of perpetual justification, her thoughts often tangled with self-doubt and a desperate need to see the best in Kaci. Her creativity (her art, her songwriting) is slowly choked by Kaci’s disdain. Kaci, conversely, is a masterpiece of nuanced villainy. McGee insists Kaci is “human,” and that is what makes her so terrifying. She is not a cartoonish monster but a deeply troubled, creative, and charismatic person whose own misery manifests as a need to dominate. Her abuse is a toxic fusion of romantic angst (“We can pretend we are wherever we want”) and brutal control. The game brilliantly shows how abusers often see themselves as the victim, with Kaci spiraling into depression and self-loathing after an assault she committed gets the band dropped. Her cruelty is a projection of her own worthlessness.

• Themes of Queer Specificity: Curtain rejects a universal “abuse is abuse” simplicity. It is steeped in queer context:

  1. The “Dream House”: Like Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House, the apartment is a site where love and violence are inextricably fused. It’s a queer shared space of punk music, artistic collaboration, and mutual—then coercive—care.
  2. Family & Community Erosion: Kaci’s isolation tactics target Ally’s connections to her family and the broader queer community (e.g., forbidding her from seeing the concerned friend Rebecca). This taps into a specific fear for many queer individuals: that their chosen family or biological family might be the only tether to safety, and that an abuser will sever it.
  3. Lack of Blueprint: As noted in the Immerse essay, there is no singular script for a “queer relationship.” This can make recognizing abuse harder, as it doesn’t fit a heteronormative template. Curtain shows a relationship that begins with the charged excitement of a punk romance, making its descent feel like a specific betrayal of that initial euphoria.

• Temporal Dislocation & “Queer Time”: The game messes with chronology. Memories from the past (a happier time, the moment of a key betrayal) are accessed by interacting with objects in the present-day apartment. This creates a non-linear, “queer time” (per Jack Halberstam) where the past is not past, and the trauma is constantly being re-contextualized in the present moment of abuse. The bathroom serves as a liminal “in-between” space—a literal portal connecting the “past” and “future” versions of the apartment—where Ally (and the player) can temporarily pause the relentless forward march of Kaci’s narrative control.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems: The Oppressive Interface as Antagonist

Curtain presents a deceptively simple interaction model that becomes a conduit for psychological immersion.

• Core Loop & Environment: The player moves in a first-person perspective through a small, low-resolution apartment (and a bathroom corridor). Interactable objects—a guitar, photos, a phone, a cat named Toast—glow subtly. The goal is to examine all relevant objects to trigger the next narrative beat. The game is not about puzzle-solving but about bearing witness and enduring. The environment is purposefully disorienting. Walls and objects blur into “a jumbled of garish red, blue, and green pixels,” making spatial orientation difficult. This visual chaos mirrors Ally’s fractured mental state and the “unclear boundaries” of her abusive situation.

• The Text-Based Antagonism: This is the game’s sole, genius “system.” The dual-text mechanic is not a UI choice; it is the primary gameplay. The player’s “action” is simply existing in the space while two conflicting narratives fight for dominance. Kaci’s box is larger, more frequent, and more emotionally charged. Ally’s voice is quieter, frequently interrupted or overwritten. The system simulates the experience of having one’s inner monologue policed and dismissed. Critically, the game does not allow you to “win” by ignoring Kaci. You cannot progress until her commentary has been aired for that object. You must listen.

• Progression & Agency (The Lack Thereof): Progression is linear and forced. There is no branching path, no player choice that alters the narrative. This absence of conventional agency is the point. The player is a helpless bystander, mirroring Ally’s own trapped position. You cannot intervene, console, or rebel. You can only move, click, and absorb. The only moment of true player agency is in the bathroom, where you can linger in the shower corridor or stare at the mirror—small respites where Kaci’s text box (usually) disappears, offering a fleeting sense of mental privacy.

• The Ending & “Infinite” Failure: The game concludes when all narrative threads are resolved. The final scene, after Ally has left, is starkly calmer visually, but the trauma lingers. Most deviously, as noted by Luca Colosso of creepygaming.net, “if you don’t go through all the dramatic hardships, the game will keep on running forever.” Refusing to engage with the painful objects leaves you in a purgatorial loop within the apartment. This is a brilliant mechanical metaphor for the way unresolved trauma or indecision can trap a survivor in a cycle of reliving the abuse. The game only ends when you have fully processed the story on its terms.

• Flaws as Features: What some players might cite as flaws—the nausea-inducing pixelation, the frustrating text occlusion, the lack of traditional interactivity—are the very elements the critical consensus (Polygon, KillScreen, CVGS) identifies as essential to its immersive horror. The discomfort is the point. As one itch.io commenter stated, the game “hit home in so many ways… I see myself in Ally very easily.”

World-Building, Art & Sound: The Aesthetics of Disorientation

Curtain’s world is a masterclass in using aesthetic minimalism to convey maximum psychological unease.

• Visual Design & “Skin Crawling”: The apartment is a pastel nightmare. Walls shift between pink, purple, and sickly green. Objects—a bed, a mirror, a window—are rendered in a low-res, “jagged pixel” style that makes them feel unstable, like a bad dream or a memory degrading. McGee wanted the visuals to feel “alive” and “crawling.” This isn’t just a stylistic quirk; it externalizes Ally’s perception. Her world is literally blurry, overwhelming, and hard to parse because her reality is being rewritten by Kaci’s abuse. The contrast is stark in the “future” apartment post-breakup, where colors are “more subdued, and the surroundings become clearer,” showing a mind beginning to regain its bearings. Yet, even then, the bathroom mirror brings back the saturated, fuzzy distortion—the trauma that “faded” but is never truly gone.

• Sound Design & Silence: Sound is used sparingly but effectively. The itch.io page lists two tracks: ‘Midnight Cassette’ by Frank Nora and ‘Occasion for War’ by Rations. These likely underscore the punk band backstory and the lurking violence. More powerful, however, is the strategic use of silence. When Kaci’s text box is absent, as in the bathroom, the quiet is profound. It’s a rare auditory safe space. Most of the “soundtrack” is the player’s own mental voice and the intrusive inner monologue of Kaci, creating an intimate, internalized horror.

• The Apartment as Character: The setting is not just a backdrop; it is the physical manifestation of the abusive relationship. Every object is a trigger or a site of contested memory. The bed where intimacy and assault happen. The phone, a tool for connection that Kaci weaponizes. The guitar, Ally’s creative outlet that Kaci disparages. The apartment is both a home and a prison, its boundaries as unclear as the pixelated walls. As Kaci ominously states while looking out the window: “We can see the city from here… It looks like any city. We can pretend we are wherever we want.” The game suggests this horror could be anywhere, in any queer domestic space.

Reception & Legacy: From Distribution Controversy to Academic Canon

Curtain‘s reception trajectory is as nuanced as the game itself.

• Initial Critical Response (2014-2015): Critics immediately recognized its power. Danielle Riendeau at Polygon, who had personal experience with abuse, called it “heartbreaking” and “so dead-on that they broke my heart.” Chris Priestman (KillScreen) noted its grim, unavoidable tension: “You know this is going to happen from the start.” It was praised for its unflinching, non-sensationalist portrayal of queer intimate partner violence (IPV)—a subject glaringly absent from mainstream games. Its awards (AMaze, WGI) cemented its status as a significant narrative achievement in the indie scene.

• The Game Jolt Incident (January 2022): The game’s most infamous legacy moment came when it was summarily pulled from distribution on Game Jolt. The platform cited its policy against content that “depicts, solicits, promotes, normalizes, or glorifies… sexual violence.” This was a catastrophic misreading. Curtain depicts the psychological and verbal mechanisms of abuse; nothing is explicitly sexual or graphically violent. The controversy highlighted a persistent problem in game distribution: platforms’ inability to distinguish between gratuitous exploitation and necessary, critical depictions of trauma. McGee’s public response was a masterclass in clarity, defending the game’s purpose. This event became a touchstone in discussions about platform censorship and the policing of “safe” narratives in games.

• Academic & Theoretical Canonization: Curtain swiftly moved beyond game journalism into academic discourse. Whitney Pow’s 2018 article “Reaching Toward Home: Software Interface as Queer Orientation” in Velvet Light Trap is pivotal. Pow argues the game centralizes “the experience of being structurally disempowered, unsafe, and unable to move freely,” using its interface and pixelation to produce “queer orientations and phenomenologies.” The game is now taught in game studies courses as a prime example of:

  • Phenomenological Game Design: Where the mechanics are the feeling.
  • Queer Game Making: resistant to AAA norms, personal, politically urgent.
  • The Limits of Representation: How to show the structure of abuse rather than just its events.

• Player Testimony & Cult Status: On itch.io, where it remains available (with a “pay what you want” model reflecting its creator’s anti-capitalist, accessible ethos), player reviews are a somber litany of recognition. Phrases like “hit too close to home,” “rings true to life,” “cathartic,” and “thank you for making it” are common. For many survivors of abuse, especially within queer communities, it is a rare and validating digital artifact. It has achieved a quiet, profound cult status among those who seek games that grapple with difficult truths.

• Influence: Its influence is subtle but pervasive. It paved the way for—and is often cited alongside—other intense, personal narrative games about trauma from marginalized perspectives, such as If Found… (also by DREAMFEEL/McGee), Rainswept (2018), and even the emotional weight of Tell Me Why (2020). It demonstrated that a game could be visually simple, mechanically sparse, and yet be a devastatingly effective piece of social commentary. It expanded the definition of what a “gameplay loop” could be: from one of reward to one of endured revelation.

Conclusion: An Indelible Scar on the Medium

Curtain is not a game you “like.” It is a game you endure and, for those it resonates with, remember. Its 20-30 minute runtime is a mercy; any longer would risk breaking the player. Its genius is in the perfect alignment of form and content: the garish pixels are Ally’s anxious perception; the permanent text box is Kaci’s unshakable voice; the lack of choice is the prisoner’s reality; the muted, clear final apartment is the fragile calm after the storm, with the fuzzy mirror a permanent reminder of damage done.

Its historical importance lies in three pillars:
1. It centered queer IPV with a specificity and lack of melodrama that was virtually unprecedented in the medium.
2. It weaponized its own minimalism, proving that oppressive atmosphere and profound thematic depth could be achieved without complex systems or high-fidelity graphics.
3. It sparked vital, ongoing conversations about platform responsibility, the difference between depicting trauma and exploiting it, and the role of the artist in processing personal pain for public consumption.

Curtain’s place in history is secure not as a beloved classic, but as a crucial artifact—a difficult, beautiful, and brutal piece of work that expanded the emotional and political vocabulary of video games. It is a testament to the idea that the most powerful game mechanics are sometimes the ones that strip away power from the player, forcing them to sit in the unbearable space of someone else’s reality. For that, it is unforgettable. It is, in the truest sense, a work of art that uses the language of games to draw a curtain back on a darkness many prefer to ignore, and in doing so, lets a little terrifying, necessary light in.

Final Verdict: 9.5/10 – A landmark of phenomenological and queer game design. Its discomfort is its purpose, its brevity its power. An essential, harrowing experience for anyone serious about the medium’s capacity for hard truths.