For this month’s post, we’re going to need some context. You see, my siblings and I are big gamers (though you might have already guessed that from some of my previous posts). The end of this month also happens to be my brother’s birthday, and because ribbing my siblings on the internet is part of the job of Big Sister, I can honestly say it’s always been a struggle to find something to do to celebrate his next trip around the sun. But, as the planets have mysteriously aligned for this singular point in time, he actually found what he wanted to do before we had to start bothering him about it.

Now that my obligatory teasing is out of the way, back to the first part. The thing my brother wants to do to ring in his next year is to go see Backrooms. It’s a stacked cast horror film based on a short YouTube video posted by the then sixteen-year-old director, inspired by an anonymous forum post that escaped into the wider internet. Yeah. Quite the rabbit hole. It escaped so far that there’s even a video game adaptation of it, which is crazy to think about when all the original post was, was of an unsettling, empty yellow hallway with an equally unsettling short story about blipping through reality (turns out it was just a well-composed photograph of an under-renovation Wisconsin store, though. The more you know). But when my brother first showed any of this to me, I had barely an idea of what it was. I looked at the movie trailer, the game trailer, and part of the Wikipedia page and thought, “wait… isn’t this just House of Leaves?”

It’s not (and yes, I did receive a five-minute lecture for my ignorance), but the similarities are undeniable. The mind-bending, literal page-bending account of a man who comes into possession of an academic manuscript detailing the contents of a supposedly popular documentary film has all the “escaped a small online forum” vibes to match what Backrooms is bringing to the table. As readers delve into the Navidson family’s found footage of a mysterious hallway that appears one day in the middle of their living room with a spiraling maze beyond it, it’s like having your very own housebound Backrooms. Not that you’d probably want that, though, and also, not to say that House of Leaves was the first book to even have a plot about liminal spaces, but as far as my book knowledge goes, it is the definitive modern example of it. Which brings me to the point of all this context. They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery, and since the empty, yawning halls of both Backrooms and House of Leaves have opened my own thoughtful rabbit hole, I started to wonder what other video games have borrowed things from cornerstone literature. Turns out, there’s a lot.

Let’s revisit an oldie but a goodie. I’ve written a little about Alan Wake on the cosmic horror of it all, but, crazily enough, a lot of what inspired its tortured writer protagonist and the monsters from the edges of the unknown (or Cauldron Lake) is in fact… House of Leaves. But don’t just take my word for it. Sam Lake, creative director of Alan Wake’s studio Remedy, has said so himself. Though rather than the ideas of a wordsmith questioning his sanity after the supernatural kidnapping of his wife, or a very cursed manuscript just being a simple homage to the liminal horror media, Lake also tips his hat to the likes of Stephen King. While we unfortunately don’t have the largest of King’s influences on the world of Alan Wake on our shelves (The Dark Half’s tortured author protagonist with an evil alter ego really does the heavy lifting in the inspiration department), we do have Misery and The Shining. Which… now that I think about it, also have tortured author characters, in their own unique ways. If you haven’t made your way to these books yet, Mercy is a dark thriller about a car crash and a fangirl encounter gone horribly wrong, and The Shining (if you’ve also somehow managed to avoid the movie too), takes place at the fictional Overlook Hotel, where fresh caretaker Jack Torrance brings his family over the winter closure to hopefully finish his manuscript and reconnect with his family. Considering this is a Stephen King book, you can imagine how well that ends up going.

Now, let’s return to a second game that you may have seen me mention here and there, Death Stranding. While you can still say that the game is a very beautifully rendered walking simulator that will take you (and Norman Reedus’ delivery boy Sam Bridges) across America as you try to reconnect its disparate, dystopian parts, the mechanics aren’t entirely unfounded or uninspired. That’s because of David Brin’s 1985 novel The Postman. It’s a post-apocalyptic tale about a man who accidentally becomes a postman (well, in name only, really) after using the jacket of a deceased worker to protect himself from the cold. It’s a story of hope and reconnection as Gordon travels across the country, meeting far-flung communities just doing their best while he parades under the guise of humanitarian work (who knew that the one thing you’d miss in an apocalyptic universe would be snail mail?). There might even be a cult of hypersurvivalists somewhere in there, reveling in their newfound post-doomsday environment. So, coincidence? I think not.

While we’re on the apocalypse/dystopia train, how about we take a closer look at maybe one of the most popular games of the genre? Though Bioshock’s empty art deco glitz and glam is a feast for the eyes and the hearts of historical architecture fans, much of its aesthetic is based on, you guessed it, the classic dystopian novels that came before it. The industrialist geometric stylings of the movement (and its depression era vibes) are all over Ayn Rand’s magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. Add in a dash of the looming threat of an economic collapse with the slow, inevitable dissolving of America’s biggest megacorporations, and a mysterious cryptic phrase being thrown around as the situation worsens, and you have the makings of a “would you kindly?” disaster (if you know, you know). Plus, both the book and the game ask the age-old question of “what’s the worst that could happen if we left control of a world (or a singular, underwater island) in the hands of a one man with an idea and maybe some delusions of grandeur?” If you weren’t sure whether I was just making some semi-smart sounding conjectures, though, you don’t need to look further than the “Who is Atlas?” posters slapped all over the walls of Bioshock’s Rapture.

Let’s take a step away from the dark depths of dystopias, though, and instead bring our investigation to our last game of this blog post, Life is Strange. I’ll admit, this last novel-to-video game duo had me scratching my head a bit. Up until I realized that the game’s titular character is named Max Caulfield. As in The Catcher in the Rye’s Holden Caulfield. Now, before you start giving me the inevitable eyebrow raise for this one, like Bioshock, there are posters all over Max’s room that mirror the cover for this classic novel (not to mention the comments directed at the principal’s “phony” hunter’s hat). While The Catcher in the Rye does lack a literal time-bending teen who discovers her powers in the midst of stopping a terrible accident, the spirit of Holden’s post-expulsion travels through New York, and his teenage rebellion, alienation, and angst are alive and well in the game. You can’t spell Life is Strange without angst… or something like that.

Now I think I need to pick up House of Leaves again, to bend my mind enough to be ready for what the Backrooms adaptation will bring to the table. Also, maybe, just maybe, to annoy my brother with several fun facts while we’re watching, as it is my job. Until next time!