The horror game scene has been pumping out quality work for a while, especially since the resurgence of indie developers. This subgenre of horror is vastly different from its AAA counterparts, more often than not packaged as short-form content that aims to tell a quick but impactful story. Usually, indie horror games likeThe Closing Shifttake anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of hours to complete, and that’s often enough.
Recently,indie horror gameshave been moving away from supernatural elements and are focusing, instead, on real-life horrors. An excellent example of this isThe Closing Shiftby Chilla’s Art. The Japanese two-person team uses their game to highlight a very real fear: being stalked.
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The Psychological Horror of The Closing Shift
InThe Closing Shift,a horror game recently released on Steam, the player character is a young woman working the late shift at a coffee shop. Everything starts off relatively normal, with her having to take orders and make drinks for customers. However, things start to get uneasy when the protagonist finds photographs of herself and strange notes. The notes are disturbing as they speak to how the protagonist and the undisclosed writer are in love. Of course, the protagonist has no idea who the writer is.
As the protagonist goes about her shift, serving customers, she starts hearing more about local stalking cases with a strange man who has been lingering outside of the coffee shopwhere the horror protagonist spends most of her time. At one point, she even sees this man standing next to the building through a CCTV camera. These unsettling events continue until the protagonist decides to try and expose her stalker.
The Closing Shiftdelivers a chilling narrative about stalking that isdisturbingly close to reality. Many would say the protagonist should have spoken to a colleague or gone to the police, but in real life the situation isn’t always that simple, and the game portrays this as well. At one point, the player is prompted to talk to their senior at the coffee shop, who simply brushes off the protagonist’s anxiety and heads home.
Even worse, in one ending, the protagonist manages to knock their stalker unconscious and runs to the police to have them apprehended. By the time she returns, the stalker is gone. The police ask her to file a report so that they can investigate the case, but this likely amounted to nothing as the stalker still reappears to harmthe protagonist in the game’s final cutscene.
Other people might thinkthe horror protagonistshould have quit her job and found another one, but this is also not a cut-and-dry solution. For one, the protagonist’s job at the coffee shop might be what’s paying her bills and keeping her afloat, making it difficult to change jobs immediately. Additionally, the stalker knew where she lived considering he sabotaged her car and forced her to take the bus. Worse, he also knew which apartment she lived in, as he pushed one of his notes through her mail slot. Even if the protagonist managed to find a new job, the stalker would be able to track her down easily.
Overall,The Closing Shiftis a stylized but realistic portrayal of stalking. It instills the player with a sense of dread, knowing that someone with bad intentions is following their every move. It also doesn’t shy away from bringing up relevant issues, such as having colleagues downplay the concern and the ineffectiveness of police intervention. It’s an indiehorror game well worth playing in 2022.
The Closing Shiftis available now on PC.
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