“I implore you. Know the void before it destroys you.” — Starseed Pilgrim
The inspiration and companion piece for this article, “Cut Off” A Dead Space Memoir” by Samantha Allen is a moving and poignant piece, comparing the narration and playthrough of Dead Space to her experience of loss and leaving the Mormon church. For her, this kind of profound emotional loss embodied one of the deepest tenets of horror: that true horror is bred from the unknown and our fear at how we will (or that we cannot) handle it. The horror for both Dead Space and Samantha was in being completely and irrevocably alone, guided by ghosts of a previous time that we can no longer rely on to see us through the hard times.
I loved the paralleling of navigating through one’s life with the immersion we experience in some games. Certain games speak to us on a deep level because of the forced interaction. Despite the pixelation, I felt a massive difference when I killed someone in Hotline Miami, where finishing a baddie frequently involved bashing somebody’s head against the ground, versus any of the kill shots in Gears of War. This is not to say that the violence is different, but rather that my reaction to the violence was mediated by something else entirely — a different connection based off of my mood at the time and where I was in my life, mentally and emotionally. Being in a much more unstable position playing Hotline Miamia created a different mentality for me to engage with it (and the violence).
I admired how Samantha was able to discuss such a personal issue through the experiences she underwent in Dead Space, because of the way the game spoke to such an irrevocable loss that she had underwent in her own life. I came to Starseed Pilgrim at a similarly unstable position: struggling through the worst depression I’ve faced in awhile, compounded with loads of other personal and professional circumstances, meant I approached Starseed Pilgrim incredibly vulnerable and incredibly lost.
Like Samantha, I also left behind a religious structure in my adolescence. And while I’m not comparing the Catholic Church to the Mormon Church, I do understand her profound sense of loss from when I left Catholicism to become an atheist. I approached my fall from grace with all the blunder of one confused and determined: I stumbled, and fell, and became lost and scared, but was always excited at the process of exploring and discovering what the world meant for me and for me alone. It wasn’t about turning to a symbolic structure to assuage my fears, but rather discovering in myself what was meaningful and right for me. No safety nets, no cushions to break my fall. Just myself and my own attempts at making some sort of sense for my life.
Normally, with video games, the player starts from a conceptually consistent framework, wherein there are certain in-grain expectations. I expect a tutorial. I expect (for the most part) cohesive/enticing narration. There is an established framework for getting a player ready in a game, and these usually involve holding the player’s hand for a certain period of time before being let go to wander and explore and discover solo. In a lot of ways, this is what Catholicism was for me until high school: it was an established system, with a set of rules and pre-conceived notions about how different scenarios would play out within these established guidelines or rules. It was a safe framework because all I was doing was learning the ropes, and my role therein.
Then there’s Starseed Pilgrim, a game that offers very little to zero of these pre-established guidelines and frameworks. I was introduced to Starseed Pilgrim at an indie gaming and music event put on in Toronto called the Long Winter. I was approached to volunteer and was told I’d be helping to run the Starseed Pilgrim booth. I knew the drill: come early to learn and play the game, then throughout the evening help others play through the game as they wander from room to room experiencing the different music and art installations the Long Winter has to offer. What I didn’t know was anything about Starseed Pilgrim (except that I kept silently auto-correcting it to Scott Pilgrim in my mind). All I was told was: “there’s no hand-holding.”
Okay. Cool. So I started playing, became confused, kept getting returned to the “start screen” (for lack of a better description of the basic level your avatar is constantly being sent back to start from). And my friend was right: there is absolutely zero hand-holding, because there is zero tutorial. The controls are explained, and a brief, psychedelic introduction is given (“The sky is dying. Take its hand and take it flying.”) And then you’re off!
…Except what do you do? You create paths, you grow. You learn the patterns and behaviours of the different coloured blocks. You figure out the objective by moving through the space in any direction you want. You are not confined (except by yourself). Then the screen flips so that the play space is now the inverted area where you were previously growing your path. And then there’s this message:
“You are always home-bound. Press H to lose your way.”
For me, this simple instruction resonated the most deeply from anything else in the game. Starseed Pilgrim is about losing your way in order to rediscover it. For yourself. The autonomy that I found jarring in the gameplay is the fundamental philosophy operating behind the game: there are no tutorials because Starseed Pilgrim is about exploring and constructing entirely on your own. Starseed Pilgrim is eloquent and the scant narration creates a sense of playing through a poem. Create the narration and the meaning of the game for yourself, without being told how to feel (and essentially what to do).
This is what atheism, and the process of losing my faith and becoming an atheist, was for me: it was about leaving behind the safety of a traditional and symbolic structure and embarking upon an even more fulfilling journey into creating meaning for myself outside of any preconceived structure because I could not exist within the previous system. There’s a void, and it’s about acknowledging and jumping feet first into that void so that you’re free to make your own meaning and your own story.
Starseed Pilgrim isn’t a comfortable game to play. It places the onus of understanding and success entirely on the player’s shoulders. There aren’t any answers except for the ones you discover yourself. It will yield nothing if you don’t put yourself into it. And while playing Starseed Pilgrim is a confusing and frustrating endeavour, there is a great sense of pride in having tackled it and figured it out.
And I think that’s why Starseed Pilgrim is such an uncomfortable, but ultimately, rewarding game to play. And why it resonated so much with me at this stage: atheism was a liberation for me during a period in my life when I needed to trust and understand myself. While I’m still an atheist, coming to Starseed Pilgrim reminded me of this process, and the pain and ultimate openness of the process of losing my way in order to find it again — a process I continually find myself in. As Leigh Alexander remarked on her post about video games simulations and life imitation in video games, this isn’t to say video games “saved” me. They didn’t — they’re just a good analogy for difficult experiences, sometimes.
