I wake up to the sound of rain pummelling my first-floor window. Feeling groggy after some ill-advised weeknight beers, I roll over with a groan – it’s only 7 am. As I stare at the ceiling, half illuminated by my laptop’s unholy blue hue, I feel my article deadline looming. With a sigh, I half-heartedly shuffle towards the kitchen, begrudgingly pour myself a coffee and begin another day.
This is what it’s like to play Apartment Story, a The Sims-esque narrative thriller about a British games journalist called Arthur. It’s not often that a video game makes me feel jarringly seen, but this was exactly my experience as I sat at my real-world desk, peering into a cramped virtual flat, commanding protagonist Arthur to shave, wash his hands, write, and cook himself an uninspiring dinner. It’s the antithesis of your typical gaming power fantasy, an adult-themed, voyeuristic life simulator – and it’s entrancing.
The creation of Glaswegian solo developer, Sean Wenham, this film-length, replayable thriller depicts shut-in Arthur’s lonely life as he becomes entangled in a rapidly escalating situation. The thriller element left me feeling nonplussed. Instead it was watching Arthur dance, go for a piss, and nosily peer into his absent flatmate’s room that made me want to return for a second playthrough. This is an eerily well-observed, grown-up twist on the idea of the life sim. Meters keep you aware of Arthur’s basic needs – one for hunger, another for tiredness, another for hygiene, and so on. I found a perverse joy in embracing the monotony of his existence.
Sporting a charmingly low-polygon art style that lands somewhere between the PS2-era Grand Theft Autos and 2000’s The Sims, this two-hour game takes place almost entirely in an authentically unassuming flat. DVD cases lay strewn across cheap Ikea shelves. Trinkets adorn the dusty mantelpiece, and as you assess the contents of your fridge for something resembling a proper meal, it’s an uncomfortably familiar facsimile of modern existence in your mid-late-20s. The 27-year-old protagonist spends much of the day writing, cleaning, and worrying about paying his bills as he gazes out on to a perennially rainy UK street.
A tap of a directional button shows incoming messages and your ever-dwindling bank balance on your cracked phone screen. As you chuck away dead plants and ignore incoming texts, there’s an eerie sense of pandemic-era housebound dread emanating from Apartment Story, a quiet hum of foreboding. You can opt to give Arthur a shave, get him drunk, have him pace around in his boxers, watch porn or even pointlessly rearrange his belongings. While I diligently wash up the virtual dishes in Arthur’s glistening kitchen, I became painfully aware of the very real cluttered plates lying neglected on the countertop in my periphery.
Yet as other characters are introduced and Apartment Story veers into overblown thriller territory, it loses some of its monotonous magic. What starts as a thought-provoking mediation on modern existence begins to unravel as Arthur finds himself swiftly dragged into a dangerous situation by former flatmate, Diane. As the threat escalates and a hidden gun is discovered, the authentically observed re-creations of modern existence fizzle close to farce. There is an increasingly far-fetched escalating threat, and neither of the game’s other two characters are convincing. It’s a shame that there isn’t a more satisfying melding of the thriller narrative and life sim elements. Perhaps the best course of action is to bypass the storyline entirely, ignoring the doorbell and carrying on cooking, smoking weed and vibing to music.
Apartment Story is a film-length mediation on loneliness, repetition and adult life that is unlike anything else I’ve played. With a little more time and scope, a little more access to Arthur’s wider life, this could have been a cult classic rather than a cult curio. Yet when an indie debut manages to so effortlessly capture such a miserable mood – and for less than the price of a London pint – Apartment Story still feels like an easy recommendation.
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