Trapped in an apartment, going through a cyclical routine, having anxiety about what might be lying on the other side of the door in the real world? What is this, the last four years of my life? No, it's the setup to the theatrical narrative presented in Blue Rider Interactive's debut work, Apartment Story.
Apartment Story's setup is built to put its players on edge, and its avant-garde presentation and Sims-like gameplay tell me that its creators are a team to watch moving forward.
Answer the knock at the door and let me in to tell you all about this adult Sims-like thriller.
​Just the Facts |
Developer: Blue Rider Interactive |
Publisher: Blue Rider Interactive |
​Platform(s): PC |
​Price: $7 |
Release Date: September 26, 2024 |
Review key provided by developer via Strange Signals. |
The real horror is never being able to own a house!
Blue Rider Interactive is a brand-new studio, barely a year old, that's looking to deliver "dramatic third-person narrative experiences within realistic, modern day settings." Based out of Glasgow, Scotland, the small team has backed up that intention with the single-location thriller, Apartment Story.
While it may not have stuck every landing for my tastes, it is a confident debut that showcases the potential of the studio's unique approach to storytelling and promises a bright future for all involved.
In Apartment Story, you are Arthur, a man whose life can be encapsulated within a tiny apartment in a city center. He's in dire straits. Bills are due, balance is negative. Phone's cracked. Life's gone stagnant but he persists. Familiar pains for many.
Arthur's ready for life to continue this way until an ex-roommate, Diane, comes knocking and lights a fire within him in more ways than one. His life is turned upside down by a girl, a gun, and the tension of things lingering just outside the confines of his apartment. Without saying too much to give away the plot of this 1-2 hour experience, the stakes in Arthur's life escalate incredibly from "How am I going to pay the electric bill?" to "How am I gonna survive the night?"
Have a look around the place
Apartment Story's visual style is fun, miming the trendy PS1 aesthetics of the current indie scene, but doing so in an especially fun and authentic way by having certain textures and face models look like actual photos stretched and plastered onto 3D models. It tickles a particular part of my nostalgia that looks back fondly at Sam Lake's Max Payne face or at the lightly altered real-world products that made their way into games.
Apartment Story also has a few genuinely cinematic moments that dynamically emerge. The darkness of night looming ominously over a moment where Arthur is unable to move at all. The way the game's camera frames Arthur showering in the middle of one of the most stressful moments of his life. Blue Rider Interactive manages to keep an artistic eye present all throughout.
The team makes the most of the game's slight presentation and it certainly adds to the vibes all throughout. Voice acting was missed, particularly in such a narrative-driven experience, but the way dialogue was often represented was effective: harsh cuts to a black void where monochrome character portraits accompany each line.
It all works to elevate the tension, to give the narrative an edge, and to make it stand out against the usual humdrum of indie game storytelling.
Blue Rider Interactive manages to keep an artistic eye present all throughout.
Apartment Story's domestic affairs are interesting, and the down-to-earth relatability of its drama makes the tension all the more real — but thanks to inconsistent writing and a painful amount of downtime in between story beats, it never ends up going anywhere all too unexpected. Despite a few moments that genuinely got my heart rate up, I was surprised that the narrative followed a pretty basic path in the end.
Still, Apartment Story feels like a proof of concept for an eventual great work. There are some beautiful moments of dialogue, and I appreciate that it gives you room to breathe during the climactic moments of the story. But unlike a similarly short and light experience from 2024, Clickolding, I walked away wondering the point of it all.
That's partially thanks to the strange gameplay decisions here.
Deep and shallow all at once
Playing Apartment Story is a lot like playing the Game Boy Advance Sims games. You're in direct control of Arthur, and you've got to feed, clean, and entertain him to keep a series of meters up.
It's a little bit clunky and cyclical by nature, something much closer to the mundanity of real life.
Cooking isn't clicking on the kitchen and hitting a "cook dinner" button. It's a multistep process: grabbing individual ingredients and tossing them onto a cutting board, grabbing a pot, putting it on the stove, and finally hitting "cook." So many interactions like this require more steps than you'd expect, and Arthur's interactions with the apartment are simultaneously granular and shallow.
For example: almost everything in this tiny space can be picked up. And I got very familiar with each of them. When one narrative moment leaves the apartment in total disarray, after I had taken care of Arthur's needs, I simply cleaned up item by item.
There are books, DVDs, plants, plates and bowls, extra toilet paper rolls, toothbrushes. Yet there's not much you can do with it all. You can't pick up a book and read to fulfill Arthur's mind meter. Arthur only ever uses the TV for playing a game, even though there are at least 30 DVDs strewn about. There is almost exactly one action you can take to fulfill each of your meter's needs.
Don't get me wrong, the actions had their charm. They were out of the ordinary for a life sim: you can smoke weed, masturbate at your desk, and spend hours smoking cigarettes at your window. But after you've done these once, with each action taking maybe 10-30 seconds at a time, the appeal runs dry. After a solid 30 minutes or so, you might find yourself simply wanting to jump to the next story beat instead of mess around with cooking or cleaning.
That's why I sometimes chose to simply stand around the apartment to wait for Diane to come back to the apartment or for other more tense things to happen.
Deeper and more diverse interactions could have given the player an even deeper connection to Arthur's small abode and the life he lives there. But that shallower-than-expected tone carries through to the Sims-like elements too.
Maintaining Arthur's meters is painfully easy to do, and it's what you must do between story beats to pass the time.
In a playthrough I watched online, someone ended up neglecting all of Arthur's meters and still ended up in the same place I did, because all it did in the end was make Arthur walk around a bit slower than usual. I found this disappointing, because the idea of dealing with a tense situation while also maintaining a particular quality of life had really piqued my interest.
To put it simply, Arthur's vitals didn't feel very... vital. They sometimes felt tedious.
Apartment Story is a single set, four characters, and one major conflict. When I worked at a community theatre, scripts like Apartment Story's came through our doors often, and I always appreciated storytellers accomplishing so much with so little.
Blue Rider Interactive makes the most of its spartan offerings, bringing those theatre comparisons to mind.
Apartment Story builds tension stronger than many other games, but the downtime sometimes leads to it fizzling out. It tells a story about topics worth exploring deeper, but barely skims the surface. I felt that it had only begun to explore its potential in the end.
Still, it doesn't overstay its welcome and is good for a single-sitting playthrough, which I always appreciate. If you're keen to explore the more experimental side of indie gaming, give Apartment Story a go. I think Blue Rider Interactive has something and I am fascinated to see where they go next.
Video Games Are Good and Apartment Story is . . . GOOD. (6/10)
+ interesting ideas about storytelling within strict game-y setup, a tension that cannot be denied, great single-sitting experience
- execution of ideas lacking as interactions run out before you know it, awkward controls and minor glitches hurt the experience, story left me wondering why
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