Lacey Games: Radfem-Adjacent Horror
Lacey Games: Radfem-Adjacent Horror
The Lacey Games narrative is meant to be a puzzle that you piece together as the viewer. You're meant to watch these videos more than once, pausing during flash frames to read the hidden text (or what's legible of it anyway) and such. Since that's meant to be a core part of the experience, I won't spoil things for you too much. But as a fan of this series, I will provide you helpful hints of general themes to look for within each installment.
Chapter 1: Lacey's Wardrobe - Lost 2006 Flash Game - You will be preyed on no matter how you dress.
Chapter 2: Disturbing Secret Ending Found in 2007 Flash Game - Lacey's Diner- The trauma victim's perspective on failure.
Chapter 3: Lacey's Petshop - 2007 Flash Game - Childhood rape, forced drug use, pornography, poverty, coping, masochism, objectification, beauty culture as violence.
Chapter 4: The Disturbing Rabbithole of LaceyGames.com - Beauty culture and femininity as both coping and inescapable soul destruction. Grieving.
So much powerful and relatable stuff delivered with a brilliance that captures both the funny and not-so-funny quirks of the old Flash "girl games" and one's futile attempts to escape the memory of violence and the loss of one's sense of self. It's worth adding that there's also a subtle metaphysical through-line across this series about the fate of Rocio, the fictional creator of the content on "LaceyGames.com". In that connection, one should pay careful attention to scenes and flash frames depicting her entangled in wires and moments wherein the on-screen image appears to be reversed, as if someone inside the computer (or other applicable device) is looking out from it at you and at goings on in the real world. There is also a broad message here about the falseness of what society socializes girls to believe and the inhuman expectations that are placed on girls and women.
This series is also currently being reworked as an actual video game called Lacey's Flash Game's. There's currently a demo available on Steam and the official development log site can be found here if you're interested (which I know I am
).
Halloween is approaching and it motivates me to share my favorite web video series with you today. It's a psychological horror series created by a Brazilian artist and video-maker who goes by the screen name ghosttundra, known as Lacey Games. It tells the story of a fictional site that, in the series' narrative, used to host a bunch of Flash games for girls between 2004 and 2010, and disturbing ways in which they seem to have been mysteriously altered. So far four chapters have been published, all of which are really good. In fact, the content is thematically the "most feminist", if you will, that I've ever seen adjacent video gaming and I've been gaming a long time. This is specifically radfem type messaging.
The Lacey Games narrative is meant to be a puzzle that you piece together as the viewer. You're meant to watch these videos more than once, pausing during flash frames to read the hidden text (or what's legible of it anyway) and such. Since that's meant to be a core part of the experience, I won't spoil things for you too much. But as a fan of this series, I will provide you helpful hints of general themes to look for within each installment.
Chapter 1: Lacey's Wardrobe - Lost 2006 Flash Game - You will be preyed on no matter how you dress.
Chapter 2: Disturbing Secret Ending Found in 2007 Flash Game - Lacey's Diner- The trauma victim's perspective on failure.
Chapter 3: Lacey's Petshop - 2007 Flash Game - Childhood rape, forced drug use, pornography, poverty, coping, masochism, objectification, beauty culture as violence.
Chapter 4: The Disturbing Rabbithole of LaceyGames.com - Beauty culture and femininity as both coping and inescapable soul destruction. Grieving.
So much powerful and relatable stuff delivered with a brilliance that captures both the funny and not-so-funny quirks of the old Flash "girl games" and one's futile attempts to escape the memory of violence and the loss of one's sense of self. It's worth adding that there's also a subtle metaphysical through-line across this series about the fate of Rocio, the fictional creator of the content on "LaceyGames.com". In that connection, one should pay careful attention to scenes and flash frames depicting her entangled in wires and moments wherein the on-screen image appears to be reversed, as if someone inside the computer (or other applicable device) is looking out from it at you and at goings on in the real world. There is also a broad message here about the falseness of what society socializes girls to believe and the inhuman expectations that are placed on girls and women.
This series is also currently being reworked as an actual video game called Lacey's Flash Game's. There's currently a demo available on Steam and the official development log site can be found here if you're interested (which I know I am ).
. Ghosttundra's an excellent content creator in general really even beyond the Lacey Games content. 