Fear and Hunger and Safe Rooms

Fear and Hunger 2: Termina was a grueling experience for me. The opening sequence effectively and efficiently establishes that for the duration that you play this game, and for a little bit afterwards, you will be under the kind of stress where it feels like your insides are being slowly but steadily crushed by a cast iron bench vice. The environment is hostile and oppressive, both visually and mechanically. There are no easy enemy encounters; even the weakest enemies could make life very difficult. Resources are scarce and so mistakes become very costly. All this means that every time I entered a new location in the game, I’d hold my breath, filled with the dread of anticipation for the new problems I’d face here. 

That’s exactly the attitude I carried with me into the Prehevil Bop (stylized as PRHVL Bop). There was no reason to suspect it’d be any different, what with it being in the city center, which is currently overrun by a mob of shambling monstrosities. And yet when you step in, you’re greeted by the sight of a plush, clean, well-lit bar, which exists in stark contrast to the dereliction of almost everywhere else you’ve been up to that point. And you hear the opening slightly melancholic but soothing chords of ‘Lost Haven/Shillings’, easily the most melodic track in the game’s soundtrack. To me, Prehevil Bop being a safe area was the biggest surprise of Fear and Hunger 2, because of how unexpected it was. 

Safe rooms are a staple of the survival horror genre. From a utilitarian point of view, they allow you to save your progress and manage your inventory. The Resident Evil games - which arguably made the concept of safe rooms an essential part of survival horror - initially had to dedicate a specific room to the purpose of game-saving because of console hardware constraints. However, that safe rooms survive to this day and age in survival horror tell us that safe rooms serve a number of non-mechanical uses as well. Safe rooms create breaks in tension which allow for a modulation of the game’s pacing and they give players a gameplay incentive to keep exploring the area. I think the impact that safe rooms, and the associated effects on pacing have on a player’s emotional state are deeply compelling.

Survival horror as a genre is extremely compatible with video games as a medium. Survival horror games tend to create tension as much through gameplay mechanics as narrative and atmospheric elements. The various balancing acts a player must perform in the moment-to-moment gameplay create a sense of immersion and with that immersion comes stress. Safe rooms are the inverse of this. By removing either all of or most of the sources of danger they simulate not just a sense of safety, but a single moment of blissful relief when you enter a room expecting it to be dangerous, but is instead a safe room.  As much as video games as a medium are singularly suitable to horror, the sense of relieved comfort I’ve felt from stepping into safe rooms over the years is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in horror from other media like books and movies. 

There’s other emotions at play besides relief when it comes to safe rooms, though. While the dangers of the world can’t reach you in a safe room, you can never truly escape them there either. The experience of being in a safe room is inherently temporary; you can’t stay there forever. That knowledge always lurks in the back of my mind and keeps me from getting too comfortable, which allows the game to retain some of its tension. This finite-ness also makes that sense of safety all the more precious. Safe rooms almost always carry a melancholic undercurrent to them, and not just because you know you have to leave soon. I think this is best evidenced by the kind of music that tends to play in them. Safe room themes tend to be slow, atmospheric, eerie, and sad. Visually, safe rooms tend to be well-lit, in contrast to the darkness or fogginess of the rest of the game world, while still being relatively austere compared to a truly cozy space. I think this haunting, sparse quality of safe rooms heightens the sense of security and comfort a player feels, as the game uses audio-visual elements to remind the player of the dangers outside while assuring the player that the room is safe. 

The lack of action and the slower, sadder music gives the player a chance to reflect on past events in the game, and the general state of the game’s setting. It’s always been easy for me to imagine the character I’m playing as doing the same as well; something that increases my emotional connection with that character. The Prehevil Bop of Termina takes this further by showing you sides of the various characters that you’d normally never see; Levi tinkering at the piano, Daan serving drinks at the bar, Karin and Abella in the secret bunker.

Safe rooms are special. They exist to be a point of contrast to their surroundings. Brightly lit where the outside is dark, and safe where the outside is decidedly not. I’m always glad when I see one in a game.