Black Room

• Title — Black Room • Released — 14 June 2018 • Developer — Cassie McQuater • Composer — Cassie McQuater, Ronen Goldstein, Brendan Coates • Programmer — Cassie McQuater, Brendan Coates • Writer — Cassie McQuater, Maia Asshaq • Platforms — Web • Modes — Single-player

• Illustration — Black Room uses sprites from old video games for its visual presentation. The game is played in the browser and requires players to explore pages to identify links to new pages. The game does not have an obvious objective or linear gameplay, instead guiding players through a series of web pages. Parts of the game require the player to change the proportions of onscreen spaces by the resizing browser's window to locate hidden objects with links to progress. Some objects generate tabs to media links outside the context of the game, including to YouTube videos or stock imagery. Visuals are represented in a mixture of ASCII, pixel art and sprites of video game characters, with accompanying text reflecting the premise of a "black room" as a meditative technique for the player character to fall asleep.

Black Room was developed by Cassie McQuater, a Californian artist working in digital art and new media. McQuater created the game in collaboration with Ronen Goldstein, Brendan Coates, and writer Maia Asshaq. McQuater, who considers the game autobiographical, stated the game's inspiration came from her experiences with insomnia and anxiety, including browsing the internet late at night. She developed the game using HTML5 and JavaScript using the Phaser Framework. The game uses repurposed sprites from retro video games, inspired by research into online communities that share sprite sheets and watching her grandmother play these games. She included heavy use of sprites of female characters intended "as a way to give them newer, more resilient narratives", stating that this approach was a reaction to the "startling" degree of sexualisation of women as characters in older games, aiming to subvert the intended use of these sprites away from sexual gratification for male audiences. Folklore and mythology were also recurring visual references for McQuater, citing the impact of childhood experiences in the Catholic Church, and inspiration from the "powerful narratives" of fairytales with female characters. Other inspiration cited by McQuater included the writing of Wilhelm Reich, and the book Digital Folklore by Olia Lialina & Dragan Espenschied. McQuater finalised the game over a process of two years. Development of the game was supported by the Rhizome Commissions Program. The game was exhibited in several locations in 2019, including IndieCade, the Smithsonian American Art Museum SAAM Arcade, the TRANSFER art gallery, and an online exhibition at the New Museum.

Black Room received the Nuovo Award at the 2019 Independent Games Festival, and was nominated as an Honorable Mention for its Excellence in Design award.