DISTRAINT turns up the lights on a dirty job

Price wants a partnership. An elderly woman loses her home when he seizes her property. DISTRAINT gives that ambition an immediate victim. Its best design question is how to keep responsibility visible while giving the player tasks.

This review concerns the PC Deluxe Edition update announced for September 29, 2017. Its revised lighting provides the strongest design choice to discuss here.

A brighter room can still be a bad place

Makkonen removed the original lantern and increased environmental lighting for Deluxe. His announcement explains that he felt the lantern contributed little. The update also introduced changing color. Taking away a familiar horror prop is a good decision when that prop occupies attention the story needs elsewhere. A player can understand a room more easily and still dread what Price's work means. The ethical trouble survives a better view. For this particular premise, that makes darkness less convenient as an explanation for unease. The job itself supplies plenty.

Play advances through left-and-right movement and puzzles, with a restrained interface. That small set of actions suits a protagonist trying to complete a job. Solving an obstacle can feel neatly productive within a premise that makes productivity suspect. The surrounding story has to make that tension count. The next correct action can still serve a rotten purpose.

Let the rough edges carry expression

In a 2018 interview, Makkonen described the first game's initial appearance as rough and credited Deluxe with bringing its look together. He identified the style as a mixture of pixel art and low-resolution imagery, with color an important part of its appeal. That combination gives the work permission to be expressive without sanding every shape smooth. A coarse edge can remain conspicuous while a change in color alters how the whole image reads.

For an illustrator, the practical lesson is to separate an expressive decision from unfinished labor. A rough surface earns its place when it helps the picture say something. Polishing every edge would be a poor substitute for choosing a palette with intention. Deluxe's revision makes a good case for revisiting how the marks work together.

Whose problem does the guilt become?

Makkonen has also pushed back against treating the first game as an anti-corporate statement. In his 2019 Game Developer interview, he described Price's inner conflict as the subject and the money-obsessed bosses as a way of intensifying it. That distinction helps explain the appeal and a limitation. The employer gives Price a reason to behave badly. Price still has to own his part in the transaction.

The risk of this focus is that another person's loss can become material for the professional's troubled conscience. Players looking for a substantial account of economic power may find the declared emphasis too narrow. The individual moral fable has a different strength. It can make a recognizable excuse, doing what advances a career, feel ugly without requiring a grand conspiracy. The bosses' broad characterization also leaves less room for ambiguity about the incentive.

Questions from the crypt

Sources & further reading

• Jesse Makkonen's official Steam page for DISTRAINT, premise, basic play and content notice
• Jesse Makkonen's September 19, 2017 announcement of Deluxe, lantern removal and lighting changes
• VGR interview with Jesse Makkonen, November 28, 2018, on the first game's Deluxe visual revision
• Game Developer interview with Jesse Makkonen, January 23, 2019, on Price's inner conflict and the bosses

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