Knock-Knock makes the hiding place part of the problem

The Lodger's cabin ought to know him by now. Three generations have lived and worked there, yet familiar surroundings are losing objects and acquiring unwelcome company. Knock-Knock makes the house's usefulness uncertain. Finding somewhere to hide becomes a problem before anybody starts looking for you.

This review concerns Ice-Pick Lodge's original PC game, released October 4, 2013. Its nightly goal is to keep the Lodger intact until dawn while investigating the cabin's disturbances.

Furniture has to become available

In November 2013, writer Alexandra Golubeva explained the mechanic. Objects appear as the Lodger concentrates on them because he needs places to hide. His uncertain memory and responsibility meet in the same action. Attention supplies something useful. A hiding place has to enter his understanding of the room before it can offer help. That gives domestic detail a job beyond decorating an empty stretch of wall.

Golubeva describes hiding as vulnerable waiting. Having found cover, the player gives up initiative. Shelter becomes an awkward bargain. You establish a place you can use, then depend on it while something else has the freedom to move.

The cabin can keep its comforts

In a later developer account, Golubeva calls the cabin cozy and the woods picturesque. She argues for the disturbing effect of a creature whose shape and behavior resist explanation. Those choices belong together. A home with some comforts left gives the Lodger something worth maintaining, while an unfamiliar visitor can upset his understanding of it. The design has a sharper tension when attraction survives inside the picture. There is still a reason to want the place back.

That account also describes the Lodger's speech as incomprehensible. A character can plainly be speaking without making his voice available as ordinary conversation. It puts the player in the position of attending to a person whose expression exceeds easy understanding. The same discomfort can pass between a room, a visitor, and the person supposedly explaining the trouble.

An experiment still owes the player something

Ice-Pick Lodge's studio statement describes its player as a co-author, responsible for completing the situation through interpretation. Knock-Knock's uncertain rules fit that ambition. There is pleasure in having enough room to suspect that your explanation is wrong. The cost arrives when a player needs to distinguish a mistaken interpretation from a failed action. A mystery can remain unresolved while the immediate consequence of a decision is clear. Confusing those two kinds of uncertainty risks making experimentation feel uninformative.

A player who enjoys testing a strange system may accept that friction as part of the encounter. Someone seeking dependable instructions has a sound reason to find it tiring. The studio's preference for questions gives the work its character, but artistic intention cannot settle whether a particular frustration earns its keep. A frightening interruption needs some room around it for the player to reconsider what happened. Otherwise the interruption becomes the whole relationship.

The appearing furniture makes attention material. Before the Lodger can trust a hiding place, he needs to make sense of home.

Questions from the crypt

Sources & further reading

• Ice-Pick Lodge's official Knock-Knock Steam record, 2013 release, cabin premise and play activities
• Joel Couture's November 7, 2013 interview with Ice-Pick Lodge writer Alexandra Golubeva
• Alexandra Golubeva's 2015 developer account of Knock-Knock's cabin, speech and uncertainty
• Ice-Pick Lodge's studio statement on challenge, interpretation and the player as co-author

Keep reading

• anatomy kitty horrorshow review
• ib 2022 remake gallery and clarity review