Had Erica been released a year ago, chances are it would have made quite a splash. An interactive, full-motion video thriller where you control the decisions of troubled youngster it is as a brave, bold experiment in storytelling.
But then Bandersnatch came along, and then Telling Lies. Now Erica feels like old news.
The game itself isn’t necessarily to blame. Without similar competition, Erica would have still found a small, passionate clutch of fans eager to discover non-traditional gaming experiences. But Telling Lies is more complete as an interactive adventure, and Bandersnatch is bigger and more mainstream. Plus – as much as I hate to admit it – it was better. Bandersnatch branched off with just enough regularity to keep its users on their toes; scenes would often play out uninterrupted, but you never lost the feeling that you were in control.
Erica, meanwhile, refuses to give it a rest. The story – a young girl confronts her violent past in a supernatural dance of the occult – has the potential to be truly fascinating. But it’s stymied at every turn by endless back-breaking chores. The game opens with you flicking open a lighter by swiping at the motion pad of your controller. Then you have to light it with another swipe. And then you have to light a lamp, then put a stylus on a record player, all with swipes. When you encounter a door, you have to turn the knob. When you find curtains, you have to pull them back. Misted windows have to be thoroughly wiped clear before you can see what’s behind them. Boxes have to be laboriously opened latch by latch.
None of these actions have any real effect on the story but you’re forced to perform them anyway, over and over, until your bones creak. In one early scene, I found myself confronted with a chest of drawers; the thought of having to swipe to open, inspect and close each drawer in turn made me audibly groan.
The mark of success for interactive narratives is how often you want to replay them. With Bandersnatch, the end of one story was simply an excuse to jump back in and explore other options. But it’s different with Erica where the amount of busywork means you’re rushing to the end to be done with it.
There’s plenty of intrigue here, and in better circumstances you’d want to spend more time with the characters in order to understand their perspectives. But by the fifth time you’ve opened a lock that could have so easily have opened automatically, all you really want to do is find the quickest possible route to the exit.
It’s a shame, because the other elements of Erica are pleasingly robust. Holly Earl – who you might recognise as Agnes in Humans – plays Erica: it’s a thankless task, since her role amounts to adopting the expression of a worried deer and repeating dialogue picked by the player. But she manages to achieve a baseline of charisma that other performers would struggle with. The same goes for the peripheral characters, who all have to maintain a low-level ambiguity in their delivery, on the off-chance that the player will make choices that radically alter their personality. This could be frustratingly vague, but it’s sold with real menace.
There’s a good game at the heart of Erica. But it’d be so much better if the interactive elements were reduced considerably. For an interactive story, that doesn’t bode well.
