Detention (video game)

Detention (Chinese: 返校; literally: "Returning to School") is a survival horror adventure video game created and developed by Taiwanese game developer Red Candle Games for Steam. It is a 2D atmospheric horror side-scroller set in 1960s Taiwan under martial law. The game also incorporates religious elements based on Taiwanese culture and mythology. The game was released on January 13, 2017.^[1] A demo version debut on Steam Greenlight on June 13, 2016.

The concept of the game originates with the Red Candle Games co-founder Shun Ting Yao. In February 2017, a novel based on the game is published by the novelist Ling Jing.^[2]

Detention's background music was composed by Taiwanese composer Weifan Chang. The soundtrack was released with the game on Steam as a DLC.

Synopsis

Set in 1960s Taiwan of the White Terror period, students Wei and Ray find themselves trapped and vulnerable in Greenwood High School (翠華中學) which is located in a remote mountainous area. The place they once knew has changed in unsettling ways, haunted by evil creatures known as the "lingered" (魍魎). While hiding from the rampaging monsters, the protagonists unveil mysteries which slowly reveal the dark past of the cursed school.

Plot

Wei Chung Ting (魏仲廷) falls asleep in class as Instructor Bai (白教官) arrives asking the teacher Miss Yin Tsui Han (殷翠涵) about a certain book list. He later awakens to find the campus deserted due to an incoming typhoon. Passing a shortcut, he finds senior Fang Ray Shin (方芮欣) asleep in the middle of the auditorium. The exit bridge is broken and they are forced to wait out the storm in Wei's classroom. Wei decides to leave Ray in the room while looking for a phone. The game transitions to Ray waking up in the auditorium once more, but in a nightmarish, darker version of the school where Wei is dead and hanging upside down from the stage ceiling. Ray wanders the rest of the school, avoiding different kinds of ghosts, solving puzzles, finding clues, and the real story behind Ray is revealed:

Ray was a bright student of Greenwood High School and was the only child of a couple whose marriage has turned sour, causing Ray to develop depression and neglect her studies. She is referred to the school counselor, Mr. Chang Ming Hui (張明暉), who she later secretly begins a romantic relationship with, which makes her happy once more. Unknown to Ray, Chang also helps Yin smuggle banned books for an illegal book club where Wei is a member. Yin finds out about the relationship and confronts him, reminding him this could endanger their club, and Ray overhears this conversation and misinterprets it as Yin trying to take Chang away from her. She convinces Wei to give her the reading list for their book club. The following day, she hands the list to Instructor Bai, a military officer posted to the school by the government, in order to get Yin fired. Yin manages to escape and flee the country. Wei and his fellow classmates attempt to burn the books, but they are caught and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. Chang is implicated in the crime and is executed. Instructor Bai gives Ray an award for snitching, but her classmates bully her for doing so and she eventually is driven by her guilt to jump off the school building. The player is revealed to be playing as Ray's soul, trapped in an endless loop of her memories because she has not yet to accept her guilt.

Towards the end, a silhouette of Ray begins to ask her questions. If the player refuses to acknowledge her sins and find redemption, the silhouette will say that she and Ray are not the same. Ray wanders down a path alongside a river of blood and bodies and encounters Wei, Chang, and Yin telling her the cycle will not end. She enters the auditorium, where people applaud her as she goes up the stage and receives a noose. She is prepared to hang herself, and the auditorium fades back to reality, where the school is abandoned and vandalized, and the noose remains hanging.

If Ray's answers show an understanding of her motivations, she will find a paper airplane containing a message of love and farewell from Chang, and is led to Chang's office. She sees the moment before Chang is arrested, and he tells Ray that people should be born to live freely without fear of oppression. We shift back to Wei, now an old man, revealed to be the random man Ray would see wandering the school earlier in the game. His journal reveals he was pardoned after the White Terror, while Yin spent the rest of her life abroad, speaking out against the country's oppression, dying eventually of cancer. He heads to his old classroom and sits at his desk as Ray's ghost sits across him as they did before. Leaving to interpretation, and canonically, Ray ending her endless cycle of death in purgatory.

Reception

The game has received favourable reviews from critics. Rely On Horror gave the game a 9 out of 10, saying that “every facet of Detention moves in one harmonious lockstep towards an unavoidable tragedy, drowning out the world around you.”^[4] Upon the game's release in January 2017, the user review on Steam has been overwhelmingly positive. Detention topped the games ranking on Steam in Taiwan and reached 3rd in Steam ranking globally within 3 days of its release.^[5]

As of February, Detention has the year's highest user rating score of 8.4, and ranks 2nd as the best PC game of 2017 by Metacritic, only behind Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, ranked 3rd as the most shared and 6th as the most discussed PC game in 2017.^[3]

See also

• February 28 Incident
• Anti-communism
• The Torment of a Flower
• History of Taiwan
• Political status of Taiwan
• Politics of the Republic of China
• Period of mobilization for the suppression of Communist rebellion
• Chen Wen-chen
• Henry Liu

References

External links

• Official website
• Detention on Facebook
• Red Candle Games on Facebook
• Detention in Steam