Benjamin Rivers

After 10 years of living in our current townhouse, we’re actively looking to move. Of course, moving is never fun, but I am looking forward to a new space. We’re aiming to get a smallish detached house somewhere within the city, but in a completely different and quieter neighbourhood.

I grew up originally in a typically suburban Canadian house, but then moved into a tiny apartment (in a new province) when my family split apart. I remember the shift of having a huge backyard to run around in, and then suddenly having life compressed to a series of four small rooms.

In many ways that shift, and the distress of that family split, has lived with me all this time. I am frequently obsessed with optimization, planning, and harbour an over-consideration for others — all byproducts of some difficult years spent in that tiny space.

Only recently, because of our current project, have I realized that when I can spread out, when I don’t self-constrain, I can genuinely flourish; I can do a lot more than I thought I could.

I think I can be a better person when I have a bit of a yard to run around in.

It appears that mangaka Inio Asano is referencing 1996 PS1 horror game Twilight Syndrome in his new series, Mujina into the Deep.

Twilight Syndrome is a side-scrolling horror title that mixes 2D, animated sprites with 3D environments to tell fairly linear, spooky tales. In it, three classmates sneak into their high school to investigate various urban legends and ghost stories.

I played this game back in college as far as I could in Japanese (I didn’t know any then) with my wife (then girlfriend), who could read the game’s kanji. Its earliest chapter features a scary ghost girl and a bathroom, which is a standard Japanese horror trope.

It scared the absolute shit out of me.

That game was stuck in my mind for years and would form the base inspiration for our first (and still most popular!) commercial game, Home. After playing that PS1 disc, I couldn’t get the idea of 2D, side-scrolling horror games out of my mind!

I love stories about scary things hiding amongst everyday places like schools and offices; about urban legends, local tales, and things just lurking around the corner that are better left forgotten.

In high school, I wrote a very cheesy novella that was, essentially, Twilight Syndrome — except in my overwrought story, it was also a clumsy teenage romance. (The loss of any backup or copy of this early foray into writing is a deep wound, let me tell you.) So when I discovered this game, it was like fate.

Twilight Syndrome’s developer, Human Entertainment, also holds a special place in my heart. They were a constantly-evolving Japanese studio that produced many hidden gems and concepts that have often gone overlooked. Sadly, they are no longer around as a studio, but their DNA can be felt throughout the industry if you’re paying attention.

And, clearly, Inio Asano is a fan as well, because who would reference such an obscure PS1 horror game in 2024?

What is it about bittersweetness that has such a profound and lingering effect?

Nancy and I are deep into the anime series Frieren: Beyond Journey’s end. It’s a story (from the manga of the same name) of an elfen mage and her life after she completes a world-changing quest with a party of adventurers who, she realizes, became her friends.

Since Frieren has lived so long compared to humans or other people, she has a different and somewhat detached perspective on the world around her. The show is gorgeously animated, but what makes it so impactful is that within its stories, characters gain deeper understanding of their situations and relationships.

And in those quiet moments of realization, we get fantastic hits of the good stuff — profound bittersweetness.

It has humour and danger and fun moments of power fantasy, but Frieren’s most powerful minutes are when we see a character smile or look wistful, the music swells, and the plot that has been weaving comes together, and they finally understand some heartfelt lesson or a connection they mistook as something else.

It’s an emotion I’ve chased throughout my career with varying degrees of success, and I love it.