Warning: This article contains spoilers for Lifeless Planet.

When I mention isolation here, to be clear: I’m not talking about single-player versus multiplayer games. That’s an article in and of itself. I’m talking about alienation. Void. Nothing. Long stretches of land, hallways, or space with no other people. It’s perhaps no surprise that this has been on my mind during a period of real-life isolation or containment, but more than that, I was playing Lifeless Planet over the weekend, and it got me to thinking. Why is something that is so uncomfortable and even psychologically detrimental in real life, something that we enjoy when it comes to gaming?

Lifeless Planet is far from the only game that leans on this trope, by the way. It’s very prevalent in horror gaming, for no doubt obvious reasons. The most self-evident examples might be Alien: Isolation and Amnesia, which are either spent in total solitude or, perhaps worse, toy with giving you a companion only to tear them away. Long stretches of Outlast and Soma play by these rules, too. In those cases, the conceit is perhaps obvious: your isolation in a horror game is specifically invoked to create a sense of powerlessness. The isolation is part of what makes the horror work. What, then, is going on in games that aren’t easy fits into the horror genre? What about the Senua’s Sacrifices, Firewatches and Lifeless Planets of the world?

For those who aren’t familiar, Lifeless Planet — the impetus behind writing this article — is, essentially, a science fiction puzzle platformer. You play as an unnamed protagonist, sent on a mission to an unnamed planet thought to be filled with lifeforms. Upon arrival, you very quickly realize this is not the case, and that your employers seem to have either been mistaken or outright lied to you about the survivable conditions on the planet in question. The air is not breathable, at least not by human beings.

However, you soon enough come across a desolate, abandoned settlement that has to have been manmade. It is evident in its structure and in the scattering of collectibles and documents written in Russian. This discovery reveals the previous presence of Soviet-era colonists on the planet.

Though I rolled my eyes at the presence of collectibles and story beats that invoked the overdone and conceivably outdated “Red Scare,” what it does do effectively is crashland you, quite literally, into a blasted landscape. An empty, impenetrable space, void of any kind of comprehensible life forms. This is compounded by the fact that your playable character has no name or visible face either. Nearly all the tools we have for understanding and connecting through identity, selfhood, and community aren’t just left at the door; they’re deliberately taken away.

I say nearly all: your character is American-accented, and masculine. There was a significant woman character at some point in his backstory, who you don’t learn the identity of until the end of the game. He’s an astronaut, who spends the entire game in his spacesuit as the air on the planet that hosts the game is not breathable. He thus needs to periodically replenish his oxygen resources. He had two fellow crew members, both of whom have seemingly vanished upon landing and are soon enough revealed to have died. Upon starting the game, that’s it.

One can easily infer this is intended to serve the same purpose as just about any other silent or nearly-silent protagonist — that is, that players are supposed to be able to project themselves onto him — but, at least for me, what was more effective here was the feeling of fairly literal dissociation. I had no roots in this man. I had no roots in the place into which he had been dropped. Place and personhood were rendered entirely alien, and on those rare occasions when another person would show up, they’d be torn away or disappear before they could make any of it make sense. Now, at first glance, the obvious answer is an already well-established point about who the “default” gamer is considered to be. Furthermore, I’m clearly not that person; but even if I was, the long, sweeping stretches of empty sand and rock, totally devoid of any human life, would still hit pretty hard.

Okay, to be fair: eventually, you learn that there is a single other survivor on the planet, a Russian woman by the name of Aelita, who seems to be your guide throughout the game. However, the sense of distance and alienation persists as there seems to be a language barrier in play. It is not entirely clear how much (if any) Russian our playable protagonist understands. Moreover, even if they can successfully communicate, the story still requires Aelita’s death — and thus the protagonist’s separation from her — to reach its conclusion. Because of this, I got to thinking: what’s the deal? Why do game developers, and players, like to be alone?

In terms of literature, these kinds of alienation and isolation usually serve to reinforce the importance of companionship and the return to human society for a protagonist’s health, fulfillment, and sense of self. They also usually point to the fact that this reintegration won’t be easy and won’t happen overnight. Also, it may prompt reflection or discussion around the kind of human society in which we want to establish our selfhoods by seeking out that companionship.

I bring up literature because video games that lean into these feelings of alienation and isolation, essentially, introduce an element of interactivity into a very similar kind of storytelling. Firewatch, for instance, equips you with a paper map, a compass, and a walkie talkie. Lifeless Planet offers you a faulty jet pack, and hinges your ability to proceed through the game on making sure you have enough oxygen. In both of these cases, you move through varying types of impenetrable, uninhabited or abandoned landscapes. You wind up trying to interact with, survive, and understand your environment, deliberately placed in a position of relatively powerless seclusion.

A perhaps surface level assessment of these gameplay experiences of loneliness has been expressed from the perspective of the introvert. When I say “surface level,” I don’t mean I think they’re wrong — I just think they’re highly subjective, and might not even be the experience of every introvert. Heck, I’m an introvert, and I had to duck out of Lifeless Planet for breaks when the long stretches of empty space and time verged onto feeling suffocating.

Still, the argument goes something like this: it’s a space to retreat into and get some time to yourself, to explore a (fictional) environment without intrusions from other people, and recharge your desire to go forth and socialize again. It seems straightforward enough. Nothing to argue with there, really. We can hardly say, though, that all introverts relate to that set of experiences, as I’ve already said.

Even more so, we can hardly say that all gamers are introverts. Taking this into account means we’ll have to look at the narrative value of isolation again, in that literary sense of the word. I’ve been reading up on it, trying to wrap my head around it. Interestingly, plenty of people don’t really seem to have an answer. More people answer my Duck Duck Go search trying to tell me about how video games destroy our social skills and isolate us from our real life friends … okay, that’s a different conversation.

In the end, just about one person had anything to say that answered my question, as far as I was able to tell, and it hit the storytelling aspect of loneliness in video games on the head. There is, in essence, a kind of freedom to it. An “anything goes” when you create wide, sprawling, empty landscapes and rip out, burn down, or abandon the structures that used to populate them, taking any signs of human life with them.

Even in games when you’re deliberately rendered powerless, positioned as an outsider — much like, you guessed it, Lifeless Planet — these settings are a “safe” but distinctly memorable way to explore identity or the lack thereof. You can explore community or the lack thereof, and then be able to unplug and go call your friend. Or your mom. Or — don’t look at me, okay, I’m lonely.

Hey, though: I’m just one person writing from their basement apartment, possibly a little loopy from being isolated, too. Maybe there’s an entirely different kind of relationship with these kinds of games that hasn’t even occurred to me. Fill me in, some time?

Phenixx Gaming is everywhere you are. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

Also, if you’d like to join the Phenixx Gaming team, check out our recruitment article for details on working with us.

Phenixx Gaming is proud to be a Humble Partner! Purchases made through our affiliate links support our writers and charity!