What to know
- Stuck in the Present is a side-scrolling psychological horror video game that traps players in Toronto’s subway.
- The game follows two characters, Faye and Rich, who are forced to relive painful memories as they attempt to navigate the twisting subway stations.
- Mars Balisacan, the studio’s founder, says the game was inspired by the team’s experience’s waiting on immigration paperwork.
Have you ever felt trapped deep in the Toronto subway system, unable to find your way out?
Embersail, a Vancouver-based indie game studio, created a side-scrolling psychological horror game that does just that. Titled Stuck in the Present, the video game follows two characters, Faye and Rich, as they relive painful memories while navigating through the twisting Toronto subway stations.
Players progress through the game by interacting with objects and structures in the different TTC stations and navigate through Faye’s anxieties as her and Rich deal with increasing dangers that threaten their livelihoods.
To learn more about why Embersail chose to set Stuck in the Present in Toronto, Now Toronto reached out to Mars Balisacan, the studio’s founder and director of operations.
Mirrors the immigrant experience
Balisacan said Stuck in the Present is a deeply personal game inspired by the immigrant experience. As most of the team at Embersail are immigrants, they realized waiting on immigration paperwork perfectly encapsulated the feeling of being “stuck in the present”
“That hit home for everyone in the room, so the whole game became an immigration story,” he explained. “We knew we wanted a setting that could hold that feeling of being trapped, somewhere enclosed, moving but never really arriving.”
Since one of Embersail’s developers lives in Toronto, the city’s subway system was the perfect choice for the game’s winding format. Balisacan said one of the game designers “even flew out just to photograph the subway lines so our art team had real references to work from.”
The studio chose a psychological horror style for a couple of reasons. Firstly, they wanted the narrative to mirror the “emotional weight of the immigration experience. But a horror game also gave them “room to dig into each character’s past trauma that they resolve throughout the narrative.”
Look out for easter eggs
Every well-crafted video game has an abundance of video games, and Stuck in the Present is no exception. Balisacan said players should pay close attention to the advertisements scattered around the subway, as they’re all parodies of real ads.
As both of the game’s characters are Filipino, there are small cultural details woven into the game that Filipino players will definitely pick up on.
Will Embersail create another video game based in Toronto? Balisacan said “stories rooted in cultural heritage are something we want to keep exploring,” so only time will tell.
“Toronto’s got such a rich mix of cultures, it’s the kind of place that’ll keep inspiring us for a long time.”
