# allison road the promise of virtual ikea horror at home robert what terms the new genre of high quality v.r. home-based horror "virtual ikea horror" or simply "horror@home" // video here this is the promise of a threat by cool games like allison road (flan project version of sony's cancelled classic pt) which isn't doing anything new - there have been haunted house games since forever - but not with this highly polished aaa-style as though the house itself is an empty (pinkywhite upper middling class) showroomallison road - first person next-gen survival horror its like you've just tried one of the comfy beds in ikea and accidentally nodded off - but now find yourself waking to a large empty and increasingly disturbing after hours store of disturbingly nondescript existential terrors admit it even gone home was hella'(tm) creepy one of the most deliciously disturbing thing about projects like allison road is how perfectly suited game development tools like unreal engine are to expressing this depressingly moody "horror@home" game type - as though they were made for it an (/ideological) rendering of the (somehow) dangerous concept of "home" in which all those bright shiny surfaces are strangely untrustworthy by design in such vr ikea horror games the house itself seems the main threat - as though its very existence is a dark sign something is already wrong - not like in the horror movies of old where the house has been invaded by some evil force andor entity but as though the idea of "home" itself is the invasion - into reality as though a living manifestation of psychological trauma an inherent discongruity of negative postmodern architectural effect a good example of this is the leeds house in manhunter - something about its slick architectural perfection is already trouble and agent will graham senses it it's not just that someone is watching the house - but that the house itself stares out into the world with strange eyes its very walls vibrating with ominous meaning and intent the lesson to take from this is "home" itself may be considered an unsafe virtual reality - a potentially botttomless rift in reality ## kickstarter update patch allison road now has a (failed) kickstarter // republic of bob