Haunted Mansion (itch) (jurakudrik)

“Gendered technicities of the 90s-2000s often presumed that the developer and the player were technically proficient males and that gameplay was predicated on mastery, productivity, and competition within capitalist regimes of the game industry (…) As I argue, modding aesthetics reside in the liminal spaces of interaction among system and bodies, or what I refer to throughout this book as the strangeness of art modding. Here, “strangeness” refers to those modes of cognition that reside beyond normal experiences of video games. In these moments, artists sought to defamiliarize standard perceptions of gamespaces into experiences of radical difference, apprehension, and instability (...) to deconstruct consumer media technology towards subversive and ironic end.” — Eddie Lohmeyer, “Unstable Aesthetics: Game Engines and the Strangeness of Art Modding“, Bloomsbury Academic, 2021

Haunted Mansion is an attempt to create an uncanny modification of the CS 1.6 cs_mansion / cs_estate maps. The Spectator is perceiving the ghosts, instead of interacting with the regular shooter gameplay. He cannot kill anybody and cannot be killed. This distorted world refers to the ghosts of the past that haunt the Spectator.

The game is displayed in Russian Pavilion / Venice Biennale.

Concept & Sound – Pavel Milyakov

Development – Jurij Kudrik