Looking back at Taiwan's White Terror, 38 years of Martial Law, in games
April 17, 2019 11:18 AM   Subscribe

Taiwan's White Terror (Wikipedia) was a period of martial law lasted for 38 years and 57 days from 19 May 1949 to 15 July 1987, following the February 28 Incident (Wikipedia), also known as the 228 Incident. Fear of discussing the White Terror and the February 28 Incident gradually decreased with the lifting of martial law in 1987, and Hou Hsiao-hsien's A City of Sadness (Harvard Chinese Film and Culture course handout; trailer and full film on YouTube) was the first movie dealing with the events, released in 1989. Still, this period of Taiwan's history is not broadly discussed. More recently, a mobile game is reopening a closed chapter in Taiwan’s history (Ars Technica, with a broader summary of the White Terror period).

The game in question is the augmented-reality game Unforgivable: Eliza, which focuses on the legacy of the martial law period in Taiwan and whose story was written by award-winning Taiwanese-American author Ed Lin (personal website; Wikipedia). Toii Inc's Allen Yu was interviewed about the project by Brian Hioe for New Bloom Magazine. You can see the trailer and about an hour and a half of gameplay and commentary on YouTube.

Unforgivable was inspired by Red Candle Games' Detention (Polygon review), a psychological horror game that revisits 1960s Taiwan [trailer; gameplay walkthrough without commentary]. Red Candle also produced a similar horror game called Devotion, which was pulled from Steam after a gamer found a poster that mocked Chinese President Xi Jinping (The Verge) [trailer; 2 and a half hour gameplay walkthrough without commentary].

Bonus materials/ context on the White Terror and the 228 Incident: in 2015, two whimsical animations provided a recent summary of the 228 Incident and what happened elsewhere after 2/28.
posted by filthy light thief (5 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
Something I knew nothing about; thanks.
posted by praemunire at 1:51 PM on April 17, 2019


Detention was a good, short, art game. Recommended if you like that sort of thing.
posted by lkc at 4:57 PM on April 17, 2019


I don't know how to feel about this. It's such a heavy, secretive subject and there is still a lot of trauma around the event. A game feels inadequate and inappropriate, like making a game about Tiananmen Square or concentration camps. The cute anime art is off-putting.

BUT--I'm not Taiwanese nor do I have family in Taiwan, and the game's author does. Is it even my judgement to make? Plus games can be an art form in their own right, so I should be looking at this as I would a sculpture or painting or piece of writing about the subject, yes? I guess it all depends on the sensitivity with which it approaches the subject. I haven't had the chance to watch the gameplay video so I could be totally off-base here and hand-wringing over nothing.
posted by Anonymous at 3:53 AM on April 18, 2019


The game is pretty much a visual novel: you learn more about the plot as you move around Taipei. As far as I know there aren't any minigames or anything and the story is pretty serious. If it reassures you any, I'd also say the anime art, as you call it, is pretty normal in Taiwan. I mean, it would be weirder if they'd deliberately chosen a Western art style, right?
posted by storytam at 8:48 AM on April 18, 2019


Oh, I know it's regular, but there are a lot of different styles within everything that comes under the heading "anime". But like I said: it's probably not my place to evaluate.
posted by Anonymous at 10:56 AM on April 18, 2019


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