It may be inferred from the title, but The House in Fata Morgana is a work about façades; societal, emotional, physical, metaphorical, even literal. A fata morgana is a mirage, one usually spotted at sea or in polar environments, that fools the eye into perceiving an object on the horizon as having its double floating above, either copied or inverted, morphing kaleidoscopically, hovering hauntingly in the distance, obscuring both the true form, and perhaps true nature, of the object in question. Sailors of old would tell stories of ghost ships, and indeed, the classic tale of “The Flying Dutchman” is attributed, possibly, to a fata morgana. The House in Fata Morgana exists not only thematically, but structurally in this tradition, a complex, morphing work of staggering gothic fiction, each of its pieces obscuring, shifting, and later re-contextualized against its true, core form. It is easy to compare The House in Fata Morgana to a puzzle box - but I consider it something much more mysterious, seemingly defying explanation but all-too-real. It is ghost light within the marsh gas, a chanting in the mist.
You would be forgiven if you assume, as I did, even five or so hours into The House in Fata Morgana, that you are reading a somewhat basic yet competent anthology of gothic fiction. The first several hours of the game involve the player being lead through a mansion outside of time by a kindly maid who tells the story of the house’s previous inhabitants over many centuries. The tales are mostly grounded despite their romanticism, eschewing direct magic or fantasy (at least, initially) for vague notions of curses and characters that seem to reappear hundreds of years later. The magics of The House in Fata Morgana exist on the margins, the most direct elements of the fantastical being plot contrivances. These, however, are designed. Much like the façades built by its characters, these too are façades of a meta structural nature. It’s fearless storytelling, willing to spend significant portions of the runtime telling the kind of story that could easily put someone off of the wider text. These aren’t slights of hand, either - these stories are never discarded. In fact, they’re critical to the overall plot, but their structural and thematic importance will not become clear until many layers have peeled back.
If these structural flourishes served only the story, they would be plenty engaging and worthwhile on their own, but The House in Fata Morgana is not content with just these, as it uses visual novel structure to its fullest extent. Every single aspect of the experience is on theme and a vector for narrative. This is not to say that other visual novels do not use their interactivity as structure, but The House in Fata Morgana squeezes so much out of every portion of UI: a change in text-box color can elicit a gasp. A shift in portraiture carries deep meaning. There are choices in the game, and I had habitually quicksaved at each one, knowing that there are slight branching paths to the story. The game used this against me, in a moment that left me panicked, mouth agape, and yelling in my empty apartment. It’s a mechanical haymaker and one of my favorite I’ve ever seen.
The cast is relatively small, but a complex relationship network is woven between them, seemingly unrelated characters becoming deeply intertwined. Every character has something to hide, and The House in Fata Morgana uses these to elicit meaning rather than for cheap twist. As the player starts to understand the true nature of the game, a character’s façade is no longer a tiresome speedbump to understanding their inner desire and intention, but yet another palette on which to evoke meaning and to provide depth. The mask each character wears, ironically, can tell the player more about them. These lies become character within themselves - what someone tries to hide can help us understand their values, their weaknesses, their pain.
Pain is of deep importance in The House in Fata Morgana, as it is the catalyst upon which façades are created. The house is tantamount to gothic fiction, and this is no different, but if the mansion of The House in Fata Morgana can be considered a kind of prison (among many other things), the deceptions that characters weave become prisons of their own. In a way, each character has their own mansion, their own grief, pain, or circumstance working to imprison them within a role or an expectation. There are few truly evil characters in The House in Fata Morgana, as the game is much more interested in exploring the capacity for good people to do evil and the banal, human fears that lead them down seemingly irredeemable paths.
The only thing more powerful than the façades and the pain that birthed them are the emotions and truths that await beneath them. True to its genre roots, emotions are the most powerful force in the world of The House of Fata Morgana - hate can imprison, love can cross space and time. I began this piece stating that it is a game about façades, but it may be a truer statement to say that the game is about what happens when we reach beyond them and the power of letting your mask down to connect with another person. To close the self off from the world and from loved ones is to construct one’s own prison, to obscure one’s true nature from the only people who may be able to understand. It is to also invite pain and cruelty - such is the paradox of living.
I finished the true ending of The House in Fata Morgana late at night, nearly 1:30 in the morning. I knew I had work the next day but I was unable to put off seeing the story through to the end any longer. I tried to stifle my weeping as to not wake up my partner. Life often feels like a series of calibrating our façades. Constantly adjusting the level of access we allow for the people we encounter and love, learning to arrive at the correct level for genuine connection but minimal pain. This, of course, is never perfect, and to love we must contend with the classic mortifying ordeal of being known to another. The House in Fata Morgana speculates that live openly and love fearlessly is not just the proper choice, but the only one we can make. It encourages emotional bravery in an unjust and painful world, lest we imprison and lose sight of ourselves.