Welcome To Kowloon is a horror game that crystallizes every Hong Konger's biggest fear: trying to find a new apartment. More specifically, trying to find a new apartment run by a landlady who won't try to kill you, whether that be literally or through charging extortionate rent.
To celebrate Halloween 2023, I decided to face that fear in this photorealistic indie horror game, hoping to experience a long-demolished historical place that once stood not far from where I grew up. The jumpscares are predictable, as is the bulk of its horror walking sim gameplay that relies heavily on holding W, but grim atmospheric touches make up for it by rooting Welcome to Kowloon in the most horrifying context of all: reality.
Hong Kong gothic
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The thin rattle of an air conditioner unit as halogen lights buzz overhead. Cockroaches scuttle through bizarrely-laid out washrooms, searching for darkness. Somewhere in the distance, a neighbor swears at their busted radio.
I've never lived on Kowloon side, nor inside the notorious Walled City where this game is set, but I grew up across the harbor on Hong Kong's main island. When it comes to its audio-visual cues, though, this game nails the universal language that connects the two halves of the city. I never knew such simple facts of life could be so ominous until I played Welcome To Kowloon, and boy does it make the already grim reality of things that much grimmer.
It's not the first time we've seen the close-packed confines of the Walled City in video games. Lit up in vibrant neon pinks and blues, it looked almost beautiful in last year's Stray. But Welcome to Kowloon is a unique horror experience for the fact that it doesn't flinch away from the truth of it. Well, the aesthetic truth, anyway; the game is set in 1999, but the Walled City was demolished in 1994, one year before I was born. First-hand accounts from past residents state that it was not a thriving bunker where cats and robots lived in relative peace, but a lawless enclave where the authorities had no control.
I can tell this game is set in the 90s, because the square footage covered by this ugly washroom alone would bankrupt me right now.
I'm not going to ask why my character in Welcome to Kowloon – described as a young student – would be looking to live in such a place, but with Hong Kong being even more expensive to live in than New York and London, I guess I can't fault them for being desperate.
Their hunt for affordable housing brings them to one of many subdivided apartment buildings in the Walled City, wrapping through narrow streets in an endless maze of confusing twists and turns. Finding which of the carbon-copy, metal-gated doors is my own is dizzying enough, but once I enter, things get weirder.
Climbing to the top floor of this traditional Chinese walk-up is a horror movie in itself, with bags of trash discarded in front of boarded-up doors, the soft sound of a woman crying coming from behind it. A sweet dog sits mournfully by an empty food bowl, and unfortunately, I cannot pet him. The sense of impending danger as I climb the stairs is unnerving in its mundanity, the poorly-lit staircase seeming to shift and change as I move up and down the building in search of puzzle clues just to get into my actual apartment.
It turns out not to be a whole apartment, but a room I am renting inside one. The scariest thing about this whole setup, aside from the body parts hanging up in the landlady's bedroom, is the layout of the bathroom.
Wet rooms are still commonplace in older buildings in Hong Kong, containing nothing more than a toilet with a wall-mounted shower hose, but the slippery steps leading up to the toilet feels comically accurate. I can tell this game is set in the 90s, because the square footage covered by this ugly washroom alone would bankrupt me right now.
In short, I've come away from Welcome to Kowloon feeling newly re-traumatized by my city's terrible housing crisis. Despite being pursued through this claustrophobic hellhole by my homicidal landlady and decidedly weird neighbor, the game's story pales in comparison to its bleak atmosphere. The narrow field-of-vision had me feeling more motion-sick than the scares themselves, and I find myself annoyed by the burst pipes, cryptic puzzles, and random scary faces popping into view as I explore. It takes me out of what would otherwise be a pretty dead-on walking sim of what it might have been like to live in the Walled City, back-alley dentistry aside.
Check out some upcoming horror games to add to your roster, from Silent Hill 2 to Alone in the Dark.
