Absent Pleasures or Pleasurable Absence? Player Engagement in Minimalist Retro Horror Games

This paper examines how absence functions as a source of pleasure in minimalist retro horror games, using the 2019 freeware and 2025 full release of No Players Online as its central case. The authors argue that the deliberate withholding of conventional elements, such as a coherent narrative, clear objectives, and a central protagonist, invites players to imaginatively fill the resulting gaps. Drawing on narratological concepts of undernarration and disnarration, the work reframes absence not as a deficiency but as a form of narrative and ludic seduction that sustains curiosity and engagement.

The subgenre under study, variously labeled analog, creepy, glitch, interface, or meta horror, is situated within a lineage of 1990s-era references, including early PC and console interfaces, found footage, creepypasta, and alternate reality games. The paper identifies two complementary forms of horror produced by these absences: a failure of presence, in which expected activity is missing, and a failure of absence, in which agency or presence appears where it should not. Together these generate an eerie, uncanny atmosphere in place of reliance on jump scares or monsters.

The empirical component consists of qualitative analysis of selected player reviews on itch.io and Steam, supplemented by close readings of the game itself. These reviews reveal "forensic fandom" practices, in which players collectively theorize, share findings, and extend their investigations into Discord servers, shared documents, and elaborate alternate reality games. The authors conclude that such games foster (ludo)narrative and ontological resonance, a prolonged sense of significance paired with a heightened awareness of the permeable boundary between the virtual and the real that persists after play ends.