Spaces of Allegory: Non-Euclidean Spatiality as a Ludo-Poetic Device

Key insights

6 slides

The starting point

Some games deliberately disrupt spatial sense acquired in infancy.

The report argues that non-Euclidean games such as Antichamber, Superliminal, and The Witness defamiliarize spatial cognition humans acquire in infancy. These games disrupt navigation and control that underpin a player's sense of agency.

Scope of the argument

The analysis is interpretive and centers on a small set of titles.

The report is interpretive rather than empirical, and it contains no quantitative data. Its scope centers on a small set of prominent puzzle and perspective-based titles.

Scope. The analysis is interpretive, resting on theoretical argument and close reading of a small set of prominent titles rather than quantitative data.

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Summary

"Spaces of Allegory" argues that digital games with non-Euclidean spatiality, such as Antichamber, Superliminal, and The Witness, do more than confuse players: they deliberately defamiliarize the spatial cognition humans acquire in infancy. Drawing on Costikyan's typology of uncertainty, Murray's and Pedercini's accounts of agency, and developmental psychology from Piaget and Moore and Meltzoff, the analysis contends that these gamespaces disrupt the navigation and control underpinning a player's sense of agency. The central thesis is that such disruption regresses players toward pre-object-permanence cognition, where objects may change size, form, or identity depending on viewpoint or interaction.

The argument's most distinctive claim is that non-Euclidean games produce ontological multistability, a condition distinct from the aesthetic or functional bistability of ordinary navigation. Through close readings of Superliminal and The Witness, the work shows how perspective-based mechanics and environmental puzzles turn the gameworld itself into an interface. In these readings, the multistable experience serves as an allegory: Superliminal frames perspective shifts as liberation and dreaming, while The Witness frames them as a negotiation of authorial power and intent.

The Witness receives the most extended treatment, with its labyrinths and multistable environmental cues described as a "ludic equivalent of concrete poetry" that compels players to construct cognitive maps and reflect on a designer-framed hidden ending. The conclusion generalizes these observations to non-Euclidean games as a whole, positing that spatial instability undermines object permanence and reasoning in ways that can be mobilized for poetic effect. The analysis is interpretive rather than empirical; its claims rest on theoretical argument and close reading rather than quantitative data, and its scope centers on a small set of prominent titles within the puzzle and perspective-based game tradition.