★ First Impressions Review: Last Seen Online ★

Disclaimer: The following post contains spoilers on Last Seen Online by Qwook and Sochin Studio. The game touches upon abandonment issues along with themes surrounding depression, toxic parent dynamics, suicide (kinda), religious cults, and online grooming. If these topics cause you distress, discomfort or agitate symptoms of PTSD please skip this entry. Your safety and convenience are of the utmost importance. A quick warning for gameplay and narrative spoilers too! The game takes around thirty minutes to an hour to complete and I highly recommend you play it yourself before proceeding. If you're exiting after this content warning I wish you well and hope to see you at another time.  

Good evening lovelies! I don't have much to share from my day tonight. I spent the entire early morning running errands then napped at noon. Later, while scrolling through YouTube shorts I came across a video that recommended an escape game called "Last Seen Online" (LSO) that caught my attention.

LSO is a psychological horror puzzle flash game where you, the main character, come across an old desktop computer at a garage sale. Curiosity gets the best of you and you decide to boot it up without formatting the hard drive to explore the files left by the previous user, a fourteen-year-old girl named Liz. 

The system unit having little pink stickers was a cute detail!

When you turn it on you come across the game's first puzzle which isn't difficult and a nice introduction to how you'll have to pay attention to the information across the screen and windows you'll encounter later on. The wallpaper also establishes the tone of the game. I was creeped out by the picture since we don't fully see any of the children's faces and the one eye we can see from the little girl wearing the polka-dot shirt is fully black. 

Inputting the password will log you into the home screen. You can click on each icon and interact with its contents except the Other World, an MMO like Second Life, and a locked zip file. Upon logging onto Buddy List, you're immediately greeted by one of Liz's friends. By chatting and scrolling through chatlogs we learn about Liz's relationships, aspirations, and burdens. After gathering the information needed to decode the password for the zip folder, you unlock six files, including a notepad file containing Liz's digital diary where we gain more in-depth knowledge of her character. 

  

The playlist being key to the zip folder was super creative! All songs can be played and serve their intended purpose while adding another layer to Liz's psyche. Fourteen-year-olds in the early 2000s should have been listening to caramelldansen, these songs were a clear cry for help.

I'll stop myself from further spoiling any additional gameplay that should be experienced firsthand. 

Beyond the nostalgic graphics and horror themes, Last Seen Online is about an impressionable teenager being groomed by strangers on the internet and ending in tragedy. It's hard not to be sympathetic towards Liz as we read through her hardships and as an adult recall a time when any form of conflict felt like the end of the world. While the word "suicide" is never mentioned in the game, Liz talks extensively about wanting to "run away from this earth" which is further agitated by her strained relationship with her mom and results in her needing to find solace in Other World. Online she meets sketchy users who introduce her to horror manga about serial killers and eventually the demonic rituals that lead to her being trapped on a filesystem. According to a John Hopkin's article, suicide is the third leading cause of death in youths aged ten to twenty-four. A teen is more susceptible to suicide after encountering unsettling and traumatic events like death which Liz comes across at school through the passing of a classmate. Moreover, Liz has no other reliable adult figure besides her disgruntled, borderline-abusive, mother whose outbursts and decision to take away her computer as punishment ultimately push her to terminate her existence on this plane.

I've seen two playthroughs of LSO since I started typing this post and I am still waiting to see people use the game as an opportunity to talk about online safety in the comments section. While we can all go to sleep at night knowing there's no way we can be tricked or manipulated into uploading our soul onto the internet, the danger of having ill-intentioned individuals seek out children and other vulnerable groups of people is real. The cult and ritual Liz is tricked into performing is just an allegory for how easy it can be to encounter unsafe interactions with adults and older teenagers who want to exploit a naive tween. Unfortunately, the internet hasn't become safer since Liz was online.

That's it for tonight! Like always, thank you for taking the time to visit my blog 👋