it’s rare to find games that truly understand the poetic potential of the videogame medium and don’t just rely on words in order to try and achieve an artistic sensibility. but cape hideous (2024) by jake clover explores this poetic language in a beautiful, natural way, without text ever appearing on screen again after the starting menu.

in cape hideous you play as a woman who smokes three pipes simultaneously and lives on a ship with a mysterious community of pirates (honestly, some of the coolest fictional pirates ever). the world portrayed here feels like it continues existing even outside of the physical confines of the videogame, largely due to the presence of many coherently curated details that the player will inevitably fantasize about.

jake clover keeps the game mechanics to the minimum essential - movement with the arrow keys - so that all the beautiful animations and interactions are put in the foreground. the poetry of cape hideous lives in its many sweet small moments, in the animations that appear only once and then never again, in the sudden close-ups, in the changes in music, in the mystique; it’s the heart-warming feeling of witnessing something truly special, a mature and promising ray of light in the world of experimental videogames.