Choose Or Die: Is CURS>R A Real Game? Inspirations Explained
Warning: contains SPOILERS for Choose or Die.
Netflix's Choose or Diecenters around the text-based retro horror survival game CURS>R and there are real-life inspirations behind the fictional game. Of course, a video game with an ancient curse encoded in its 8-bit programming doesn't exist, but plenty of text-based and horror video games influenced CURS>R. Text-based games, known more formally as interactive fiction (IF) games, were popular in video games' burgeoning years after 1976's Colossal Cave Adventure pioneered the genre. CURS>R follows the same format as IF games from the 1980s by prompting choices for its players to progress gameplay.
After stumbling upon CURS>R in her friend Isaac's (Asa Butterfield) apartment, Kayla (Iola Evans) begins playing the game out of curiosity. To her horror, the game hurts her loved ones and puts her in the face of her traumatic past. Choose or Die holds similarities to works like the interactivechoice-based Black Mirror movie Bandersnatch, which also centers around a retro IF computer game that puts its characters in sinister situations. The difficult, daring choices CURS>R forces upon its players make Choose or Die's premise also similar to the Saw franchise, in that victims face tasks that force them to harm themselves or others at the risk of death.
Related: Every Song In Choose Or Die
The list of actual games that influence CURS>R is extensive. Popular horror IF games from the 1980s include Personal Nightmare and The Lurking Horror. Personal Nightmare tasks players with eliminating demonically-possessed people from a town that the devil invaded. The Lurking Horror is more cerebral, setting its character through a blizzard on a university campus to face Lovecraftian-inspired
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