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In 2023, many of us can’t imagine what it’s like to live under the same roof as a bunch of strangers. Our privileged lives here in the West often result in an ignorant, closed-minded lifestyle that neglects the thought of life outside of our little bubble. For many countries, citizens have to contend with dirty water, a bucket to shower, beds made only from springs and temperatures that would send a Briton into a coma. For the increasingly popular developer in the indie horror sphere, N4bA’s horror titled Welcome to Kowloon delves into the world of a forgotten piece of real history where refugees, gang members, criminals and the poor would come together and live in what could not be considered four walls of pure claustrophobia. Imagine if what was destroyed long ago remained and what remains was a story you could both see and feel in the abandoned dwellings inside the walled city of Kowloon. It’s Vincent’s explanation of the story and ending of Welcome to Kowloon. I hope you enjoy this read.
A brief history of Kowloon
For anyone interested, Kowloon was an actual place in China that was heavily populated in the late 1980s, with a staggering 35,000 residents when they shared accommodation on a 6.4-acre piece of land.. The area was congested due to its design which enclosed residents inside four walls, created by the Chinese government as a military fort in 1898. Many years later and in the aftermath of World War II, its four walls began to fill up, mainly with people looking for cheap accommodation, often resulting in many people committing crimes or engaging in drugs and prostitution. While the walls finally fell in 1993-94, its history is forever preserved. Over its lifetime, houses would continue to be built up to its 13-story limit, which would house hundreds of residents who had to share a tiny space in the most claustrophobic and filthy of conditions.
N4bA shows life inside Kowloon, as a single resident looking to save money by traveling to a place forgotten by history, but kept alive by those long gone. Taking a leaf from Chilla’s Art book, Welcome to Kowloon follows the premise of a college student who, like most, must survive harsher living conditions to preserve what little money he has.. But in doing so, will anything sinister be revealed from within Kowloon?
Welcome to Kowloon’s History Explained
The story begins similarly to Chilla’s Art indie horror games, telling a brief description of the game’s premise by explaining who our protagonist is, where he is and what he is doing here. This time we follow a young student trying to find cheap accommodation. But as we all know, nothing is ever free and saving a little money is worth it if you’re not alive to even spend a penny? Upon entering a giant building of apartments that from the outside show life through the warm glow of interior lights, you very quickly discover that you may be the only real resident here.. With most doors boarded up, you start to wonder if what you are seeing is real. The main question however is – Who owns this dog?
Meet the owner
SamaGametricity throughout the building seems to be working fine, but in this maze of hundreds of stacked houses, there is so much more hidden behind its ordinary living facade. Your first glimpse of this is your adventure in the store outside to find your apartment key. The sounds of life on an empty street are scary to say the least, but it’s when the noise stops that you truly feel completely alone and suffocated by eyes all staring at you at once. The owner is the one you read through notes written by herself and the former resident. But you quickly learn that something is not what it seems. With the apartment’s front door locked, you begin to wonder if that’s why the previous occupant couldn’t leave their room.
Always a little out of sight but always one step ahead of you, the owner warns you not to leave the Apartment at night. But with the front door padlocked, you decide it might be time to leave. You check the landlady’s room to find that the apartment’s former residents never came out but remained in pieces, soaking up blood in a cloth bag and exposed to view by the new arrivals.. This woman is confident. You see the owner who points at you and disappears in an instant. Is she even real? The toilet reveals a decapitated man suspended by a chain with flesh ripped off. With clear evidence of cannibalism, you try to leave but are attacked in the process, knocked unconscious, and sent back to your room.
Related: Midnight Scenes: From the Woods Story and Ending Explained.
In the neighbor’s apartment
When you wake up, you can go out to the balcony and enter the neighbor’s apartment. You learn that your neighbor felt unsafe and worked hard to complete the renovations, but never made it out because of the boarded up front door from the inside. Things start to change around you. The hanging clothes instead reveal a suspended body and the painting above the padlock key comes to life in brief moments that are used as jumpscares. Another padlock is found with the code – DECAY which is found in blood on several paintings which appear to show images taken from the owner and framed. A single chair, garbage bags and a crowbar are inside. You use the crowbar on the front door to get out.
The streets of Kowloon
Outside the Apartment but with a long way to go before you get out (if he’ll even be alive), the threat grows when a man resembling one of the landlady’s victims pursues you. The code to escape is revealed as 5913. Now on the streets you find the brightly lit exit sign which requires bolt cutters to unlock the shutters. You have no choice but to enter the apartments in search of cash for the vending machine and gas. With the generator lever stuck inside the vending machine and notes left behind leading you to a wild goose chase, something is bothering you or maybe it’s just the developer. You find a hiding place that gives you the coin you need at the vending machine. A picture on the wall stands out of a golden retriever, assumed to be the same one you fed at the start of the game. Was it the former resident who was lured to Kowloon by the landlady?
You hear the sound of a man who appears to be moaning in pain, his sound surrounds you as you rush to find the generator room once more by picking up the vending machine lever. Messages strewn on the wall talk about life in the walled city of Kowloon and how the government hid the deaths that occurred within its walls. As Kowloon has been demolished since 1994, could it be that your visit to its place is not what it seems and that the ghosts that haunt you are trying to keep you there because you really belong to them? You finally arrive on the roof to collect the bolt cutters and return one last time to the exit where the dog is waiting for you, bowl in front once more. You use the bolt cutters and leave this cursed place once and for all.
The end of Welcome to Kowloon
The area outside the exit shows something of an Outlast sequel, with naked men praying, slamming their faces against the walls or hanging from the balconies above. After leaving Kowloon alive, you get back in your car and start driving. As you make your way to the wasteland, you look behind you to see the large apartment building turned into rubble, representing the Walled City of Kowloon as it really is.. Experiencing something supernatural and being called upon by forces beyond your reach, Kowloon has contacted you to see the truth of what happened inside these walls. As the pipes were flooded with poisonous green gas which caused people’s flesh to fall off, caused cannibalism due to the limited supply of food and increased aggression and paranoia to the point that people locked and padlocked their doors the night.
The gas, presumably put in place by the government to “evict” their inhabitants, killed them one by one and left only madmen behind. The only safe moment came from the rooftop which was the only place that felt like home compared to the whole apartment complex. Although there is no gas on the roof, it was probably a place where residents dropped off to escape the walled city. The news shows a flood of reports of people seeing the city of Kowloon on the way out. With the mass eviction that took place before the demolition and the rise in crime in the last few years that the walls were up, N4bA presents a dark theory on the extent to which the government went forcibly to evict its inhabitants who regarded the walled city of Kowloon as their own.
