"Think of your many years of procrastination, and how you've always been granted more and more time of which you never took advantage.

It's time to realize the nature of the world to which you belong - to understand that you have a time limit and it's running out.

So use it to advance your enlightenment or it will be gone forever!"

-clump of grass

We as humans should not think of ourselves as above or remove from the world around us. We are as much or as little a part of the universe as the tiniest fly or the biggest planet.

That is the premise around which Everything is build and that Everything tries to get you to relate to. While the gameplay is simplistic and the narration walks a fine line between engaging and pretentious, I very much appreciate a game that has a real point and builds every part around supporting that point. Want to see more games like that

Ok so I already wrote down what I thought about the game, but I need to expand on it because I've been playing 3 hours straight since I was "done" with it.

The value that you can find in a game like this lies squarely in whether you agree, or share similar feelings, as those expressed by Alan Watts and whether you think O'Reilly successfully recreated them. Like most holistic thinkers that attempt to find answers to questions that can't really be answered, I think the man had interesting intuitions, and in many regards, he's more charming than most thinkers of today, but he's also pretty quaint in his views on how we are all connected and seems to carefully omit himself from saying more subversive things in these talks. Maybe that's a problem whit the game itself, or maybe I'm just hearing these speeches way too out of context. At any rate, the game is cute, and certainly enjoyable, and I would recommend playing it for the way that it lets you travel through one sphere of existence to another alone. The sheer scale that that traversing evokes is well worth the play.
That being aside, the latter half of the game will devolve irrevocably into a collect-a-thon that will most surely hook you if you're receptive to that kind of thing. I'm not so sure this is what Watts was thinking about when he did his lectures. But in a way, it's a pretty insightful commentary on how easily we can reduce complex topics into a clicker game.

------------------------------------------

Ya había escrito sobre este juego y pensaba que no tendría que decir nada más, pero resulta que acabo de hacer tres horas seguidas de Everything y necesito añadir un par de cosas.

El valor que puedes encontrar en un juego como éste radicará en que estés de acuerdo o compartas ideas similares a las expresados por Alan Watts, y si crees que O'Reilly las está recreando con éxito. Como muchos pensadores holísticos que intentan encontrar respuestas a preguntas que realmente no pueden responderse, creo que el señor tenía intuiciones interesantes y, en muchos aspectos, es más fascinante que la mayoría de los intelectuales contemporáneos. Pero también me resulta simplón en su manera de insistir en nuestras conexiones, y parece evitar profundizar en detalles más subversivos. Tal vez el juego en sí las está caracterizando mal, o tal vez las estoy escuchando fuera de su contexto. En cualquier caso, el juego es lindo y ciertamente divertido, y recomendaría jugarlo por la forma en que te hace viajar de una esfera de la existencia a otra. La enormidad que evoca ese recorrido bien vale la pena experimentarla.

Habiendo dicho eso, la segunda mitad del juego involuciona hacia un juego de coleccionar cosas que va a apelar a tus instintos más depravados. Dudo mucho que este horror vacui fuese el que Watts tenía pensado cuando impartió sus lecturas, pero dice mucho de nuestra manera de diseñar que sus ideas y pensamientos puedan ser reducidas tan groseramente a hacer muchos clicks.

What a weird little game this is. It’s a great experiment on how to convey abstract ideas about ourselves and the universe. It gives just enough hints for you to stay in a flow of discovery, without taking away the mystery of it all - even after it ‘ends’. It gives you a complimentary sandbox to play around in while indulging in the philosophical lectures of a certain individual. I mean, what a great use for a videogame. Not going to say more about it, just go experience it for yourself. Also getting ‘everything’ for that price is a bargain.

Equal parts silly and thought-provoking.

I thought this was game was just going to be T-posing animals tumbling around a world making random sound effects. And it is definitely that.

What I was not expecting was a series of audio logs with genuinely interesting lectures from philosopher Alan Watts.
Honestly that sounds incredibly boring on paper but that mixed in with the goofy gameplay that had me constantly ascending and descending looking for new random Things to possess kept me engaged for hours.

My biggest complaint really is that the trophies and objects are intentionally ambiguous as heck. Including how to find your way to the end of the game.

+ Fun to explore and find new things to posses
+ Goofy gameplay and writing that got a few chuckles from me
+ Surprisingly thought-provoking audio tapes

- Difficult to find your way to game ending spot
- Obtuse trophy descriptions
- Gameplay eventually got stale before I had finished the audio tapes resulting in a bit of grind

It's such a cool idea, and I like Alan Watts, but now that I know David O'Reilly is kind of a new wave crypto idealist I'm not sure how I feel about this whole thing being more meaningful than it is pretentious. Like things kinda slot into place and it makes sense that this was made by that kind of guy. I'm sure he's not all that bad, but I unfollowed him on social media a year or two ago because he was just giving off insufferable vibes and I can't remember if there was something specific vis a vis NFTs/crypto or if it just felt like that was where he was heading. Maybe that's not good enough reason to dislike this game, but given what else I've seen of his work I think it's founded enough for me to be skeptical about him.

I mean what can I say? It's everything. A work of art that attempts to quantify existence and the triviality of "things" and "beings" and the relationship between them and the player and yada yada yada. The possibilities and interpretations are endless and the developers play into that idea to its fullest potential. Balancing humor and poignancy, the game is self-serious in its aspirations to the point of parody but understanding the limitations of the medium, is aware of that. I see myself, like when I first played upon release back in 2017, returning to this every so often to collect more "things" and listen to more Alan Watts excerpts because it remains an immensely hypnotic and relaxing comfort. Something to escape to for bits at a time and with that I imagine my appreciation of this will only grow.

Such a strange game. I dug it quite a bit.

If I had to describe the game I'd say it plays almost like Katamari mixed with Spore while a british guy talks about cosmic philosophy.

It's really well done. Quite short too so it doesn't overstay it's welcome.