ThinkingFella
Leaving things purposely up to interpretation has to be my favourite design decision in Art. It is the backbone of any great piece that wants to find a comfortable spot in the back of your mind, even long after you have left your seat.
It is a natural feature in Artforms like music, the visual-arts or literature purely through what they can't do. An instrument can't play images, a painting doesn't speak words to you and A BUNCH OF LETTERS CANNOT PRODUCE SOUND. I couldn't hold back on that cheap and silly gag lol, but it still works to show that it all just takes place inside the recipients head. "I'll leave a better one up to your interpretation" is what I could posture and that would be an example of a lazy, insincere way to handle this organic quirk as a design choice.
I digress and come back to my point.
Our experiences with Art are obviously, inherently subjective, but even more so if there are layers missing and our individual minds need to fill their needs to fill them, everyone with the unique shapes life has chiselled them.
Taking away further layers intentionally and intentfully takes confidence, not just for the artists in themselves, but in their audience. It is a sign of respect towards the recipients intellect to not handhold them through an idea.
Films and especially Video Games are usually really bad at leaving room to interpretate. They need to direct the viewer, use the established language of Film or Play to guide them through a story, often tell them what exactly is the appropriate way of thought in any given moment with a multitude of "humans are dumb animals lets exploit this" shit, or worst of all, out right tell them. (Of course there is a layer of not wanting to make a player frustrated with it's systems which largely plays into this, but that isn't what i mean)
Game developers always love to brag about the interactivity and the amount of choices players are given in their game, but these aren't just predetermined, mapped out and implemented, no they also follow a predetermined single conclusion of thought and emotion. There is no contextual interplay anymore once a game hands you your result and walks you through it.
Michael Haneke talked in an Interview about a scene of his film "Das weiße Band" and the attempt to carefully set up multiple different viable interpretations of it and it's meaning (a thing he often attempts actually). The viewer's emotion has to decide which one. Everyone watched the same film, but the one in your head further alters depending on your own choice of interpretation. (Of course one could argue that these interpretation were still mapped out and implemented by him blabla, the difference and my point tho is that he doesn't walk you through them or claims a right one)
Imagine the exponential potential if AAA's attempted and left room for something like this.
But they won't cause they can't it seems. The impact of a player choice has to be made aware of. They need to make sure that the player knows interplay took place and most of the times even what exactly to conclude from it, not just with a consequence to the action, but a reaffirming telegraph that it was one.
Is this a flaw in Video Games as a whole are just in their established design philosophies?
In the worst of these cases they don't just view the player as complete idiots who need everything spoon feed, they become, and Film also often does this, emotional Propaganda.
Thirty Flights of loving has no branching choices of play, only of thought. Unless of course you count running past every room as a choice of play, which is an option.
Blocky low poly graphics don't have the means to properly propagate and Brendon Chung willfully ignored any attempt at direct or conventional storytelling. The game has no words to speak to you, the music came before it and all the written text in the environment gives only context to further room of interpretation.
It is a really short and sometimes janky experience that can seem unfinished or rushed to an average gamer's sensibilities, but the sincerity in it's ambitions are more than enough for me.
Like I said you could just speedrun through the entire game, but the things that make this easily possible are the thoughtfully placed polygons that subconsciously guide the player to the next set piece and the dev not giving a fuck if they choose to do so. There is actually a really interesting GDC talk about level design and lighting tricks to help guide a player through a linear environment and it's story. https://youtu.be/9RbXTv7iNbw?si=NFcsUBxi492HqmL1 (is still have no idea how to hyperlink in my notes app, if anyone knows how pls tell me lol)
My text is getting a bit too long again and game is only fifteen minutes long, so I'll stop myself here without even actually reviewing it. I'd rather talk more broad about the thoughts it made me engage in than spoil any of it's contents. I'll just say I finally got my first PC with the ability to run highend stuff, but this was the first game I chose to play on it for some reason. I also played it twice in a row, for the directors commentary, because I was that intrigued by it. Plus it got me type all of this shit out immediately after that.
If you have 5 bucks or the patents to wait for a sale, like short games that attempt kind of artsy stuff or whatever you wanna call it, then definitely give Thirty Flights of Loving a go.
It is a natural feature in Artforms like music, the visual-arts or literature purely through what they can't do. An instrument can't play images, a painting doesn't speak words to you and A BUNCH OF LETTERS CANNOT PRODUCE SOUND. I couldn't hold back on that cheap and silly gag lol, but it still works to show that it all just takes place inside the recipients head. "I'll leave a better one up to your interpretation" is what I could posture and that would be an example of a lazy, insincere way to handle this organic quirk as a design choice.
I digress and come back to my point.
Our experiences with Art are obviously, inherently subjective, but even more so if there are layers missing and our individual minds need to fill their needs to fill them, everyone with the unique shapes life has chiselled them.
Taking away further layers intentionally and intentfully takes confidence, not just for the artists in themselves, but in their audience. It is a sign of respect towards the recipients intellect to not handhold them through an idea.
Films and especially Video Games are usually really bad at leaving room to interpretate. They need to direct the viewer, use the established language of Film or Play to guide them through a story, often tell them what exactly is the appropriate way of thought in any given moment with a multitude of "humans are dumb animals lets exploit this" shit, or worst of all, out right tell them. (Of course there is a layer of not wanting to make a player frustrated with it's systems which largely plays into this, but that isn't what i mean)
Game developers always love to brag about the interactivity and the amount of choices players are given in their game, but these aren't just predetermined, mapped out and implemented, no they also follow a predetermined single conclusion of thought and emotion. There is no contextual interplay anymore once a game hands you your result and walks you through it.
Michael Haneke talked in an Interview about a scene of his film "Das weiße Band" and the attempt to carefully set up multiple different viable interpretations of it and it's meaning (a thing he often attempts actually). The viewer's emotion has to decide which one. Everyone watched the same film, but the one in your head further alters depending on your own choice of interpretation. (Of course one could argue that these interpretation were still mapped out and implemented by him blabla, the difference and my point tho is that he doesn't walk you through them or claims a right one)
Imagine the exponential potential if AAA's attempted and left room for something like this.
But they won't cause they can't it seems. The impact of a player choice has to be made aware of. They need to make sure that the player knows interplay took place and most of the times even what exactly to conclude from it, not just with a consequence to the action, but a reaffirming telegraph that it was one.
Is this a flaw in Video Games as a whole are just in their established design philosophies?
In the worst of these cases they don't just view the player as complete idiots who need everything spoon feed, they become, and Film also often does this, emotional Propaganda.
Thirty Flights of loving has no branching choices of play, only of thought. Unless of course you count running past every room as a choice of play, which is an option.
Blocky low poly graphics don't have the means to properly propagate and Brendon Chung willfully ignored any attempt at direct or conventional storytelling. The game has no words to speak to you, the music came before it and all the written text in the environment gives only context to further room of interpretation.
It is a really short and sometimes janky experience that can seem unfinished or rushed to an average gamer's sensibilities, but the sincerity in it's ambitions are more than enough for me.
Like I said you could just speedrun through the entire game, but the things that make this easily possible are the thoughtfully placed polygons that subconsciously guide the player to the next set piece and the dev not giving a fuck if they choose to do so. There is actually a really interesting GDC talk about level design and lighting tricks to help guide a player through a linear environment and it's story. https://youtu.be/9RbXTv7iNbw?si=NFcsUBxi492HqmL1 (is still have no idea how to hyperlink in my notes app, if anyone knows how pls tell me lol)
My text is getting a bit too long again and game is only fifteen minutes long, so I'll stop myself here without even actually reviewing it. I'd rather talk more broad about the thoughts it made me engage in than spoil any of it's contents. I'll just say I finally got my first PC with the ability to run highend stuff, but this was the first game I chose to play on it for some reason. I also played it twice in a row, for the directors commentary, because I was that intrigued by it. Plus it got me type all of this shit out immediately after that.
If you have 5 bucks or the patents to wait for a sale, like short games that attempt kind of artsy stuff or whatever you wanna call it, then definitely give Thirty Flights of Loving a go.
2022
Victim Doll made me feel so many different emotions during my ~1,5 hours with her, most of which I have rarely felt in Art, let alone Video Games. She left me speechless except the exclaimation "What the fuck" in all the ways I could exclaim it after the 'thanks for playing' text attempted to pluck me out again.
A violently horny intrusive thought with an appropriate smut of Marx. Conjured up by DOMINOCLUB & communistsister inside the skeletal Video Super Videotome engine, leaving the player only a hand full of choices they have real autonomy over, but its dithering Vicera are enough to punch through.
The atmospheric, crunched-out audio-visual synthesis imply a mood rather than a descriptive purpose and paired with the "it takes all place in the readers head" natural strength of literature leaves room for the recipients mind to interpretate and elevate it above just the sum of it's parts.
I thought the content and trigger warning was a trick to program fear inside the player's head before the game has even properly started, but no, it is sincere and fully appropriate.
I don't want to spoil more, just appetise the sick or give a healthy heads-up. Maybe also, because I can never hold back for long on hiding shitty referential double meaning in my prose and the game is free on itch anyway. Also any art that manages to make me pull the Dutch Google-translater up, to understand every single throw-away line, has to had fully gripped me.
Fuck Landlords.
A violently horny intrusive thought with an appropriate smut of Marx. Conjured up by DOMINOCLUB & communistsister inside the skeletal Video Super Videotome engine, leaving the player only a hand full of choices they have real autonomy over, but its dithering Vicera are enough to punch through.
The atmospheric, crunched-out audio-visual synthesis imply a mood rather than a descriptive purpose and paired with the "it takes all place in the readers head" natural strength of literature leaves room for the recipients mind to interpretate and elevate it above just the sum of it's parts.
I thought the content and trigger warning was a trick to program fear inside the player's head before the game has even properly started, but no, it is sincere and fully appropriate.
I don't want to spoil more, just appetise the sick or give a healthy heads-up. Maybe also, because I can never hold back for long on hiding shitty referential double meaning in my prose and the game is free on itch anyway. Also any art that manages to make me pull the Dutch Google-translater up, to understand every single throw-away line, has to had fully gripped me.
Fuck Landlords.
2020
As someone who got pretty heavy into street photography again this summer, I wanted to give this genre a second chance despite my lukewarm experience with Toem a couple months ago, but in my first impression of Umurangi Generation I just got reminded of some of the same design philosophy and issues as i had experienced back then. However I eventually found more intention here than in Toem.
The gameplay loop consists entirely of following a restriction of checklists with the photos you need to take for the game. Add to that, an incentivesed speedrun for a bonus if you complete all of the bounties in the current location below ten minutes, which seems utterly antithetical to the joy of photography.
Is the act of being a gamefied contract worker really the only possibility for these types of games? Does it really also need a ticking timer in the corner to stress me out on top of that?
And I can understand the feel for the existence of the former, but only because we are trained to expect some kind of tangible objective to follow as gamers and game designers. Umurangi Generation to my suprise actually found a way to elevate this game design obligation. (I get into that a bit further down) "If there are no conditions to be met how else could you call it a game, how else would the game know you did the thing!" could be argued. My problem with this notion is that every photography game I have played inevitably turns the inherent creativity of that artform into something different instead of searching for a way to fully embrace it.
For about fifteen minutes of trying to check off the ten-solar-panel-bounty from the list in the second level "Otumoe Tai" I was naively ignorant towards the little, extra symbol next to that objective, because I genuinely didn't even want to consider that the game asks for further, more specific restric.. I mean conditions to take my shots. I legit thought my game was bugged or some shit, but turns out I was truly a bit naive and that Umurangi Generation wants it's players to take most of their pictures with a very particular lense or distance to the sub- and objects for successful progression. In those twenty minutes my efforts at photography became really uninspired and after that realisation the recovery from this seemed pretty usless to me and the game.
The timer, which in my playthrough continued in red numbers upwards to infinity (it should just disappear after you failed or only be unlocked after your first completed run of a level) for no apparent reason other than to tease me with exactly how much time I have been wasting in this game, was not encouraging a different mindset.
There were two levels after which I gave up on trying to loose myself in "making art" and just tried to speedrun the act of pointing at the right thing with the right thing in the right way, but failed each time to get the bonus and dreaded to complete tasks in which I was asked to count a bunch of things again. If I had known this game was more about counting shit, finding specific stuff or the semi-puzzle of detecting an angle(often a single intended one, for the most egregious of the bounties to my delight illuminated by a neon green circle, which presumably also earns the player some extra cash to stand in and take their photo from but Idk) to combine multiple of the intended sub- or objects in one frame, all with, and I'll say it again, A TIMER STARING AND JUDGING YOUR EFFICIENCY, I probably wouldn't have bought it on a whim and engaged in a little more thinking feller behaviour before that. I should just stop going into games completly blind and adjust my expectations with a bit of research beyond looking at some screen shots or looking at a high number next a promising ramping curve on a Backlogged entry, smh.
Thoughtfull level design kind of alleviates some of those complaints a bit. Like when I was inside the Train a bounty asked to photograph twenty sticky notes. I knew the game wouldn't get my lazy ass to actually count all the things on my screen again, but low and behold I eyeballed it and the first snap I took of a wall in the kitchen had generously, exactly that amount of yellow squares rendered on it. Occasionally my illiterate ass got stumped by a single word in the objective (my dumbest moment, which I would like to share for the readers amusement, was seeing the words "two coffees" next to the word "downlight" in which the context of coffee made me unironically, on autopilot and by association deduct, while also not really questioning the lack of a space between the two, that "downlight" had to be an in-universe drink.. you know like bud light.. In retrospection I am fully selfaware that this was hilariously stupid, but Idc to admit this while simultaneously still blaming the game, because this was the first bounty with two entirely different genres of things, there is an overabundance of in-universe food items in this level and the term "ceiling light" exists. Lol. Hell, I should just play games, with the option available, in German. The word used in that version of the game translates literally into ceiling light and not "Einbauleuchte" as google translates my headcanon light beer,(I only looked this up after the fact tho) would have saved ten minutes of my time which I am now more than matching with this self-reporting paragraph about my own idiocy for your entertainment. Edit: I actually managed to find a streamer with an even dumber thought process than mine https://www.twitch.tv/superantonio64/v/861937373?sr=a&t=20s all love tho and the photo is pretty fire)
But man, thank god, most of these problems seem kind of more.. unimportant once world building does it's magic, the story fully lifts the curtains and the worth of the camera in your hand achieves it's, by the game intended, purpose. (I actually won't spoil that much of the story or themes in here)
Those very specific things you need to photograph lead the player to examine the Mise en scene,(unless of course they just unpluck their thinking box and only scan the enviourment for the crucial thing) so while the gameplay could feel like contract worker's fetch quest to me, the lists are admittedly kinda genius in getting the player to focus on each individual polygon, it's meaning and as a result in it's enviourmental story telling and exposition. A part of this trick Umurangi pulls, which shifted my initial annoyance about it into appreciation once I got what it was doing, were the at first glance decivingly simple descriptions which lead me to inspect every render in some of the comfortably small levels to rule each one of them out. When a prompt asks to photograph a specific word for instance, I would in tandem, even if just accidentally, read most of the sentences on a poster, graffity, the small print on a random box, the food item label, or beyond just the headline of a magazine a NPC might hold in their hands.
This got me to properly inspect the green fireflies while searching for a butterfly which lead to some cool isolated close ups of one, or aware if the large amount of cigarettes, knifes and medkits in the UN millitary camp while searching for those objectives(some of the first clues hinting that there is something more sinister going on than the rooftop photo-session like in the intro level before that), or to fully inspect the unravelling apocalypse outside a moving train while joining the flashing of a red light.
How the entire Walled City is looking for solace inside VR gaming headsets, while I was taking shots of a the word "gamers" a bunch of times. Crazy how a prompt like "photograph the word gamers 7 times" can lead to such a hard hitting declaration by the game I myself was currently escaping into. Seeing a fully armed and ready Military OP right next to a twitching dude with a VR headset tucked to his face is pretty jarring imagery. Or how your first sight in that level are a bunch of joyful folks dancing in the streets, I in an instant felt obligated to capture with my shutter, just to turn that camera lense and understand what the name "Walled City" truly encompasses.
Through this design Umurangi Generation engaged me in it's story, themes and humanity with a sharp but subliminal efficiency. All of the games I've played then forgotten in which the gorgous, painstakingly sculpted 3D models, digitally printed graphic designs, each intentfully placed static pixels on my screen transformed into backround noise after the obligatory respect for the effort, all of which are contrastingly focal in this world and even highlighted in their low-poly beauty through the gameplay of toying around with an array of lenses and settings gifted to the player.
A part of me believes that all of these observations I just attributed to the games design would have still taken place without it's reliance on checklists, but the existence of one itself gives context. Who am I taking these for? Who even pays me for it? The ominous implication of getting a fine for photographing the blue shells, which needs a bit of time to fully settle in, comes to mind. That this at first deceptively simple mechanic to get the player to be more careful with the framing and not just mindlessly waste a filmroll has genuine meaning in the story was brilliantly executed.
The music is also more than worth mentioning, but I have to admit I fell like condensing a plethora of tones and soundscapes into a few sentences, not wanting to adding another wall of text, always boils down to using genre descriptive buzzwords. In the context of this review a famous Elliot Erwitt quote on photography is fitting "The whole point of taking a picture is so that you don't have to explain things with words"
Maybe that's why I'd rather listen to, or play music than attempting to find the right ones for something that maybe can't be reduced to them and my RYM is as empty as my ball sack after listening to this OST. Anyways.
Bouncy, atmospheric synth- and drum-sample-heavy EDM, Breakbeat and Hip Hop transcends the atmosphere even further and goes hard from the moment you are greeted by the flapping vapor-waves of the penguin at the starting screen. There might be a few duds here and there, but the sheer volume and consistency in the catalogue for such a short game is impressive on it's own.
(Pretty irrelevant, but why did that MF choose the surename Adolf in his music?? Or did his parents do that to him? I couldn't find it out)
Gonna go even more off the rails here and talk about my love for street photography a bit, although truthfully the game feels more like you are a war correspondent, which I cannot speak on in the slightest and like I explained it even kinda convinced me of its game design philosophy on photography after some time and thoughts, but still.
Street photography in general seems impossible to replicate inside of a Video Game. You try to capture the slipt of a second in time, in an endless stream of movement. No looped animation circle could achieve that. Street photography specificially(hell, realistically war photography even more so, but probably for different more legitimate reasons) even if harmless can be an adrenaline rush. "Everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear" You'll need to be friendly, confident, subtle and bold in the same breath and not afraid of some verbal confrontation. It is kinda therapeutic to me and genuinely helps me with my, during covid developed, agrophobia and social anxiety. If they catch me while snapping it I just smile and tell them what I am doing, most of the time they don't even care. I only take pictures in touristy spots and mostly groups of old people and their dogs, but I still sometimes catch myself not wanting to disturb anyone and once I only take one picture in a span of twenty+ minutes that's when I am done for the day. I just do it for myself, to get better at it and photography.
It also lets you view the world through a different lense (bad pun intended). You start noticing and appreciating lines, shapes and people you were previously blind towards and develope an eye for when a real or interesting moment is about to unfold out of the nessecity to capture it. "All the the technique in the world doesn't compensate for the inability to notice"
There is no way a glorified screenshot in a Video Game could ever come close to that specific experience. That game would need to be a money-eating, ambitious risk and for a very niche audience. And probably the only, I hate say this next string of words, open-world-game I would get giddy for. Shit I'll just go outside and do my thing there.
Like I said I don't actually want write about or spoil the story, beyond a few observations up to the halfway point at least. Mostly because it's the one thing best experienced for yourself and someone smarter probably did a better synapsis or analyses about it. That reminds me, now I can finally, fully delve into that new Jacob Geller hood classic, this time without skipping the portion about this game. Also this review is way to long already. Holy.
I might bump the score eventually, because I am aware I sometimes like to judge games for what I wish they could have been, which is silly when a game achieves what it set out to do well enough. Despite having even more nitpicks like the finicky 3D platforming I didn't care for or that I wished the NPCs had at least some kind of reaction to shoving a camera up their faces or words to say about it and the world instead of just changing the poses of the player characters friends. The score will always be capped though, because the implementation of a timer is inexcusable to me. (I've said that like four or five times now lol, but I was just unable to ignore it in my playthrough)
The layers of presentation, the very unique branch of the low-poly (gonna throw reductive buzzwords out again) "neonpunk vapor-wave" aesthetic, the bopping OST and the detailed, environmental world building gives Umurangi Generation the worth to spend your time and money on, but I would recommend leaving the house if you go into this expecting it to scratch more than a very simple and gamefied itch for photography, although it found a way to give purpose to it's use in a slightly different context.
I actually would recommend the latter to eveyone here, in all of the ways you choose to interpretate it. Aight, imma grab my film rolls and head out.
The gameplay loop consists entirely of following a restriction of checklists with the photos you need to take for the game. Add to that, an incentivesed speedrun for a bonus if you complete all of the bounties in the current location below ten minutes, which seems utterly antithetical to the joy of photography.
Is the act of being a gamefied contract worker really the only possibility for these types of games? Does it really also need a ticking timer in the corner to stress me out on top of that?
And I can understand the feel for the existence of the former, but only because we are trained to expect some kind of tangible objective to follow as gamers and game designers. Umurangi Generation to my suprise actually found a way to elevate this game design obligation. (I get into that a bit further down) "If there are no conditions to be met how else could you call it a game, how else would the game know you did the thing!" could be argued. My problem with this notion is that every photography game I have played inevitably turns the inherent creativity of that artform into something different instead of searching for a way to fully embrace it.
For about fifteen minutes of trying to check off the ten-solar-panel-bounty from the list in the second level "Otumoe Tai" I was naively ignorant towards the little, extra symbol next to that objective, because I genuinely didn't even want to consider that the game asks for further, more specific restric.. I mean conditions to take my shots. I legit thought my game was bugged or some shit, but turns out I was truly a bit naive and that Umurangi Generation wants it's players to take most of their pictures with a very particular lense or distance to the sub- and objects for successful progression. In those twenty minutes my efforts at photography became really uninspired and after that realisation the recovery from this seemed pretty usless to me and the game.
The timer, which in my playthrough continued in red numbers upwards to infinity (it should just disappear after you failed or only be unlocked after your first completed run of a level) for no apparent reason other than to tease me with exactly how much time I have been wasting in this game, was not encouraging a different mindset.
There were two levels after which I gave up on trying to loose myself in "making art" and just tried to speedrun the act of pointing at the right thing with the right thing in the right way, but failed each time to get the bonus and dreaded to complete tasks in which I was asked to count a bunch of things again. If I had known this game was more about counting shit, finding specific stuff or the semi-puzzle of detecting an angle(often a single intended one, for the most egregious of the bounties to my delight illuminated by a neon green circle, which presumably also earns the player some extra cash to stand in and take their photo from but Idk) to combine multiple of the intended sub- or objects in one frame, all with, and I'll say it again, A TIMER STARING AND JUDGING YOUR EFFICIENCY, I probably wouldn't have bought it on a whim and engaged in a little more thinking feller behaviour before that. I should just stop going into games completly blind and adjust my expectations with a bit of research beyond looking at some screen shots or looking at a high number next a promising ramping curve on a Backlogged entry, smh.
Thoughtfull level design kind of alleviates some of those complaints a bit. Like when I was inside the Train a bounty asked to photograph twenty sticky notes. I knew the game wouldn't get my lazy ass to actually count all the things on my screen again, but low and behold I eyeballed it and the first snap I took of a wall in the kitchen had generously, exactly that amount of yellow squares rendered on it. Occasionally my illiterate ass got stumped by a single word in the objective (my dumbest moment, which I would like to share for the readers amusement, was seeing the words "two coffees" next to the word "downlight" in which the context of coffee made me unironically, on autopilot and by association deduct, while also not really questioning the lack of a space between the two, that "downlight" had to be an in-universe drink.. you know like bud light.. In retrospection I am fully selfaware that this was hilariously stupid, but Idc to admit this while simultaneously still blaming the game, because this was the first bounty with two entirely different genres of things, there is an overabundance of in-universe food items in this level and the term "ceiling light" exists. Lol. Hell, I should just play games, with the option available, in German. The word used in that version of the game translates literally into ceiling light and not "Einbauleuchte" as google translates my headcanon light beer,(I only looked this up after the fact tho) would have saved ten minutes of my time which I am now more than matching with this self-reporting paragraph about my own idiocy for your entertainment. Edit: I actually managed to find a streamer with an even dumber thought process than mine https://www.twitch.tv/superantonio64/v/861937373?sr=a&t=20s all love tho and the photo is pretty fire)
But man, thank god, most of these problems seem kind of more.. unimportant once world building does it's magic, the story fully lifts the curtains and the worth of the camera in your hand achieves it's, by the game intended, purpose. (I actually won't spoil that much of the story or themes in here)
Those very specific things you need to photograph lead the player to examine the Mise en scene,(unless of course they just unpluck their thinking box and only scan the enviourment for the crucial thing) so while the gameplay could feel like contract worker's fetch quest to me, the lists are admittedly kinda genius in getting the player to focus on each individual polygon, it's meaning and as a result in it's enviourmental story telling and exposition. A part of this trick Umurangi pulls, which shifted my initial annoyance about it into appreciation once I got what it was doing, were the at first glance decivingly simple descriptions which lead me to inspect every render in some of the comfortably small levels to rule each one of them out. When a prompt asks to photograph a specific word for instance, I would in tandem, even if just accidentally, read most of the sentences on a poster, graffity, the small print on a random box, the food item label, or beyond just the headline of a magazine a NPC might hold in their hands.
This got me to properly inspect the green fireflies while searching for a butterfly which lead to some cool isolated close ups of one, or aware if the large amount of cigarettes, knifes and medkits in the UN millitary camp while searching for those objectives(some of the first clues hinting that there is something more sinister going on than the rooftop photo-session like in the intro level before that), or to fully inspect the unravelling apocalypse outside a moving train while joining the flashing of a red light.
How the entire Walled City is looking for solace inside VR gaming headsets, while I was taking shots of a the word "gamers" a bunch of times. Crazy how a prompt like "photograph the word gamers 7 times" can lead to such a hard hitting declaration by the game I myself was currently escaping into. Seeing a fully armed and ready Military OP right next to a twitching dude with a VR headset tucked to his face is pretty jarring imagery. Or how your first sight in that level are a bunch of joyful folks dancing in the streets, I in an instant felt obligated to capture with my shutter, just to turn that camera lense and understand what the name "Walled City" truly encompasses.
Through this design Umurangi Generation engaged me in it's story, themes and humanity with a sharp but subliminal efficiency. All of the games I've played then forgotten in which the gorgous, painstakingly sculpted 3D models, digitally printed graphic designs, each intentfully placed static pixels on my screen transformed into backround noise after the obligatory respect for the effort, all of which are contrastingly focal in this world and even highlighted in their low-poly beauty through the gameplay of toying around with an array of lenses and settings gifted to the player.
A part of me believes that all of these observations I just attributed to the games design would have still taken place without it's reliance on checklists, but the existence of one itself gives context. Who am I taking these for? Who even pays me for it? The ominous implication of getting a fine for photographing the blue shells, which needs a bit of time to fully settle in, comes to mind. That this at first deceptively simple mechanic to get the player to be more careful with the framing and not just mindlessly waste a filmroll has genuine meaning in the story was brilliantly executed.
The music is also more than worth mentioning, but I have to admit I fell like condensing a plethora of tones and soundscapes into a few sentences, not wanting to adding another wall of text, always boils down to using genre descriptive buzzwords. In the context of this review a famous Elliot Erwitt quote on photography is fitting "The whole point of taking a picture is so that you don't have to explain things with words"
Maybe that's why I'd rather listen to, or play music than attempting to find the right ones for something that maybe can't be reduced to them and my RYM is as empty as my ball sack after listening to this OST. Anyways.
Bouncy, atmospheric synth- and drum-sample-heavy EDM, Breakbeat and Hip Hop transcends the atmosphere even further and goes hard from the moment you are greeted by the flapping vapor-waves of the penguin at the starting screen. There might be a few duds here and there, but the sheer volume and consistency in the catalogue for such a short game is impressive on it's own.
(Pretty irrelevant, but why did that MF choose the surename Adolf in his music?? Or did his parents do that to him? I couldn't find it out)
Gonna go even more off the rails here and talk about my love for street photography a bit, although truthfully the game feels more like you are a war correspondent, which I cannot speak on in the slightest and like I explained it even kinda convinced me of its game design philosophy on photography after some time and thoughts, but still.
Street photography in general seems impossible to replicate inside of a Video Game. You try to capture the slipt of a second in time, in an endless stream of movement. No looped animation circle could achieve that. Street photography specificially(hell, realistically war photography even more so, but probably for different more legitimate reasons) even if harmless can be an adrenaline rush. "Everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear" You'll need to be friendly, confident, subtle and bold in the same breath and not afraid of some verbal confrontation. It is kinda therapeutic to me and genuinely helps me with my, during covid developed, agrophobia and social anxiety. If they catch me while snapping it I just smile and tell them what I am doing, most of the time they don't even care. I only take pictures in touristy spots and mostly groups of old people and their dogs, but I still sometimes catch myself not wanting to disturb anyone and once I only take one picture in a span of twenty+ minutes that's when I am done for the day. I just do it for myself, to get better at it and photography.
It also lets you view the world through a different lense (bad pun intended). You start noticing and appreciating lines, shapes and people you were previously blind towards and develope an eye for when a real or interesting moment is about to unfold out of the nessecity to capture it. "All the the technique in the world doesn't compensate for the inability to notice"
There is no way a glorified screenshot in a Video Game could ever come close to that specific experience. That game would need to be a money-eating, ambitious risk and for a very niche audience. And probably the only, I hate say this next string of words, open-world-game I would get giddy for. Shit I'll just go outside and do my thing there.
Like I said I don't actually want write about or spoil the story, beyond a few observations up to the halfway point at least. Mostly because it's the one thing best experienced for yourself and someone smarter probably did a better synapsis or analyses about it. That reminds me, now I can finally, fully delve into that new Jacob Geller hood classic, this time without skipping the portion about this game. Also this review is way to long already. Holy.
I might bump the score eventually, because I am aware I sometimes like to judge games for what I wish they could have been, which is silly when a game achieves what it set out to do well enough. Despite having even more nitpicks like the finicky 3D platforming I didn't care for or that I wished the NPCs had at least some kind of reaction to shoving a camera up their faces or words to say about it and the world instead of just changing the poses of the player characters friends. The score will always be capped though, because the implementation of a timer is inexcusable to me. (I've said that like four or five times now lol, but I was just unable to ignore it in my playthrough)
The layers of presentation, the very unique branch of the low-poly (gonna throw reductive buzzwords out again) "neonpunk vapor-wave" aesthetic, the bopping OST and the detailed, environmental world building gives Umurangi Generation the worth to spend your time and money on, but I would recommend leaving the house if you go into this expecting it to scratch more than a very simple and gamefied itch for photography, although it found a way to give purpose to it's use in a slightly different context.
I actually would recommend the latter to eveyone here, in all of the ways you choose to interpretate it. Aight, imma grab my film rolls and head out.
2017
Playing Minecraft again for the first time since I was a kid with a bunch of friends who no-lifed this game for years, was, to say the least, a unique experience. I have never, from a purly gameplay perspective, been this overwhelmed and bored simultaneously.
It is borderline depressing to hear my old friends joyfully speaking in a to me foreign language and about something I can't seem to get anything out of other than the digital social interaction with them. And I don't want to have to commit a bunch of my time to learn and understand it, that just isn't the kind of gamer I am. I'd rather meet those same friends IRL, play something we are on equal footing or play shorter games alone that actually move something inside of me intentionally.
Being a reinstated noob in the current Meta and getting handheld by some well meaning bros through the Nether End-boss fight, while they were continuously arguing with each other about stuff I don't know shit about was just exhausting to me and I have never felt less while watching the credits of game roll down the screen.
A part of me wants to give Minecraft credit anyway for it's depth, (or whatever you wanna call it when something gets perpetuatually updated for over a decade, because it's the most profitable game on the market) but another side in me knows that the rightwing shithead who made this stole the base idea from Zachtronics and made a gazillion dollars as a result of dumbing it down, while Zach didn't get an ounce of credit, artisticly or monetary, other than in the first ever forum post Notch made about the development, in which he literally admitted to Minecraft being an Infineminer clone.
The funny thing is Zach himself said in an Interview about it that he cannot take credit for the idea of Minecraft, because he would have never come up with the mind numbing mechanic to just hold down the left mouse button to farm something. The words "mind numbing" in there are mine and are not in his quote, but judging by Zachtronics game design philosophy they were kind of implied.
And yea, turning my brain off and just building shit is the most pleasing thing to do in this game, but I don't like to play games to turn my brain off and to me this isn't an argument to learn about all the inordinate crafting intricacies either.
As a huge Brian Eno stan, the ambient OST by C418 is undoubtedly the pre-eminent reason Minecraft is deserving of it's attention as mainstream art to me, but as someone who listened to the album a bunch of times over the years without ever touching the game, I couldn't believe how many day-and-night circles pass before you'll ever hear one of those beautiful soundscapes. Despite it's sparse use, I would still argue that this gorgeous background music is, at minimum, subconsciously responsible for it's rise and staying power. I would waste some time anywhere those tunes grace my ears tbh.
With the exception of the infallible music and it's functionality as a social hub, this just isn't for me. Also, fuck Notch
It is borderline depressing to hear my old friends joyfully speaking in a to me foreign language and about something I can't seem to get anything out of other than the digital social interaction with them. And I don't want to have to commit a bunch of my time to learn and understand it, that just isn't the kind of gamer I am. I'd rather meet those same friends IRL, play something we are on equal footing or play shorter games alone that actually move something inside of me intentionally.
Being a reinstated noob in the current Meta and getting handheld by some well meaning bros through the Nether End-boss fight, while they were continuously arguing with each other about stuff I don't know shit about was just exhausting to me and I have never felt less while watching the credits of game roll down the screen.
A part of me wants to give Minecraft credit anyway for it's depth, (or whatever you wanna call it when something gets perpetuatually updated for over a decade, because it's the most profitable game on the market) but another side in me knows that the rightwing shithead who made this stole the base idea from Zachtronics and made a gazillion dollars as a result of dumbing it down, while Zach didn't get an ounce of credit, artisticly or monetary, other than in the first ever forum post Notch made about the development, in which he literally admitted to Minecraft being an Infineminer clone.
The funny thing is Zach himself said in an Interview about it that he cannot take credit for the idea of Minecraft, because he would have never come up with the mind numbing mechanic to just hold down the left mouse button to farm something. The words "mind numbing" in there are mine and are not in his quote, but judging by Zachtronics game design philosophy they were kind of implied.
And yea, turning my brain off and just building shit is the most pleasing thing to do in this game, but I don't like to play games to turn my brain off and to me this isn't an argument to learn about all the inordinate crafting intricacies either.
As a huge Brian Eno stan, the ambient OST by C418 is undoubtedly the pre-eminent reason Minecraft is deserving of it's attention as mainstream art to me, but as someone who listened to the album a bunch of times over the years without ever touching the game, I couldn't believe how many day-and-night circles pass before you'll ever hear one of those beautiful soundscapes. Despite it's sparse use, I would still argue that this gorgeous background music is, at minimum, subconsciously responsible for it's rise and staying power. I would waste some time anywhere those tunes grace my ears tbh.
With the exception of the infallible music and it's functionality as a social hub, this just isn't for me. Also, fuck Notch
2021
This game is more movie than game in it's story telling. In a weird way though it is almost fitting that a pseudo mindbending video game about a horror novel author's manuscript was actually a film the entire time.
I am exaggerating, there are obviously the obligatory zombie-, but not actually a zombie, okay maybe they are just a zombie, but with an extra shield mechanic -shooter sections. There are also some decent, often optional "walking sim" parts with additional world building, lore or foreshadowing of the story. The game is serviceable just not for me, I am hating a bit, because I am honestly always disappointed when I choose to play a Video Game instead of watching a Film or a TV Show and then I feel like I would have gotten the same x10 out of rewatching a Lynch (or Nolan, he might unironically enjoy this) flick while playing a mindless zombie shooter on the side.
Like, my favourite part in the first chapter was some silly and short Twilight Zone -eseque video you can watch on a TV in the game. Why am I even playing a game at that that point I have to ask myself?
Starting off with the nod: "Stephen King once wrote that 'Nightmares exist outside of logic, and there's little fun to be had in explanations; they're antithetical to the poetry of fear." and after that immediately tutorialising how to break and defeat the first "Nightmare" you encounter, and thereby lessening the potential fear of the unknown a player could experience and contradictong that corny opening monologue is baffeling to me.
The animations, sound design and fx alone convey perfectly well that the lamp has an effect on the enemy, figuring that out by yourself would work perfectly fine in a nightmare mystery setting. Why are games this inconfindent in themselves and the player that tjey feel the need to take this small and kind of intriguing revelation away?
"For a moment the repressive feeling from the nightmare I had on the ferry returns" a near comical jumpscare flashes for half a second. The shortness, randomness and how on the nose the attempt at connecting Alan's narrated thoughts to the players emotions were, made this moment kinda silly to me. These Jumpscares keep coming throughout the game and keep getting longer, showing the player more information. And idk, to me that is honestly, at least in theory, an interesting concept to excuse the use of jumpscares, by the nature of the scare getting longer the jump would slowly cease to exist. But they don't really, there is still epileptic ass editing in those moments to compensate for the length I guess. So, to me at least, this minor recurring flash of imagery, which I'm wasting way too much time on in this review, is only an annoying, tension wasting horror gimmick that is halting the gameplay instead of the intriguing, itself slowly revealing narrative exposition it could have been.
Alan Wake gives me confidence to be a writer myself, a profession not even included in the top five artistic delusions I have, but this game bumped it up a bit. The writing in Alan's manuscripts is mediocre at best, there is no way this guy is such a legend that a small town has a life-sized cardboard cutout of him in a Bar.
Damn, is he supposed to be a mediocre cardboard cut out of an author and that is a blatan admission of that? But man self-awareness wouldn't make it any better.
In one of the manuscripts it says "..to describe the dark presence as intelligent would have implied human qualities on something decidedly inhuman" all this sentence is giving me is the implications that intelligence is a quality exclusive to humans. And thats just arrogant human exceptionalism in my book.
I dropped this game after like six+, kinda slogging hours and turned on Twin Peaks instead. If there is some plot-twist that nullifies my complaints about the story related stuff or the game somehow gets way more interesting, I honestly don't really care enough to sit through even a playthrough of it to find out and I did genuinely try that a couple days after, but then again choose to watch something else instead. [Played like a month ago, but I'll log it with todays date for visibility or some shit, idk if that is how it works]
I am exaggerating, there are obviously the obligatory zombie-, but not actually a zombie, okay maybe they are just a zombie, but with an extra shield mechanic -shooter sections. There are also some decent, often optional "walking sim" parts with additional world building, lore or foreshadowing of the story. The game is serviceable just not for me, I am hating a bit, because I am honestly always disappointed when I choose to play a Video Game instead of watching a Film or a TV Show and then I feel like I would have gotten the same x10 out of rewatching a Lynch (or Nolan, he might unironically enjoy this) flick while playing a mindless zombie shooter on the side.
Like, my favourite part in the first chapter was some silly and short Twilight Zone -eseque video you can watch on a TV in the game. Why am I even playing a game at that that point I have to ask myself?
Starting off with the nod: "Stephen King once wrote that 'Nightmares exist outside of logic, and there's little fun to be had in explanations; they're antithetical to the poetry of fear." and after that immediately tutorialising how to break and defeat the first "Nightmare" you encounter, and thereby lessening the potential fear of the unknown a player could experience and contradictong that corny opening monologue is baffeling to me.
The animations, sound design and fx alone convey perfectly well that the lamp has an effect on the enemy, figuring that out by yourself would work perfectly fine in a nightmare mystery setting. Why are games this inconfindent in themselves and the player that tjey feel the need to take this small and kind of intriguing revelation away?
"For a moment the repressive feeling from the nightmare I had on the ferry returns" a near comical jumpscare flashes for half a second. The shortness, randomness and how on the nose the attempt at connecting Alan's narrated thoughts to the players emotions were, made this moment kinda silly to me. These Jumpscares keep coming throughout the game and keep getting longer, showing the player more information. And idk, to me that is honestly, at least in theory, an interesting concept to excuse the use of jumpscares, by the nature of the scare getting longer the jump would slowly cease to exist. But they don't really, there is still epileptic ass editing in those moments to compensate for the length I guess. So, to me at least, this minor recurring flash of imagery, which I'm wasting way too much time on in this review, is only an annoying, tension wasting horror gimmick that is halting the gameplay instead of the intriguing, itself slowly revealing narrative exposition it could have been.
Alan Wake gives me confidence to be a writer myself, a profession not even included in the top five artistic delusions I have, but this game bumped it up a bit. The writing in Alan's manuscripts is mediocre at best, there is no way this guy is such a legend that a small town has a life-sized cardboard cutout of him in a Bar.
Damn, is he supposed to be a mediocre cardboard cut out of an author and that is a blatan admission of that? But man self-awareness wouldn't make it any better.
In one of the manuscripts it says "..to describe the dark presence as intelligent would have implied human qualities on something decidedly inhuman" all this sentence is giving me is the implications that intelligence is a quality exclusive to humans. And thats just arrogant human exceptionalism in my book.
I dropped this game after like six+, kinda slogging hours and turned on Twin Peaks instead. If there is some plot-twist that nullifies my complaints about the story related stuff or the game somehow gets way more interesting, I honestly don't really care enough to sit through even a playthrough of it to find out and I did genuinely try that a couple days after, but then again choose to watch something else instead. [Played like a month ago, but I'll log it with todays date for visibility or some shit, idk if that is how it works]
2020
Yes I know of a band named Fugazi. Thanks for asking strange, cute and scary game.
I am definitely gonna keep playing this series, especially because this was very short with no wet fat.
100% worth 15 minutes of your time just for the atmosphere. And it's way more than that one silly Pop-culture reference i kinda reduced it to.
I am definitely gonna keep playing this series, especially because this was very short with no wet fat.
100% worth 15 minutes of your time just for the atmosphere. And it's way more than that one silly Pop-culture reference i kinda reduced it to.
2019
I have been falling for so long I have forgotten what the ground looks like.
This was a digital euphoria I genuinely needed to help me float, at least for a short while.
An audio-visual feast, bite sized tabs of purple acid for my way too sober mind, hungry for a meaningful stimulation. Loose, soothing and forgiving.
I'll have to admit, the synth pop OST was hit or miss for me. I caught myself nodding along only three seperate times, but maybe I was just too enthralled in the whole experience to notice all the other times and nothing overstayed it's welcome anyway. It also reminded me that Debussy fucks hard.
Also crazy they got Queen Latifah in this to tell me I got a bronze rank.
Play this if you want a short but warm hug from a person rubbing some LSD onto your skin.
This was a digital euphoria I genuinely needed to help me float, at least for a short while.
An audio-visual feast, bite sized tabs of purple acid for my way too sober mind, hungry for a meaningful stimulation. Loose, soothing and forgiving.
I'll have to admit, the synth pop OST was hit or miss for me. I caught myself nodding along only three seperate times, but maybe I was just too enthralled in the whole experience to notice all the other times and nothing overstayed it's welcome anyway. It also reminded me that Debussy fucks hard.
Also crazy they got Queen Latifah in this to tell me I got a bronze rank.
Play this if you want a short but warm hug from a person rubbing some LSD onto your skin.
If you are insufferable like me and occasionally try to get people outside of the medium into video games then this might be the best one to get them genuinely interested.
Solving a well-thought-out 17th-century murder case by gathering evidence, understanding contextual clues, and identifying suspects, all behind the accessible comfort of using only a mouse, makes true-crime jennys giddy.
The way some of these vignettes tell a story, pieces scattered across the scene with the right amount of context missing is brilliantly executed, rewarding to put together and sometimes genuinely beautiful.
The pixilated art style toes the perfect line between readable and crude, almost mad magazine-esque adult cartoon. The pixels look like they all stink.
Tbh while playing I wasn't sure if the ending and the main plot are trying to say something specific because the only message I got felt pretty dumb. So I kinda just chalked it up to gameplay ideas informing the story. Then after finishing the game, I read Epiglottis review who said it better than I ever could when they called the place the story ends up in "soft-brained 'tyranny of forced equality' territory". And yea, I got the same vibe.
One of the things Obra Dinn undeniably has above the golden idol is its interesting use of audio and sound design (hearing the victim's last moment). You can play the golden idol with the sound muted and it wouldn't make a difference (except atmospherically of course). That felt a bit disappointing to me, but I also have to admit that I don't see a good possibility to further implement sound without just ripping off obra dinn ideas or changing how the game feels in general. So maybe it's good they didn't.
Next time you want to get your adult friends or family members into video games pull out this one and play a chapter with them.
Solving a well-thought-out 17th-century murder case by gathering evidence, understanding contextual clues, and identifying suspects, all behind the accessible comfort of using only a mouse, makes true-crime jennys giddy.
The way some of these vignettes tell a story, pieces scattered across the scene with the right amount of context missing is brilliantly executed, rewarding to put together and sometimes genuinely beautiful.
The pixilated art style toes the perfect line between readable and crude, almost mad magazine-esque adult cartoon. The pixels look like they all stink.
Tbh while playing I wasn't sure if the ending and the main plot are trying to say something specific because the only message I got felt pretty dumb. So I kinda just chalked it up to gameplay ideas informing the story. Then after finishing the game, I read Epiglottis review who said it better than I ever could when they called the place the story ends up in "soft-brained 'tyranny of forced equality' territory". And yea, I got the same vibe.
One of the things Obra Dinn undeniably has above the golden idol is its interesting use of audio and sound design (hearing the victim's last moment). You can play the golden idol with the sound muted and it wouldn't make a difference (except atmospherically of course). That felt a bit disappointing to me, but I also have to admit that I don't see a good possibility to further implement sound without just ripping off obra dinn ideas or changing how the game feels in general. So maybe it's good they didn't.
Next time you want to get your adult friends or family members into video games pull out this one and play a chapter with them.
2004
Trying to recall the exact events of a play session in Yume Nikki feels to an uncanny degree like trying to recall the exact events of a dream right after waking up.
Those kinds of dreams where it kinda felt like you had a nightmare, but you aren't quite sure if it actually was one. You can't remember how you got from one place to the next, if it was a single dream or multiple and even less what any of it meant.
It's also the kind of modern art that is so simple in concept and execution, yet nails its premise so effortlessly, that I can't help but hate that I didn't come up with it first lol. I can see how a similar thought process and admiration, shared among indie devs in the mid-2000s, inevitably led Yume Nikki to spawn its own sub-genre.
Those kinds of dreams where it kinda felt like you had a nightmare, but you aren't quite sure if it actually was one. You can't remember how you got from one place to the next, if it was a single dream or multiple and even less what any of it meant.
It's also the kind of modern art that is so simple in concept and execution, yet nails its premise so effortlessly, that I can't help but hate that I didn't come up with it first lol. I can see how a similar thought process and admiration, shared among indie devs in the mid-2000s, inevitably led Yume Nikki to spawn its own sub-genre.
2021
The notion of Black and white photography communicates a way bigger interest in artsy shit than the game actually wants (you) to explore. Taking selfies gets the same priority as the zoom function out here. You get a tripod, not for any further calibrations like a hight adjustment or angling the camera a bit, but to insert the player character and by extension yourself into any scene (and for a puzzle solution that kept being reused). After getting the ability to use filters I took a really depressing photo of a crying kid and then showed it to the npc who gave me the filters, their reaction was: "hahaha ha filters make everything so funny".
Now don't misunderstand me, this isn't me criticising the npc reaction from the standpoint of "I showed him sad thing not funny thing, game wrong" and more like this is just how the game views photography.. as just funny toy to f around with (or as a checklist of challenges with the photo club npcs). If there was at least one npc with a more interesting perspective on photography in this game this wouldn't even be a problem to me, but there isn't. The dialog in this game is so 'going through the motions' filler, sometimes reduced to just the gesture towards a common trope, that they didn't even credit anyone for the writing.
The main reason I picked this up was because I thought it would give me the same comfiness and freedom of artistic expression, a wholesome little world like "Chicory" gave me, but it sadly didn't.
In Chicory nobody ever tells you how or what to draw. In Toem you almost exclusively have to take photos for checklists with descriptions that first seem like they are open for interpretation, but are actually just light puzzles with one specific solution. Photograph the tiniest army means photograph the ants, not a group of boy scouts in uniform, or the other 'can be mistaken as the tiniest army, thing they purposely put in the level which I forgot rn. Like, imagine if it wasn't: take a very specific photo for me with this loose description. And instead all of the purposely placed Red Herings are possible solutions, making it more about the relationship of interpretation and description than about a dumb fetch quest. But that would mean writing thoughtful dialog which..this game..doesn't
Chicory gets more colourful with each player input, a move that seems like a no-brainer in a black-and-white game about an entire artistic medium. Tbh, I believe they only left toem in b/w because color coding is really hard and It's easier to make a pictures look good that way.
The game is still a relaxing affair and losing yourself while taking photos works for me no matter how basic it and disappointing all of the rest is.
Now don't misunderstand me, this isn't me criticising the npc reaction from the standpoint of "I showed him sad thing not funny thing, game wrong" and more like this is just how the game views photography.. as just funny toy to f around with (or as a checklist of challenges with the photo club npcs). If there was at least one npc with a more interesting perspective on photography in this game this wouldn't even be a problem to me, but there isn't. The dialog in this game is so 'going through the motions' filler, sometimes reduced to just the gesture towards a common trope, that they didn't even credit anyone for the writing.
The main reason I picked this up was because I thought it would give me the same comfiness and freedom of artistic expression, a wholesome little world like "Chicory" gave me, but it sadly didn't.
In Chicory nobody ever tells you how or what to draw. In Toem you almost exclusively have to take photos for checklists with descriptions that first seem like they are open for interpretation, but are actually just light puzzles with one specific solution. Photograph the tiniest army means photograph the ants, not a group of boy scouts in uniform, or the other 'can be mistaken as the tiniest army, thing they purposely put in the level which I forgot rn. Like, imagine if it wasn't: take a very specific photo for me with this loose description. And instead all of the purposely placed Red Herings are possible solutions, making it more about the relationship of interpretation and description than about a dumb fetch quest. But that would mean writing thoughtful dialog which..this game..doesn't
Chicory gets more colourful with each player input, a move that seems like a no-brainer in a black-and-white game about an entire artistic medium. Tbh, I believe they only left toem in b/w because color coding is really hard and It's easier to make a pictures look good that way.
The game is still a relaxing affair and losing yourself while taking photos works for me no matter how basic it and disappointing all of the rest is.
2022
I played this with a friend who is usually very on edge during any kind of horror media. He fell asleep.
I could stop my review right here, on this tongue and cheek, but also completely sincere remark of my experience, because it hammers my main point of contempt home. That these games are utterly boring and uninteresting.
Even external things like a drinking game with the homie can't upgrade the experience. The game has a fucking catch phrase (used in the drinking game by us) it constantly spouts in desperation for relatability and as a lacklustre faux identity. The instagram motivational content classic you see at the bottom of your local gym bros workout pics "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger". The game tries to evoke Nietzsche, but can't even reach Kelly Clarkson.
I know there is a subset of narrow minded people in high up positions who actively want games to just be interactive films, but it seems to me like no matter how many A's these studios have their attempts fail even at B-Movie level. Made up of mostly cutscenens plagued by over done horror clichés and a term coined millenial writing. The second half consisting of tension robbing quick time events, fixed camera angles that learned nothing beyond superficiality from the original resident evils and choices the game just can't help but remind the player of, right after they were made.
That last one is something that I will never get. How unconfident in the player's ability to understand that they just made a choice is the game? Can they expect me to take it serious if it doesn't take me and the limited opinions of interactivity as such and therefore itself serious? Why try to immerse the player with 'agency' if you then immediately televise to them that this is just a game? Just put it in the logs without the pop up notification. At the same time revealing their cards like this let's the player notice whenever their choices actually meant nothing instead of leaving it out or god forbid up to interpretation. The path I choose was to shelve this game.
Before my friend fell asleep he said something that hit the nail on it's head "if this was a film I would have already closed it."
He is right. Games have this excuse. The novelty of interactivity alone carries way to often completely unoriginal and boring stories. How long till this novelty wears off?
To cleanse my soul and to keep my guilt conscious from feeling the need to review and find the right words for the games I actually love, for at least a little longer, I'll have to give credit where its due.
The scene with the narcissistic girl in which she walks the pier alone while talking to her phone. No other character would be able to have scene like this, but her behaviour up untill this point of the game makes it completely believable that she would just talk to her phone camera and half ironically pretend like she is talking to her followers. But i think the interesting part happens at the end of the scene. Idk if this is optional, but she does some verbal introspection about her actions towards the guy she likes and it humanises her. It was the first and only time i said "damn, this wasn't even bad writing" to my friend who was already asleep, but not yet snoring. Mere seconds later she enters a cabin at the end of her walk and gets killed by one of the things. The game humanised her right before killing her off. They robbed the viewer of the 'satisfaction' from seeing the unlikeable character killed and turned my indifference into sympathy and as result the moment almost into horror in the last second. I say almost, because the scene was still goofy af.
Also graphics so good they'll make you say "thats that dude from the netflix show they cancelled after one season." I don't know why netfilx is catching strays now, but i especially don't know how to end rev
I could stop my review right here, on this tongue and cheek, but also completely sincere remark of my experience, because it hammers my main point of contempt home. That these games are utterly boring and uninteresting.
Even external things like a drinking game with the homie can't upgrade the experience. The game has a fucking catch phrase (used in the drinking game by us) it constantly spouts in desperation for relatability and as a lacklustre faux identity. The instagram motivational content classic you see at the bottom of your local gym bros workout pics "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger". The game tries to evoke Nietzsche, but can't even reach Kelly Clarkson.
I know there is a subset of narrow minded people in high up positions who actively want games to just be interactive films, but it seems to me like no matter how many A's these studios have their attempts fail even at B-Movie level. Made up of mostly cutscenens plagued by over done horror clichés and a term coined millenial writing. The second half consisting of tension robbing quick time events, fixed camera angles that learned nothing beyond superficiality from the original resident evils and choices the game just can't help but remind the player of, right after they were made.
That last one is something that I will never get. How unconfident in the player's ability to understand that they just made a choice is the game? Can they expect me to take it serious if it doesn't take me and the limited opinions of interactivity as such and therefore itself serious? Why try to immerse the player with 'agency' if you then immediately televise to them that this is just a game? Just put it in the logs without the pop up notification. At the same time revealing their cards like this let's the player notice whenever their choices actually meant nothing instead of leaving it out or god forbid up to interpretation. The path I choose was to shelve this game.
Before my friend fell asleep he said something that hit the nail on it's head "if this was a film I would have already closed it."
He is right. Games have this excuse. The novelty of interactivity alone carries way to often completely unoriginal and boring stories. How long till this novelty wears off?
To cleanse my soul and to keep my guilt conscious from feeling the need to review and find the right words for the games I actually love, for at least a little longer, I'll have to give credit where its due.
The scene with the narcissistic girl in which she walks the pier alone while talking to her phone. No other character would be able to have scene like this, but her behaviour up untill this point of the game makes it completely believable that she would just talk to her phone camera and half ironically pretend like she is talking to her followers. But i think the interesting part happens at the end of the scene. Idk if this is optional, but she does some verbal introspection about her actions towards the guy she likes and it humanises her. It was the first and only time i said "damn, this wasn't even bad writing" to my friend who was already asleep, but not yet snoring. Mere seconds later she enters a cabin at the end of her walk and gets killed by one of the things. The game humanised her right before killing her off. They robbed the viewer of the 'satisfaction' from seeing the unlikeable character killed and turned my indifference into sympathy and as result the moment almost into horror in the last second. I say almost, because the scene was still goofy af.
Also graphics so good they'll make you say "thats that dude from the netflix show they cancelled after one season." I don't know why netfilx is catching strays now, but i especially don't know how to end rev
2015
I had a best friend like Chloe growing up, a narcissistic rebel who's self-confidence and ability to truly not give a fuck I looked up to. But whenever i tried calling them out for their selfish asshole behaviour, they would gaslight me into thinking, me criticising them is actually worse and what they did is just what best friends do or not that big of a deal.
The game's casual normalisation of this kind of behaviour made me reflect on that constantly, but it never really questioned it. You can't not engage with chloe or really disagree with her actions if you want the story to progress. Trust me, I've tried getting caught, going back to max's room or what ever seemed like an alternative, but nothing is possible. If this inescapable dread of a guilt tripped toxic 'friendship' would be on purpose i think i could appreciate it, but it's not. The game views those scenes as Max having a fun night out with her besty.
I wanted to play this, because i was for a long time under the assumption that Life is strange is a pro LGBTQ+ game, but it utilises a mechanic known in the industry as 'gay button'. A bigoted homophone can play the entire game without ever being confronted with anything explicitly queer. It's all hidden behind optional button prompts and up to interpretation, like the boys or girls locker room decision or kissing chloe. The game just wears some of the aesthetics of being progressive nothing more.
It also kind of seemed from the very beginning to me like kate was a problem to solve for the player, before she was real character, which left a sour taste in my mouth up untill the point where i choose the wrong dialog a second time. I feel the game using her suicide as this shock factor knowlege-check climax to the episode, outways whatever they attempted to say about bullying or mental health and kind of game-ifys trauma.
When episode three strarted i had to think about the scene with kate, but before i could properly start reflecting max's voice actress said: "I really have to think about kate"
There is a constant discussion in film director circles about how much you should really think for the viewer. Beyond obvious stuff like 'show don't tell' there exists this inability in mainstream art to just let the receptor think and let them engage in their own thoughts about the art. I don't even mean having a different interpretation, i mean letting the receptor interpretate period.
Life is strange, constantly does this, it does the thinking for you. Max just tells you how or what to think. How to solve the puzzle. What to do. How to feel.
I really don't get why this is so normalized and even often appreciated in gaming.
For something more positive, i liked the artstyle and the general vibe of the town.
The game's casual normalisation of this kind of behaviour made me reflect on that constantly, but it never really questioned it. You can't not engage with chloe or really disagree with her actions if you want the story to progress. Trust me, I've tried getting caught, going back to max's room or what ever seemed like an alternative, but nothing is possible. If this inescapable dread of a guilt tripped toxic 'friendship' would be on purpose i think i could appreciate it, but it's not. The game views those scenes as Max having a fun night out with her besty.
I wanted to play this, because i was for a long time under the assumption that Life is strange is a pro LGBTQ+ game, but it utilises a mechanic known in the industry as 'gay button'. A bigoted homophone can play the entire game without ever being confronted with anything explicitly queer. It's all hidden behind optional button prompts and up to interpretation, like the boys or girls locker room decision or kissing chloe. The game just wears some of the aesthetics of being progressive nothing more.
It also kind of seemed from the very beginning to me like kate was a problem to solve for the player, before she was real character, which left a sour taste in my mouth up untill the point where i choose the wrong dialog a second time. I feel the game using her suicide as this shock factor knowlege-check climax to the episode, outways whatever they attempted to say about bullying or mental health and kind of game-ifys trauma.
When episode three strarted i had to think about the scene with kate, but before i could properly start reflecting max's voice actress said: "I really have to think about kate"
There is a constant discussion in film director circles about how much you should really think for the viewer. Beyond obvious stuff like 'show don't tell' there exists this inability in mainstream art to just let the receptor think and let them engage in their own thoughts about the art. I don't even mean having a different interpretation, i mean letting the receptor interpretate period.
Life is strange, constantly does this, it does the thinking for you. Max just tells you how or what to think. How to solve the puzzle. What to do. How to feel.
I really don't get why this is so normalized and even often appreciated in gaming.
For something more positive, i liked the artstyle and the general vibe of the town.
2021
Every design decision has to delete a whole world of possibilities to exist.
This game is an exercise in and a comment on exploring these worlds of possibilities.
The act of deckbuilding itself is a mirror to this creative process.
Choosing which cards to build the deck around is like choosing which iteration of an idea you want to build on. This is where inscription captivated me the most, as a beautiful work of art about reconceptualization. Don't leave anything on the cutting table, try the half baked stuff, but in a meta context that actually works because of it's sincerity.
I also loved when a stoner friend of mine told me to immediately delete the game after seeing his user name and picture on my enemies card. Lmao
This game is an exercise in and a comment on exploring these worlds of possibilities.
The act of deckbuilding itself is a mirror to this creative process.
Choosing which cards to build the deck around is like choosing which iteration of an idea you want to build on. This is where inscription captivated me the most, as a beautiful work of art about reconceptualization. Don't leave anything on the cutting table, try the half baked stuff, but in a meta context that actually works because of it's sincerity.
I also loved when a stoner friend of mine told me to immediately delete the game after seeing his user name and picture on my enemies card. Lmao
2020
Whoever had the idea that an ode to Akira Kurosawa should be built on soulless ubisoft mechanics needs to resign as an artist.
2022
Fetch quests and "press x to jump up here" BUT as a cat.
The fact that they didn't realize how much potential they had to tell a story completely without words is honestly baffling. The whole story with the robots felt like somebody didn't want to give up on an old idea so they mashed it together with somewhat interesting cat mechanics and then they structured the whole game around that instead of the cats. I really wouldn't be surprised if this were once two different student projects.
Can't be bothered to finish all the fetch quests in midtown while searching for the right windowsill to jump on. Imma have to drop this one. Thanks tho ps extra
The fact that they didn't realize how much potential they had to tell a story completely without words is honestly baffling. The whole story with the robots felt like somebody didn't want to give up on an old idea so they mashed it together with somewhat interesting cat mechanics and then they structured the whole game around that instead of the cats. I really wouldn't be surprised if this were once two different student projects.
Can't be bothered to finish all the fetch quests in midtown while searching for the right windowsill to jump on. Imma have to drop this one. Thanks tho ps extra