crimson2877
Beaten: May 20, 2022
Time: 10.95 Hours
Platform: Mac
Honestly I wasn’t completely sold on Sephonie at first. It’s another game from Analgesic Games, and while I’ve loved all their other games, this one was primarily a 3D platformer, which isn’t usually a genre I love. On top of that, I’d only been lukewarm on the demo (which I now mostly attribute to trying to play it on a 2017 Macbook keyboard). Even still, I was excited and I tried to go in and have fun with the unique platforming and the cool tetris-like puzzles.
I’ll be honest, I don’t really want to write about the gameplay. It was good and fun, a bit frustrating at moments and rooted in things that weren’t my speed really, but obviously well designed and robust. The puzzle aspect was cool too, never all that hard once I got the hang of it but nice and slow compared to the reaction-based gameplay of the rest of the game.
Stylistically, the game is wonderful. Melos has outdone himself on the music yet again, and while I’m not sure it’ll hold such a place in my heart as the Anodyne 2 OST does, it’s at least as strong a work. On the visual side of things, the colors are deeper, the environments more natural, and overall it’s just amazing. Most of the game for me was just chilling out to the design while making my way through puzzles and platforms, and honestly that’s exactly what I wanted out of it.
What I wasn’t quite expecting was the narrative and the themes. Maybe it’s just because it does start a bit slow, and the demo purposefully kept some context out of view, but I was expecting this game to be kind of story-light for some reason. I prooobably should’ve thought about Analgesic’s other games and how well they integrate free-flowing gameplay and powerful, thematic writing, because that’s what was here.
Sephonie is a game (as far as I can tell) that seems to branch somewhat off of the themes of immigration explored in Melos’ game All Our Asias, but also moves into a place where it’s talking about relationships and communication just as much as it’s talking about the lived experiences of three Taiwanese scientists and their varied relationships to the USA.
All of it hits very hard and is written beautifully, but in particular there are some things deep in there about relationship strain and communication that I felt harder than the rest. There’s this theme in there about communication and connection easing the way we show the darker, more destructive parts of ourselves, with hopes that maybe the people we’re connecting with can help us to understand and rid ourselves of what’s deep in there, what we try to keep chained up. Instead, when we connect with people with the idea that they can take our pain and leave us whole, everyone can end up hurt and overwhelmed. Even when everyone wants deeper connection, sometimes that depth comes too soon, or too late, or is just too deep. Others can help us understand ourselves, but they can’t take our burden.
Anyways I love this game and you should buy it right now
Time: 10.95 Hours
Platform: Mac
Honestly I wasn’t completely sold on Sephonie at first. It’s another game from Analgesic Games, and while I’ve loved all their other games, this one was primarily a 3D platformer, which isn’t usually a genre I love. On top of that, I’d only been lukewarm on the demo (which I now mostly attribute to trying to play it on a 2017 Macbook keyboard). Even still, I was excited and I tried to go in and have fun with the unique platforming and the cool tetris-like puzzles.
I’ll be honest, I don’t really want to write about the gameplay. It was good and fun, a bit frustrating at moments and rooted in things that weren’t my speed really, but obviously well designed and robust. The puzzle aspect was cool too, never all that hard once I got the hang of it but nice and slow compared to the reaction-based gameplay of the rest of the game.
Stylistically, the game is wonderful. Melos has outdone himself on the music yet again, and while I’m not sure it’ll hold such a place in my heart as the Anodyne 2 OST does, it’s at least as strong a work. On the visual side of things, the colors are deeper, the environments more natural, and overall it’s just amazing. Most of the game for me was just chilling out to the design while making my way through puzzles and platforms, and honestly that’s exactly what I wanted out of it.
What I wasn’t quite expecting was the narrative and the themes. Maybe it’s just because it does start a bit slow, and the demo purposefully kept some context out of view, but I was expecting this game to be kind of story-light for some reason. I prooobably should’ve thought about Analgesic’s other games and how well they integrate free-flowing gameplay and powerful, thematic writing, because that’s what was here.
Sephonie is a game (as far as I can tell) that seems to branch somewhat off of the themes of immigration explored in Melos’ game All Our Asias, but also moves into a place where it’s talking about relationships and communication just as much as it’s talking about the lived experiences of three Taiwanese scientists and their varied relationships to the USA.
All of it hits very hard and is written beautifully, but in particular there are some things deep in there about relationship strain and communication that I felt harder than the rest. There’s this theme in there about communication and connection easing the way we show the darker, more destructive parts of ourselves, with hopes that maybe the people we’re connecting with can help us to understand and rid ourselves of what’s deep in there, what we try to keep chained up. Instead, when we connect with people with the idea that they can take our pain and leave us whole, everyone can end up hurt and overwhelmed. Even when everyone wants deeper connection, sometimes that depth comes too soon, or too late, or is just too deep. Others can help us understand ourselves, but they can’t take our burden.
Anyways I love this game and you should buy it right now