This review contains spoilers
It's hard to review this experience without having played the ARG as it actually happened, so I'll put this simply into two parts- the main, surface-level experience, and everything else I had to look up to complete.
The main experience is incredibly efficient horror. In only 20 minutes you can have a very satisfying playthrough that effectively utilizes some very simply tricks to lay out atmosphere, story, and scares. Even though each server run is identical, I found myself consistently chilled by the ghost in the machine, wondering if my mind was playing tricks on me every time I thought I saw something blip out of the corner of my eye. The icing on the cake is the seemingly permanent ending- you are warned about the consequences of your actions, and they play out. This and games like Doki Doki Literature Club can serve as reminders of the narrative potential latent in the idea of digital file storage itself.
As for what came next, I can't help but be a bit disappointed. As I said before, I didn't experience the ARG in 2019. The entire thing completely flew under my radar. It wouldn't be fair for me to hold it against the rest of the game, so I won't be harsh on the fact that I fiddled around in the servers and rebooted enough times that the game loop became a repetitive slog. All I can do is critique the direction the story goes and imagine how I might have felt if I discovered it through the community, and I have to say that it feels a little lackluster. I think the buried ending falls short, judged as a counterpart to the surface level experience. The sci-fi finale as presented felt a little antithetical to everything I loved about my initial experience.
All that being said, I think this game was lovely, haunting, and well envisioned and executed, and I hope I can find more short experiences like it. Open to suggestions!
The main experience is incredibly efficient horror. In only 20 minutes you can have a very satisfying playthrough that effectively utilizes some very simply tricks to lay out atmosphere, story, and scares. Even though each server run is identical, I found myself consistently chilled by the ghost in the machine, wondering if my mind was playing tricks on me every time I thought I saw something blip out of the corner of my eye. The icing on the cake is the seemingly permanent ending- you are warned about the consequences of your actions, and they play out. This and games like Doki Doki Literature Club can serve as reminders of the narrative potential latent in the idea of digital file storage itself.
As for what came next, I can't help but be a bit disappointed. As I said before, I didn't experience the ARG in 2019. The entire thing completely flew under my radar. It wouldn't be fair for me to hold it against the rest of the game, so I won't be harsh on the fact that I fiddled around in the servers and rebooted enough times that the game loop became a repetitive slog. All I can do is critique the direction the story goes and imagine how I might have felt if I discovered it through the community, and I have to say that it feels a little lackluster. I think the buried ending falls short, judged as a counterpart to the surface level experience. The sci-fi finale as presented felt a little antithetical to everything I loved about my initial experience.
All that being said, I think this game was lovely, haunting, and well envisioned and executed, and I hope I can find more short experiences like it. Open to suggestions!