"I am inventing all this and it is about to disappear, but it does not”

"So, what is this work about?" is the first question people ask, if deciding to look at something. In the case of Iaia, well, I think the meaning is surreal and open to interpretation, not in the "the author was lazy and wanted to get something to the jam before the deadline" way (they made it by about a week) but in the "this is genuinely disturbing-in-a-good-way."

What happens is simply that you are walking along the street and reflecting on a very odd life and choices made. Which has been done before, but it pushed the Talking Heads' Once in a Lifetime into my head, and also, it had an epigraph from Leonora Carrington's The Hearing Trumpet, which I hadn't read, but based on what I saw here, I'm interested.

Given that this was for Single Choice Jam, there is a choice at the end, a surprisingly normal one, which makes sense. It's a good one to have after surreal reflection. I will keep it in spoiler tags, so if you want, you can have a quick play-through (there was some tension as to what the choice would be, and I don't want to ruin that,) but even the response is not what you'd expect.

Iaia has no back button, so you have a lot of text to re-scroll through first, but that's more than okay here (I just repeatedly hit tab and enter.) The first time through I wondered if some text was randomly generated, maybe because the author tried this trick before with Phenomena, and it worked well. But the images are deliberately chosen, and they feel well above "throw stuff at the wall."

So what is the choice? (Spoiler - click to show)You buy a drink at the vending machine. I like it a lot, because I think back to when I bought stuff at a vending machine, and I knew it was overpriced, but it looked very good. I was reminded of the vending machine in the high school social lounge, how I wanted to order one of each, and it would've been easy to do so if I planned things out, but I never did. The magic of vending machines died early for me, which is good for my pocketbook, I suppose, but I missed that. I was surprisingly disappointed on the first play through that (Spoiler - click to show)root beer was sold out, and it turns out it always was, but I still played through to buy root beer. It mattered to me much more than it should have, which on reflection was really, really neat.

Anyway, the next time I (Spoiler - click to show)drink root beer, I'll think of this game. Maybe I will even replay it at the same time. That'll, like, totally show it it can't stop me from doing what I want!

This game has disjointed and poetic imagery of you as a person that exists across multiple worlds and dimensions.

It was written for the Single Choice Jam, so it only has one choice at the end, deliberately in(?)consequential.

The imagery evokes kaleidoscopic existence and hints at a deeper backstory for the 'main' protagonist (if there can be said to be one).

My first thought after playing this game was: “what the frick did I read?” Then: “I wonder what the other soda do…” And finally: “Is this like… someone’s brain spiralling and using the mundane choice of a drink as a way to ground themselves?” I still had to play the game a few times to get to that point… And I sill don’t think I grasped all of the subtleties… I think.

The author mentioned being inspired my multiple works, one of which I actually recognised: Computerfriend. And I could see how: in the stylistic and formatting choices, or the almost nonsensical train of thoughts, and the grounding mechanism… Though I did find this piece easier to digest, as it deals more with a sort of strange meditation than a mental health crisis (or maybe it does actually, just differently?).

Within the rambling of thoughts, the author discusses the path that led you to this moment (and the paths that didn’t or could be? Still confused on that) and what it all means. It questions the futility of wanting to link all choices, events and thoughts, as some sort of random occurrence, and sheds light on the insignificant moments and how it can change the trajectory of a life.

The game is also somewhat meta with the theme of choices. Not only does it give you a choice by the end (a very mundane one), but the topic of choices themselves. How some will matter and some won’t (who gets to decide one is or is not?), how some will be connected to others, or have consequences for others, or run in parallel to others… Choices is sort of a constant in our lives, and whether we realise or not, we constantly make choices… Only in games can you only have one.