The Maze Gallery

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

I love the genesis of this work unreservedly. An anthology of sorts, multiple authors coming together to build a dream-logic museum that needs escaping. The conceit is just dynamite, and by virtue of its broad author pool allows for many different visions of weird art and distorted history. Its many voices are every bit as integral as individual narrative beats in establishing an off-putting environment that constantly surprises and keeps the player off balance.

It also makes for a variety of self-contained room puzzles, from moon logic leaps to more traditional find-carry-use. From the jump, with its inhumanly cheerful and contradictory usher, the mission is clear. Explore and escape a dream-logic environs, more soaking in it than ‘solving’ it. It was always going to hinge on how compelling this weird subconscious space could become.

There is a reason David Lynch is such a singular creator. He seems, perhaps naturally perhaps supernaturally, attuned to a collective well of subconscious imagery that he leverages to tell tales that defy and-then construction, but nevertheless FEEL right every step of the way. In lesser hands, his works would be overwhelmed by incoherence and befuddling choices. (Some charge that Lynch himself does not always escape this.)

Now imagine attempting a Lynchian anthology. The defining challenge would be, who do you pair with him? What cast of creatives can match his singular connection to our ID, yet ALSO have a uniquely compelling voice of their own? You can be forgiven stalling on the problem of who could even play in that field. And what would that finished work look like, how would it hold together?

My impression of MG was that as much as its patchwork instability was served by its multiple authors, inevitably it was going to be uneven: some areas were going to be more effective than others. I don’t think I am interested in doing a full vignette comparison, it’s not clear how much of the perceived differences I could resolve beyond my own head to anything of general interest. I will highlight two I really responded to though: there was a Tiny Art room that presented some inventive miniature imagery and the surreality of the Hungry Room really landed like gangbusters for me. Both of those had a surge, not only of strangeness that was present throughout my explorations, but of danger that were not as present elsewhere. Those were bright hot sparks, no doubt. They recognized, as Lynch often does, that the strange is often implicitly THREATENING. Either because it is untethered from our fleshy concerns and constraints, or because of its repudiation of a reality that has gotten too comfortable. Strangeness, without threat, just has a little less charge for me.

In the end rooms without that charge landed less resoundingly. Couple that with a work that, by design, stitches together visions of reality that are gleefully at odds with each other, and the player is left off balance, renegotiating the game with every new room. The downside to this approach is that the game never establishes a rhythm of its own, it is very much of its disconnected parts. This constant start-and-stop of rules reset pushed back against my engagement - any time I started to get a grip on a room, a gameplay style, it was time to start over with a new one. I just didn’t get into a flow.

I cannot stress enough that this is not a WEAKNESS of the game - this is its core design, the major effect it is aiming for! With that in mind, I openly admire the folks charged with stitching it all together, both in mechanics of coding, in integration of sound design, and delivering a complete package. The subject matter may jar in its divergent visions, but the player’s experience is as smooth as possible, ensuring the creative dissonance is no more or less than its intended. It is a bold, successful experiment, greater than its Sparky parts, but also not escaping its inherent asymmetry and conflicts that keep true engagement from ripening.

Played: 9/27/24
Playtime: 2hr, Part4/4 Hungry Room
Artistic/Technical ratings: Sparks of Joy/Mostly Seamless
Would Play Again?: I honestly don’t know - its contradictions have left me adrift!

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless