recombinatorial

recombinatorial is a short experience that leads the player character on an involuntary journey through a place of ruin and dislocation. You can select certain words and phrases along the way, or not. The story notes how people who arrive in this place purge their past and replace the old with new, which the interactivity mirrors with its fragmentation and regurgitation of words.

Mostly I got impressions. The urge to go north, more familiar from the popular media I grew up with as some kind of admirable drive to explore, is repurposed into something more like the mindless compulsion of an animal being puppeted by an invading fungus. I also sensed echoes of the siren calling travelers to the shores, with all the wrecked boats and bleached bones.

There is something else at the end of this journey, a meadow beyond the rough sea. Whether it’s real or imagined, I couldn’t tell. The distinction between yourself who must go north and those who stay behind in the narrows is something else I’m still not sure about. There’s a lot to ponder.

But it felt like the impressionism was the point here, and using more words to elucidate the details would be counterproductive. The concept fits well into the 500-word limit of the Neo-Twiny Jam, and the terse writing reads like smooth yet uncomfortable poetry. Reusing snippets at the end is an interesting way to stretch the boundaries, though it ended up being one final question mark for me since I couldn’t tell how or whether the end sequence connected to what I’d clicked earlier.

But the overall piece was intriguing and transportive. It felt quite cohesive as a game poem, even if I didn’t fully understand how everything connected.