Iyashikei - The Fountain

In his writings on so-called “entheogens” – hallucinogenic drugs used for religious purposes – scholar Huston Smith proposed a three-part model for analyzing the experience of those using them: set, setting, and drug. “Set” is more or less shorthand for mindset, the expectations and beliefs a particular person brings with them, which obviously enough shape how things play out, while the specific characteristics of the precise hallucinogen on offer similarly has a clear impact on what the experience will be. “Setting” here signifies the ephemeral details of the particular context in which the drug is taken: is it night or morning? What nearby objects might attract the user’s attention? Who is the friend or friends there to keep an eye on things? For whatever reason, this last element always struck me as the most elusive – while the first and last factor are reducible to psychology and chemistry, the middle one partakes of alchemy: the same exact person could try the same exact drug, but have a radically different experience from one time to the next based on something as small as the color of the drapes.

I’m not necessarily saying that playing IF is like taking psychedelics, but the model comes to mind because I suspect my response to The Fountain would have been entirely different had its cover art been different. The blurb, which is surely a central part of the setting, nicely conveys what the game offers: a low-key fantastical environment through which the player can wander while soaking up the peaceful atmosphere. But the art conveys how that’s going to be done, presenting an aesthetic that’s Thomas Kinkade by way of Midjourney – for the former, see the garish, over-saturated colors, for the latter, see the dinghy that’s tied up to the underwater part of a piling or the chaotic pattern of ripples on the lake. Without that visual prompt, I suspect I would have enjoyed this well-meaning game a lot more; with it, though, I found myself getting undeservingly irritated by its sometimes-schmaltzy prose and thin implementation.

The writing issue is the biggest one because the game is more or less a walking simulator: over the ten minute or so run-time, by far the thing you spend the most time doing is looking at scenery. There are a few actions required of the player – you need to cross a lake on a boat, there’s some limited interactivity allowing you to bottle some water from the eponymous fountain, and at one point progression is blocked until you realize one location has an unmentioned exit, though I wasn’t sure whether this was a puzzle or an oversight. And beyond looking around, you can better appreciate the atmosphere via LISTEN, BREATHE, and MEDITATE. But there’s not much to the gameplay, and as far as I can tell the responses to these latter verbs are identical no matter where you go.

So looking at stuff is where the game is at, which is fine by me: I’ve played plenty of similarly-structured games, and it’s an approach well suited to the parser format. But this is a structure that lives or dies by the quality of the writing; absent deep lore or a characterized protagonist with a backstory to peel back, the only reward the game has to offer is descriptive prose, and sadly I found it just wasn’t up to snuff. Here’s X ME, for example:

"You see yourself as a tranquil traveler, immersed in the serene beauty around you. Your presence here feels harmonious, a perfect blend with nature’s calm and gentle rhythm."

Here’s X SKY:

"The sky stretches wide, a vast canvas of soft azure blue. Wisps of white clouds drift lazily, their edges kissed by the golden sun. Birds soar gracefully, their calls echoing in the serene expanse. The air is fresh and crisp, carrying the faint scent of pine and wildflowers. Sunlight bathes the world in a warm glow, casting a gentle radiance that touches everything below. As you gaze upward, the endless sky fills you with a sense of peace and boundless possibility, inviting you to lose yourself in its tranquil beauty."

And one final excerpt, from when you make landfall on the island:

"You arrive at the island shore, it welcomes you with a blend of soft, golden sand and cool, green grass. Tall, shady trees line the edge, their leaves whispering in the gentle breeze. The water, clear and inviting, laps softly against the shore, creating a soothing rhythm. Sunlight filters through the branches, casting dappled patterns on the ground. Colorful wildflowers dot the landscape, their delicate fragrance mingling with the fresh scent of the lake. The shore invites quiet reflection, its beauty a tranquil retreat. Here, surrounded by nature’s serenity, you feel a deep sense of peace and connection to the world around you."

I can see what each of these excerpts is trying to do, but unfortunately I don’t think any of them work. Adjectivitis is the first problem, with the overuse of descriptive words undercutting the power of the prose and reducing the power of any individual image. It doesn’t help that the palette here is an extraordinarily limited one, too – “serene”, “tranquil”, “peace”, “harmony” are words that recur again and again, flattened by repetition, and even particular details, like sun dappling across a surface, are overused. The descriptions also commit the cardinal sin of commandeering the player to tell you exactly what you feel and think, which is risky enough with a characterized protagonist; with a main character who’s an empty vessel, this feels like a lack of respect for the player combined with a lack of confidence that the prose is accomplishing what it should. Taken together, these flaws make the writing aggressively kitschy, which doesn’t convey the restful vibe the game’s going for – and its wordy blandness kept me wondering whether the prose was also a product of an LLM tool.

Some implementation stumbles also took me out of the world. Beyond the unmarked exit, I ran into some trouble with the bottle (once I dropped it, trying to pick it back up triggered two messages saying I didn’t want to get it again), and in the second half of the game, I noticed a fair number of mentioned scenery items that weren’t actually implemented. It’s nothing too awful, but in a small game that’s aiming to create a meditative mood, the impact of snarls like these is magnified.

I’m aware I’m probably being too hard on an inoffensive game, and it’s important to acknowledge that this puzzleless, plotless structure is a high-wire act that makes small flaws more visible. And god knows we could all use more peace and a place of refuge these days. So if the cover art hadn’t pushed me to be on alert for the prose getting purple or robot-y, possibly I would have judged The Fountain to be anodyne enough – and I suppose there’s someone out there who might have had the opposite reaction (Thomas Kinkade sold a lot of paintings). Using the IF medium to present short, meditative experiences seems like a promising approach to me, so I’d definitely be up for more efforts in this vein in the future – I just hope I like the drapes better next time.