Campfire

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

The choice to cycle the modern Dr.s Who… let me just pause to say I will pay 5 American dollars to anyone that can figure out where I’m going with this, relative the game in question.

The choice to cycle the modern Dr.s Who so quickly is kind of wonderful. It gives the titular actors the opportunity for wide and varied careers before and after their potentially typecasting prison. Personally, I stan for Capaldi but all of them are just dynamite in the role. I see the case for Matt Smith as the most interesting post-Dr., but honestly, it’s Tenant. I think we can all agree on that. (Time to lock down your guesses).

Among my favorites of his is the grim detective series Broadchurch. Playing opposite British National Treasure Olivia Coleman, he is a prickly dick of a detective. In a legendary piece of line delivery, at one point he inflicts on his co-star the savage bon mot “What is the point of you, Millah?” My entire household erupted at that. I am subsequently given to understand that maybe this is a common put down and NOT originally his, but in that transcendent line delivery, he claimed it and gifted it to all of us. “What is the point of you, Millah?” (in a butchered version of Tenant’s accent) has become a common jab in my home, dripping with overriding affection and shared joy not present in the original.

I give you this labored background so you have the full context of my meaning when I say, “What is the point of you, Campfah?” (So, who do I owe money to? No one? No one.)

This is, in its most basic construction, a camping simulator. After a prelude of draining workplace drama you shop, pack, travel, make camp, dither in the out of doors, then come home. There is no plot per se, no dramatic arc, no NPCs of note, just raw camping logistics. My affection for the chutzpah of this conceit may not soar to the heights of Tenant’s tour de force, but it echoes it. Like camping itself, the work presents no artificial dramatic constructs, it simply IS. What you get out of it is what you yourself derive from the environment and mechanics.

So, do you like camping? I do. And here is where I think Campfire falls short of its modest goals. The mechanics of camping are as routine as daily life. Prepare, cook, clean, maintain. The novelty of its rituals are what distinguish it from your daily life. By reducing camping to its mechanics, and not somehow capturing the novelty aspect, a piece of the experience is lost. I’m not here to suggest I know how to do that, only that it was missing.

A deeper disconnect is that, logistics aside, the true charge of out doors experience is reveling in the immersion in nature, from a perspective of being denied it for 95% of our work life. At its best, it can transform mundane routine with fresh vibes and bring joy where at home would be rote. I think the piece’s impulse to contrast the experience with the numbing one of daily work was the right idea. I think it made a misstep in execution though.

With few exceptions, even the most mundane repeated experiences are never EXACTLY the same in real life. Sometimes you struggle with toilet paper, sometimes you are mad at your family while washing your hands, sometimes your dog darts in front of the lawn mower and pulls you up short. IF authors can’t possibly capture this microvariation, and commands like ‘cook food’ inevitably get a single response of text, repeated verbatim every time the command is executed. In most cases, this is a reasonable compromise.

Here though, that compromise really undermines what is going on. When, say fishing, to see repeated text on its mechanics, then one of two stock responses based on success or failure, the experience becomes just as rote as hammering out a weekly project report. Without cues that these experiences are somehow transformed by the novelty of out of doors, they are reduced to the same numbing effect as the prologue’s workday. IF limitations make the joy of camping as joyless and repetitious as work. (To those who claim, “but my work is not joyless, it is my defining bliss!” my response is “screw you guys. You’re doing it wrong.”)

Now, maybe this joylessness is the subversive theme of the piece? Maybe the message is ‘camping is no escape, all life is drudgery.’ Yeah, I don’t buy that. This runs counter to my life experience in general, and camping in specifics. If this is the point of the piece, change my answer to “Thanks, but no.”

I don’t think it is though. I think it legitimately is what it presents as, a minimalist experiment with drama-free simulation. If so, I would recommend putting in work to provide a LOT more varied responses to each action. You’re choice-select, not parser, it’s doable. Try to capture the transformational effect of breaking with work-life and the wonder of nature. It is a fine line, I get it. You need to present scenes and images and not attribute emotions to the player. Let them do that. But it is doable. Then I think the work might realize its goals a lot better. Or at least THIS goal. Certainly, it might elevate it from the mechanical exercise it is currently.

Unrelated, it feels disrespectful not to observe that Jodi Whitaker (another Dr.) also murdered her role in Broadchurch. What a cast.

Played: 9/14/24
Playtime: 15m, complete
Artistic/Technical ratings: Mechanical/Seamless
Would Play Again?: No, experience feels complete

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