The Endling Archive

This game sent me to Wikipedia multiple times, researching topics as seemingly disparate as Lífþrasir, Nichiren Buddhism, the Voynich manuscript and Benjamin the last Tasmanian Tiger. This may have easily doubled the time it took me to play the Endling Archive -- which is very short -- but it also shows that the fictional author of that piece of software achieved their goal: making me want to know more about the topics he talked about.

At first, the Endling Archive seems to be a database about the last surviving members of otherwise extinct species. It quickly branches out into other areas, often with the same note of loss and loneliness, though some of the entries are here to explain a science fiction scenario to us. I love the underlying idea, and for a while I thought I would love the piece too. But in the end it is too ephemeral while at the same time trying to tap into something that is not ephemeral at all; its invocations of thousands of years of history (Jesus, Buddha) falling flat compared to the more thematically appropriate invocations of Benjamin and Earhart; and its SF story too trivial and unoriginal.

I still recommend playing it! It's short and there are the elements of something fantastic here.

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