Welcome to the Universe

Middle school bodies are like crappy NYC apartments: nothing seems to fit right, the smells never go away, and the general experience makes you wonder how growing up was ever considered a good idea.

Regardless, the young adult body is a universal conundrum that everyone must confront at some point. (Don't get discouraged. Studies from The New York Times tell you these feelings are permanent and leave ever-lasting damage to your psyche.)

This game has two kinds of passages. The first are these extremely dry descriptions of a nonexistent sociologist named Jacob Balamer, and his research, which seems to be about how humans can best exercise empathy and connect to each other. Interspersed with those are a far more interesting "life simulator" game, of the kind I really liked playing in middle school. I'd link to more examples, but can't seem to find any on IFDB. I'm thinking about games where you control a human protagonist from birth to death. It happens in this life simulator, which sees you playing through various vignettes seemingly based on Balamer's real life (you're presumably a white American guy), with a hefty dash of surreal humor thrown in.

Eventually the two threads connect and (Spoiler - click to show)you realize that Balamer made the life simulator, as an attempt to teach other people about his research. It turns out the game's reception is poor and he disowns his entire body of research, deeming it (and himself) a fraud. The actual game ends up a somewhat strange but uplifting note describing the choices you've made throughout the story and what they say about you. Here's a little sliver of your life, and there are the little slivers of Balamer's life that you've gotten through first reading about his body of work, and playing the game that he created. Even if his research was dry, boring, pointless, and didn't say much about humanity (that was the impression I got from the writing), he still wanted to connect with people, and that's been accomplished via the actual game you just played.

The writer definitely has chops. There's only one error in the entire game I could find ("Space, in it's purest form" instead of "Space, in its purest form"). The game is full of great one-liners and zany snippets, like the below line:

You’ve been instructed to write a short essay on the topic “Should kids have homework?” for English class. While you are glad your teacher is interested in hearing about topics actually relevant to your life (unlike last week’s discussion climate change), you’re not quite sure where to start.

You reach down in the deep well of ideas swirling inside your brain. Homework good… but also bad?

There are a lot of humorous asides: a random survey you can take, a funny clown encounter, etc. One passage is "placeholder text for an unfinished story section that will be added in a future update". I'm 90% certain this is a joke that was done on purpose, but I honestly can't be sure.

The funniest thing that happened to me while playing is that at one point a message came up saying something like: "An update has been released. Would you like to install it now?" and I clicked yes. I was given a ridiculously long loading bar and below that, a message saying: "Please do not close the window while installing".

You'll never guess what I did.

It was an accident, okay.

Anyway, I reopened the game, and through the power of expedient clicking managed to get back to where I was without much time wasted. I didn't even change any of my answers! (Well, except the survey answer. I tried to skip the survey. Didn't work.)

Thoughts overall... The game is well-written, but despite that didn't entirely gel with me. There are moments that made me laugh and moments that made me feel contemplative, but I think the ending came on too suddenly and the descriptions of Balamer's work were ultimately too dry and full of meaningless academic babble for me to really connect with them, or Balamer as a character. Not great, considering he's such a large part of the story. I also think the story undercuts itself in parts with the humorous asides--not that I hated them, but maybe I would like more focus on the serious, contemplative parts to give them space to breathe apart from the comedy? Because when the game gets serious, it's good, but the parts that are serious feel too short and insubstantial to have any real weight.

That's just me, though. At any rate, this story has pizzazz, and I can appreciate that.

Quotes:

You look where the sky should be only to see a river. You reach for the current. It's warm.

I’m going to sink. I always knew that, but I thought my boat would hold water. None of you know what it’s like to plant a seed by hand. You fix weights to ships, and you tell them the water's fine.

I’m an arduous process, arboreous labor. My bones are the dirt the ground came from, my trees the gift of broken hands. I want you to find the coastline. But none of you see it, none of you do.

---

It is empty. The world around you is creaks and bones, the hardwood floor a muted fretboard. No one else is around. The universe is quiet, a silent denouement for an inevitable ending. You see it on the skin, the distance. Your time is drawing to a close.