Welcome to the Universe

This is a Twine game that alternates between academic treatises in one set of styling and a life-simulator in binary choices in another set of styling. You progress through an entire life while simultaneously reading about the (fictional) author's thought processes and research.

I thought the life simulator part was pretty fun. It has a certain unusual perspective on the world that to me captures a lot of the weirdness one feels when transitioning from one age group to another.

The scientific part seems intentionally obfuscated. Some of it seems like a reference to way the 'inner' game is structured (for instance the scientific part talks a lot about duality and the importance of a fixed binary, while the game consists of yes/no choices). I think that one phrase from it describes itself well: a “verisimilar facade of truth, a frightening pastiche that serves only to bolster the supposed intelligence of the person writing it.”

The game has some meta (or is the word extra-diegetic or something fancy like that?) parts like completing a survey about the game, downloading an update, etc., a part that looks unfinished.

Overall, I liked the opportunity to think about my life, and I liked the way that the game poked fun at personality tests and the kind of vapid summaries they give.

So I think I'll rate the game on that impression. Witty, nice-looking, poking fun at obtuse academic language, introspective.

Outside of that, someone mentioned that this is a parody of Alter Ego, a very old choice-based game. I had heard it mentioned once or twice and had looked at it in the past, but I revisited it as part of this review. I think that this game definitely suffers from the comparison. This game lambasts the over-emphasis on binaries; Alter Ego has more than just binary options and gives quite a bit of freedom in exploring the game; this game is self-conscious and tries to show the absurdity of life, but Alter Ego does so as well. I've heard it said that the best parodies are by those who have a deep love of the subject material, but I didn't get that feeling here. Now, I don't even really like Alter Ego and this whole reference idea isn't stated by the author, so I'm not including it in my rating, but it would be like parodying a hamburger by putting roast beef in a hot dog bun: just revisiting the same basic concept, making it a little more absurd, but not essentially adding anything or doing anything significantly better. (whereas a burger-lover's parody of a burger could make a really tall burger to make fun of how hard it is to bite into a restaurant burger, or include 20 patties and 25 slices of cheese and sparklers on the top to make fun of supersizing, etc.)

As a final side note I liked how smooth the animations were, (the two I remember are the picture of Conway's game life and the loading bar).