Welcome to the Universe

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

I do love me a multi-leveled work. A work that plays on multiple levels creates opportunity for all kind of cross-level linkages and inferences, and opportunity to examine things from multiple points of view and scope. I think I counted 4 different levels this piece operates at, which is just crazy ambitious. I’m going to need to number them for clarity.

There are two levels that are cued by graphical formatting. The first (L1) is kind of an academic summary of an… academic. It presents as a publication overview of a (presumably fictional) Dr. Balamer, a psychologist or philosopher who fascinates himself and his work with commonalities of human existence, up to the point of collective unconscious. Our game experience is periodically interrupted to present some more of this fictional background and context, building to a point where this thread (inevitably) twines with…

The OTHER graphically cued level. (L2) is a pixelated font videogame, cuing a 90’s(?) provenance that ALSO fascinates itself with life’s common experiences. The game is a series of scenarios the player is invited to briefly explore before rendering a verdict about themselves based on this exploration. The scenarios themselves are pretty quickly revealed to be (Spoiler - click to show)isolated snapshots of a life, leapfrogging in stages from birth to death.

There is a third level (L3), actually revealed even before the second level, of meta- playfulness. The opening sequence, where an erudite discussion of Moslow’s heirarchy of needs recasts LIFE CHANGING VIDEO GAMES as a core human need is hilarious in context and a breath-takingly hubristic way to introduce the game’s title screen. Thing is, this meta-playfulness stands outside both the other levels, not really of a piece with them, but slyly undercutting or tweaking them both. Honestly, this is kind of the best level of the game. It is this periodic cold dose of humor that keeps you on your toes, challenging whatever connection you are forging with the material as well as challenging the first two levels' hubristic ambitions.

The last level (L4) is the player themself. I mean to distinguish this from much of IF where this level is fully subsumed in L2. Here, you are playing a player of videogame (L4)… by playing a videogame (L2)! The game itself is kind of a character in this thing, and as player, your journey with it is very much part of the narrative. I don’t know if I’m saying this clearly. What I mean is the gameplay is a narrative distinct and separate from the game itself. The game exists both as ITSELF, an artifact in the fictional world, AND as the player’s main entry into that world. You are not a space hero, an angsty teen WITHASECRET, or a grizzled detective solving a mystery. You are a game player playing the real game in front of you that IS ALSO IN THE FICTION. I’ve thrown a lot of words at this, I hope it’s clear enough. If it’s not, just play it, I guess? The chutzpah of all this is just so delightfully joyous and sparkly.

So here you are making fiction by playing a fictional game that also happens to be real. You are choosing dimensions of human experience across a series of vignettes that aim to coalesce around the fictional Dr. Balamer’s observations of human commonality. And this is where I just couldn’t make that final jump from fireworks-display level sparking to true engagement. There is sometimes notable flair in the scenarios (a subversive favorite is opening with ‘you are behind bars’ to be revealed as (Spoiler - click to show)the crib of a baby. Just as often though, there is not. In a quest to describe common human weighpoints, the work falls a bit too much on generic scenarios that don’t feel specific enough to be real, but whose choices ALSO don’t feel justified due to that ephemerality. At one point you are meant to weigh in on having children after a single shopping incident. Not only was the incident itself a bit too pale to generate any real heat, the choice being asked was laughably grandiose! This was the most egregious example of this narrative/choice mismatch but it felt present in some capacity most of the time. This is the L4 experience, possibly the most unique aspect of this crazy Sunday stew.

So what I found as the game progressed was that I loved everything about it EXCEPT THE PLAYING OF IT, meaning navigating the scenarios themselves. There was a midpoint survey that hilariously broke things up. Periodic meta clashes like one leading text: “This is placeholder text for an unfinished story section that will be added in a future update. Please make a selection on the next screen, imagining the scenario that lead to these options:” This feels deliberate tweaking of the overall experience, not a coding oversight. The contrast between the extremely tight-laced academic analyses and background (L1), the much looser gameplay (L4), then the meta piss-taking (L3) always brought sparks of fun.

That core game though (L2), what was built up throughout the piece to be some sort of insightful distillation of human existence, was kind of revealed to be (Spoiler - click to show)a regurgitation of choices made throughout the length. Just that. And choices that had a lot more weight put on them than justified by the scenarios in the moment. There is a read on this mismatch that I like, that this is one final coup d’gras from L3 - that all the academic gushing and egghead philosophizing was ultimately so underwhelming and inadequate to its own goals. That is also a super sparky interpretation for me. It is not CLEAR that is intentional on the piece’s part, but the possibility that it might be is super, super fun to think about.

So yeah, a constant shower of sparks from its levels scraping against each other in thrilling ways, with a core gameplay conceit that deliberately or accidentally refused to become engaging. That’s where I finish. And a bonus point for smashing all these levels together so gleefully.

Played: 10/4/24
Playtime: 35m
Artistic/Technical ratings: Sparks of joy/Seamless bonus point for multi-level madness
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