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Terminal 00by Angus Edandrake Nicneven2018 Surreal Custom
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Terminal 00 is a website created by Angus Edandrake Nicneven, and works like a dream diary-esq exploration game, but in your browser. It is laid out in sections called "terminals" and "depths". Explore the terminals as a "probe" and see what you can find!
[Epilepsy/flash warning.]
This game had a cult following at some point, which is how I heard about it. Nowadays the subreddit is pretty dead. I blame this on the game, which is really a website with hundreds of pages to explore, being difficult to parse and therefore inaccessible to newcomers.
The website has an odd and intentionally cryptic storyline, where you are a Probe exploring Terminal 00, part of a network of Terminals whose goal is to "Open the Gate". This goal is stymied by attacks from something called the CoS. If that doesn't make much sense to you, it doesn't make much sense to me, either. There are several pages that explain the lore farther, most of which can be accessed from the Assistance page, but don't expect clarity.
I think surreal and cryptic storylines definitely can work under certain circumstances, but the writing here just isn't very good, and there's too much nonsense being thrown around for me to really understand any part of it. Combine this with the fact that some webpages are locked behind cryptographic puzzles and I really don't know what's going on. Not only that, but I'm not motivated to find out what's going on. I'd explore a bit, dig deeper if it interests you, and leave if it doesn't.
Why three stars despite this? Because the website looks mind-bogglingly cool. Awesome glitchy aesthetic and a lot of unique visuals. Also music. Downside is that the music and visuals take a while to load, but they're worth looking at for a few minutes.
I voted playtime to be half an hour, but it depends on how much time you're willing to spend on this. I can see someone using hours of their life to decode the messages. I can also see someone looking around, getting bored, and leaving within a few minutes. It depends. I personally can't imagine spending too much time here, though.
STIRworld
'Terminal 00' of Angus Nicneven explores participatory new media practice
Terminal 00 was created by Angus Edandrake Nicneven, an American writer and the author of Stars Bleed, a dark fantasy book published in 2018. It is an interactive art project that treats the website as a point for artistic intervention, allowing visitors, or ‘travellers’ to explore its many cryptic webpages. These webpages are also known as terminals, and it is the threat of consumption they face from a nondescript malignance called CoS that forms the base of the website’s narrative.
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