Welcome to the Universe by Colton Olds
You know that genre of video where the artist has drawn a picture and then zooms in on a tiny detail that reveals another intricately drawn picture & so on so forth like a bunch of matryoshka pictures? This game was a bit like that. Floating on the surface of consciousness, dimly aware of the layers of multiple consciousnesses, aware that you are being steered by the hand of something other than yourself, the lack of agency is both alarming and yet freeing. The inevitability and futility of everything has been transformed into a performative tool for amusement, which in and of itself, as the player of such a game, is amusing.
On a tangent, this quote from Balamer was especially intriguing – “We shouldn’t be resistant to labels. Labels allow us to talk about what things are and create building blocks of understanding.” This, when combined with the main conceit of the game, where you have to pick which statements you (or the character you are playing) identify with, reminded me so so strongly of (1) those personality quizzes (a long history spanning from Buzzfeed to more recent Uquizzes) which essentially give you a label to stick on yourself at the end, and (2) the whole YA craze of sorting people into houses or factions? Give the people what they want! Labels!
The further we go into the game, the more it’s like walking into the brain of the universe, like going into the real control room behind the control room and just watching something play out behind the scenes. There is such a strong sense of detachment, of distance. Still, in a relatively humorous way, and at the end of it all, the certainty that life is worth living, that it is worth hanging on for, that meaning is something you have to make for yourself. While your choices shape who you are as a person, that person is ever-shifting, fluid, through a physical shell that can barely contain the multitudes that you are.
As an end note - loved the design, the game’s retro vibes juxtaposed with the papers’ more formal layout.