The Den by Ben Jackson
The Den is not trying to be subtle about its play with words and symbols. The very last screen shows ‘THE DEN’ and then below that ‘THE END’. Okay, they’re anagrams, thanks for making sure I couldn’t possibly miss it. Also, ‘The Den’ contains the phrase ‘Eden’, the male main character is called ‘Aiden’ (Eden/Aiden, get it?), and the female main character is called ‘Vee’, an anagram of, you guessed it, ‘Eve’. Did I already mention that the God figure is called ‘Father,’ always with a capital letter, and that Adam and Eve, I mean Aiden and Vee, have to eat a literal apple that will give them forbidden knowledge? That’s right before they leave Eden, I mean The Den, in order to become the mother and father of mankind in a world where all humans have died due to a virus that made people infertile.
It’s not subtle! But we don’t always need subtlety. The symbolism does the job, and you’re so busy solving the elegant puzzles that you’re not too involved in critically examining it anyway. What’s more, the game starts out leaving you fairly uncertain where it will go. Early on, I had strong Dogtooth vibes, and I thought that this was about an overprotective father who wanted to shield his kids from reality. Then I increasingly got Josef Fritzl vibes, and I had a suspicion that the medical tests on Vee had to do with an incestuous pregnancy. It was something of a relief to find out that the game is far less dark than that. Even Father isn’t that bad; He’s quite a benevolent figure actually. The overarching story about a virus that makes people infertile doesn’t make that much sense – it’s never explained why this was only realised after eighteen years, since, presumably, infected prospective parents would have run into trouble immediately – and it’s also very strange that the entire Den is set up as a sequence of puzzles (who makes a system where you have to walk to different physical computers for different household maintenance tasks?); but it all works, because none of that is really what we care about.
We care about the characters. About their ultra-compressed phase of growing up and finding independence from their parent. About their ability to work together. And, of course, about the puzzles. And The Den really delivers when it comes to the things we care about. The character development is good. It’s not subtle, it’s definitely more in-your-face young adult novel than psychological novel, but it’s good. The working together stuff is extremely well done; I’m not sure I’ve seen a more elegant implementation in IF. And the puzzles are near-perfect: varied, logical, systematic, intuitive, and at the right level of difficulty to keep the story going. Also, there’s real tension! First about Father, then about Father recharging, and finally about the power-down time limit.
If you’re in need of help, there’s also a good and thematically appropriate diegetic hint system: you just talk to your supposed sibling. I saw one or two reviewers complain that they got hints when they didn’t want to, but I don’t think you need to have these conversations if you’re not looking for hints.
I really enjoyed my time with The Den. The denouement could have been shorter – after all, this is not a game about emerging from Vault 13 and going into the new world, it’s a game about the difficult process of leaving behind your childhood – but that’s a small comment. Playing The Den is fun, and it also has something to say… even if it’s not subtle.