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I have like five minutes for this..

For some reason, I didn’t see the response from Dcast earlier today.

I get what you’re saying. It was a bit like reading a book on philosophy, religion and mental health that is structured around dialectical quotations. Even if you like the allegories, the references and all that the writing seems to imply, it’s a pretty cold and demanding way of getting a point across.

I’m glad you liked the puzzles, I enjoyed them as well. I was also hoping for one puzzle that would’ve been a real head-scratcher, but as it was, the flow and pace of the game was never interrupted, which counts as well.

The art, for me, was a bit heavy. I see you really liked this aspect of the game. Nice! For me, it was bit of a challenge in and of itself. It was.. evocative? Not generally my cup of tea, but well done, nonetheless.

I’ll get back to the discussion, there are some things worth talking about, still.

Nineveh sent me on a bit of a mental journey today. I ended up with a theory that is not even half-baked, not even cookie-dough, it’s basically water splashed over some far-fetched flour.

I just tried the annotation mode and apparently, it’s very dense on the Norse mythology.

The Cicada gave a shout-out to Lacan (as they do), which made me reconsider the ideas I had right after solving the phone number puzzle. I should’ve guessed the oppressive use of language and symbolism was more than just a stylistic choice..

Within the first five minutes of playing with annotations, the game also confirmed something I had hoped was just a vague association I had while playing. Major spoiler: it’s about cancer. In that light, I think the psychological struggle of the character is less about someone being driven into (and kept in) Limbo by dysfunctional modes based on structural experiences, but rather a sudden crisis, based in abjection.

I think one of the birds made some weird allusions to monogamy and then there’s Teretoma..  Still not sure what to make of that. I have a theory but it’s heavy, disheartening and crude. I think I’ll give the annotation mode another chance tomorrow, because I do wonder what’s beneath the surface.

Hi Bon!

The Norse mythology got me to consider your warrior-interpretation. It gives the game more direction and the protagonist more agency, though I’m not sure if it works for me in light of the psychological themes. Perhaps as a metaphor for (re)coding/decoding the subconscious, after a sharp disruption, losing a point of reference for the self? (then again, another metaphor..)

I think there’s some humour in the raven, if you like your homonyms.

Regarding bleakness: it’s interesting how people define the term, perhaps it says something about our experiences and outlook on life. To me, perpetual struggle and self-chastising is (generally) more bleak than resignation. The Stranger’s actions seem quite destructive as well. That may fit the warrior theme: accomplishing goals requires obstacles and/or some kind of adversary to be eradicated.

Maybe the game is trying to tell us: your desire to fight only brings more destruction. It won’t help to overcome grief. In the end, resignation, even if it means to accept being/feeling hurt, is the only way to move on. Rejecting acceptance and turning it into a force for destruction will only continue a cycle of pain.

Luhr28 - 09 June 2021 03:19 AM

DCast - 09 June 2021 01:15 AM

Secondly, and it ties a lot with the first reason, what made the story not work for me to even larger degree is the writing. To me, it was just… tiresome? Intelligent, deep, thought-provoking, but just SO tiresome. Everyone and everything spoke in quotes and aphorisms. Everything is a symbol for something else, everything is a metaphor for another metaphor for some kind of allegory. Aside clown head with his silly/cruel jokes (and even he, obviously, had double meaning to his words) there is so much flowery prose, pontification, grand statements and quotes, quotes, quotes… that whatever little connection I had to the Stranger was almost wiped out by all that volume of dogmatic/artistic writing. Maybe, this wasn’t for me, maybe I was just missing something, but even if I dug really deep inside myself - I couldn’t find anything even remotely close to what I have read: in my thoughts, my own words or stories related to me by others who experienced trauma/tragedy. It’s like I read a poetry book about depression. I can say that it was beautifully-written and marvel at the language used, but nothing much besides that, because it left me cold, and I couldn’t find connection inside, even if I went through similar things.

Sophomoric, in other words? It was clear to me there was a lot of talent behind Primordia, but yeah, that’s not the kind of feedback you want to be getting for your second game. Ouch.

Regarding the symbolism, I think this game might fall into the trap that Primordia, for all of its use of biblical and esoteric references, deftly avoided. That is, it is so easy to attach an esoteric or mystical reference to something and artificially attach the weight of ages to it.
I’m tempted to say that it’s a cheap way to add the illusion of depth to any piece of art, and well, ya know what, I will say it: It is. However, I don’t think that Strangeland is too guilty of this—many of the references and symbols used are appropriate for their in game corollaries, and broadened the narrative without adding exposition (this is a great way to use symbolism and allegory). Perhaps at a certain point the writers just got carried away. Sometimes it happens…you realize that 20% of a piece you are writing has a particular characteristic and think ‘hey, that’s pretty cool, what if we did *everything* like that.’
And you know what? For some, that might actually work. Some people enjoy researching and cogitating over every last shred of text, plumbing the depths of every sentence or turn of phrase, to milk it for every last drop of possible meaning. However, as a game that also has the explicit wish to carry the player along at a swift pace so that he experiences the narrative in a relatively smooth and unbroken way, asking us to stop and consider every arcane sentence is counter productive. But there is an annotated version of the game, so maybe that’s the reason for that.
Personally, there were a lot of references that I intuitively understood (or at least, they meant something to me) and enjoyed ‘getting’ them. Others I chose to ignore, and don’t really feel that my experience was diminished by doing so.

Okay, so I finished this game a couple of days ago, and there’s a lot to unpack here. I’ll do my best to express my thoughts without turning this into a bazillion word essay.

Let’s talk about the mechanics first.

For the first 1/4 or so of the game, I really enjoyed the puzzles. I thought they struck a nice balance, making me feel useful and clever as a player, but not being so difficult as to frustrate my desire to see what happened next in the story. The story beats that I got as a reward overcoming an obstacle were that much more rewarding because the obstacle I needed to overcome presented a satisfying challenge. Unfortunately, I think that the puzzle quality diminishes as the game goes on. For a game that specifically asks the player not to brute force the puzzles, a startling many of them actually require some version of brute force, or are just as easily forced as solved. Often times I did not want to exhaust every dialogue option, as I tried to choose the correct ones that would let me progress without upsetting the characters I was talking to. I quickly learned, however, that in almost all instances (all but the man-headed dog toward the end), you have to say everything to everyone.
In an interview with one of the devs, he states that the starfish puzzle is his favorite. I don’t even see how that’s a puzzle. You have to randomly choose answers to his prompts until you find the ones that upset him. Then you talk to him again and choose those four(?) answers in a row.
The ‘logic’ puzzles are mostly rehashes of old ideas, made so easy that there’s no reason to use logic to solve them. And because of the abstract and unreliable nature of the world you are in, leaps of logic (ie. Brute forcing) are encouraged in several of the inventory puzzles. There’s nothing heinous in the design, but after the strong puzzle design at the start of the game, I was to varying degrees let down by the remainder.

Graphically, this is a technically impressive retro-style game. The world of Strangeland was exciting to discover. Getting into the tent and meeting the mouth monster for the first time was scary, going down the well and freeing the cicada was exciting—would the creature that emerged be friendly for foe-y?—, and getting on the roller coaster felt, well, like getting on a roller coaster…but for different reasons than one normally feels in a theme park. The problem is that there is no real discovery in the second half of the game. You go from Strangeland to Deadland, and not only do you traverse the same areas all over again, you essentially do the same puzzles all over again too. As someone who plays adventure games to feel like he is on an adventure, this retreading really took some of the wind out of my sails and some of the excitement out of the great graphics.

Basically, I felt that Strangeland’s gameplay was indeed a rollercoaster, full of ups and downs, peaks and valleys, highs and lows, and a few really great loop-de-loops.

This segues decently into my thoughts on the game as a holistic work of art. Hooboy.

Okay, where to begin. The retreading. I don’t know if I’ve ever played a game where the mode of expression is as appropriate to what’s being expressed as it is in Strangeland. The game is about depression, anxiety, doubt, and struggle. It might make for some frustrating gameplay, but I *love* the way that this inner journey is communicated, through a series of restarts and glitches. The ‘lesson’, if I can call it that, where the main character continues to ‘die’ and end up back at square one, but always carries with him the things that he has acquired and the knowledge that he has learned, is wonderful. It might seem like all efforts are futile, but they’re not—what appear to be the most devastating, painful, and irrecoverable defeats are actually crucial stepping stones on the path forward.

Regarding the MC’s doubt and his relationship with the woman. This is complicated, to me, and I really like it.
In the beginning and middle of the game, I thought: The MC was in a relationship with a woman who had self-destructive or, to be more general and open to more universally relatable interpretation, dark or unhealthy tendencies. He loved her and tried to be there for her, but in the end he couldn’t save her. Maybe he tried his best until the very end and it still wasn’t enough, or maybe he realized that saving her was beyond his ability, or maybe he realized that it was beyond his ability to save her without putting himself at significant risk in the process…so for whatever reason, he didn’t save her (I’m not necessarily laying blame on him). However, and this leads me to the belief that he is actually a decent fellow, he feels deep regret that he couldn’t/didn’t save her, and is plagued by the retrospective doubt that perhaps he could have, if only X, and Y, and Z. This is a heck of a lot to live with.
The ending seems to reveal that the woman did not kill herself or anything like that—she seems to have died of illness. The MC is devastated by her loss, racked with doubt that maybe he could have done something to save her, and can’t live with the doubt or without her. He is living in *her* deadland, as he imagines it in his own head.
It’s true that everything we experience in the game, even the woman, is his imagination. The triumph is that by the time we have reached the end of the journey, he is flying on wings of light (and not the dark wings we used at first) and resting his head in the lap of his golden haired love, who also emanates a light. These and the cicada are the only two instances of benevolent light that I can recall in the entire game. It’s lovely.

But…(continued in my next post)

Continued from my last post…

But…while the journey and its themes, when considered from afar, have universal resonance, they become more and more individual the closer you get. Strangeland is without a doubt an autobiographical game. When we begin the adventure, the framework is very loose and the mystery is deep and shrouded. At this point, it is easy to mentally reconcile the experiences of the MC with some of our own, especially since there is so much open-to-interpretation symbolism. As the plot becomes more acute, it becomes more and more personal, and therefore less relatable. It reminds me of certain pieces of music, which are so intimate and soul baring that they are admirable for their nakedness and effectively devastating expression, but which also become uncomfortable, because it becomes increasingly clear that this is not a party I have any business being at. The singer might have needed to create this song in order to find understanding or catharsis, but what purpose is served by making it public?
Even if the song *is* somewhat relatable…what is the motivation for sharing this unremittingly bleak darkness?
Well, in the case of Strangeland, there is the happy ending, but I can’t help but feel that many people who can relate to the themes expressed here might not *want* to relate to them, might not feel that it is healthy to assume the role of the MC and relate to his state of mind, just so that the game can be fully appreciated.
When I think about it from this perspective, maybe Strangeland works better as a work of art than as a game? If so, then it is darn near a masterpiece in the exploration of what it is like to live with crippling anxiety. To wit (pun intended), the way the darkness of doubt manifests in an ever questioning, ever undermining, sneering voice in the MC’s head is incredible, and one of the most amazing pieces of characterization I’ve seen in an adventure game (or work of art) this side of Laverne in Day of the Tentacle.

Okay…I’m a little exhausted at the moment, but might continue this later.

Basically, Strangeland is a fair-to-good game in some ways and a masterpiece of introspective narrative in others. Could it be such a masterpiece without also being a game? No. But the game definitely gets the raw end of the deal here. I don’t think I’ll ever recommend Strangeland to anyone, but I’m glad I played it and I’m glad it exists, because there is definitely potential for a more perfect coalescing of game and theme, and that would be transcendentally amazing. And since Strangeland is made by the same folks who made Primordia, I get the feeling they are capable of it.

Also, I never grew tired of the word play and aphorisms. I loved it when you looked into the object marked ‘abyss’ and say ‘I don’t think it’s looking back.’
And when you give Gershom an eye and say ‘You might want to see this.’ And he says ‘Do I?’ (Eye, haha), ‘We shall see.’ It’s not exactly humor, but it’s a form of levity, and maybe the only levity that can be utilized effectively in such a bleak world without causing extreme dissonance.

Toodles for now!

Awesome.

I’ll write a couple of final thoughts tomorrow.

Vegetable Party - 10 June 2021 06:09 PM

Awesome.

I’ll write a couple of final thoughts tomorrow.

Glad you enjoyed. I’ve got a few minutes to spend between work and dinner, so I’m going to shed some light on one of the major characters in the game, the fella ‘neath the tree who is responsible for so many of the quotes, symbols, allegories—and clues! in the game. His name is Gershom. This is an allusion to the Talmudic elucidary Rabbeinu Gershom (the Hebrew translation of ‘rabbeinu’ is ‘our teacher’ and it is used as a high honorific that is rarely used. It is usually reserved for Moses, who is often referred to in Jewish texts and colloquially as Moshe Rabbeinu). Rabbeinu Gershom was also known as Rabbeinu Gershom Me’Or Hagolah. Me’Or Hagolah means ‘the light of exile.’ This man is so revered in the Jewish heritage that his writings are considered almost the equivalent of the Torah as it was handed down by Moses at Sinai—which was directly told to him (Moses) by God on top of the mountain. That’s pretty heady stuff.
Anyway, the key words here, of course, are ‘the light of our exile’, and the fact that the historical Gershom and the Strangeland Gershom are both known for their writing. The protagonist of Strangeland is exiled from external reality, light, and life. Gershom, beneath the tree, writes the work orders and gives him the information which is necessary to help him find his way. It’s good stuff and makes perfect sense…although it leans heavily into a history/mythology/area that many people will be completely unfamiliar with.
There is a mixed symbol here that I’m curious about. Once we cross over into the Deadland,  there is a snake dripping venom, drip drip drip, onto Gershom’s head. This *has to be* an sinister allusion to the story of Rabbi Akiva, where Akiva demonstrates the positive power of persistence by showing his wife that even large stone can be impressed upon by something so seemingly powerless as a drop of water, if the water persists and drippity drops onto the stone for a long enough time.
I don’t remember the dialogue between the MC and Gershom regarding the dripping venom well enough to explain it any deeper, but there’s something there. Especially since, in another poignant Gershom conversation, he says something along the lines of ‘do something enough times and it loses its meaning. Write something enough times and the words lose their meaning.’ It makes sense that, this being Strangeland/Deadland, the dual-incarnation of the rabbis Akiva and Gershom would take the positive lessons of their true-life counterparts and twist them into something significantly more nihilistic.

One part of the game that I have a hard time wrapping my head around, maybe someone could offer their interpretation and help me out: I tried to be kind to the denizens of Strangeland, and didn’t like that the game design required me to harm or kill most of them. Was I being too naive? Were all of these characters just malignant structures that had to be destroyed in order for our hero to achieve the benevolent epiphanies that he finds in the final stretch of the game? My initial interpretation was that, by out and out killing these constructs, he is killing pieces of his mind rather than reconciling with them. But you know, not everything that lives in our minds deserves to; sometimes we do have to sever ourselves from some pernicious mental entities that infect our consciousness. We don’t necessarily have to pack rat away every piece of mental baggage we ever owned. Mental amputation is not always mental suicide.

Okay, a couple of more thoughts before I go.

I didn’t like the way the final dialogue played out, between the MC and the woman. For all its heaviness, the game managed to avoid philosophical exposition up until that point. Then, at the end, we lay there in her lap, like on a therapist’s couch, while drops these enlightened life hacks on us. ‘Don’t look it in the face. Look it in the eyes.’ That’s good stuff, but couched in a monologue of similar gems, it comes across as the climax of a self-help seminar, not as the climax of an adventure game.

Also…The cicada said something that I loved, about living underground for 17 years and coming up to see the light for such a brief time. I forgot what the line was exactly, but I really enjoyed it, especially since, where I live, *THIS IS THAT TIME* when the cicadas are coming out! There are hundreds of thousands of them living in my area, and when I ride my bike up the mountains their individual chirping noises combine into one endless drone of a chirp. You can’t imagine it if you haven’t heard it. It sounds like an alien spaceship landing. Anyway, if anyone has that line from our cicada friend, please remind me what it was.