I often love games that require you to do a bit of creative thinking or interpreting information to get the most out of a story as I feel those often lead into becoming some of the most captivating and thought-provoking stories around. However there are times where this can be taken… a bit far.
I found this out whilst playing through Broken Reality, an interesting game I picked up in the Steam Spring Sale. It’s essentially a collectathon game set in a vaporwave/early internet era world that styles itself as an elaborate 3D chatroom. It’s certainly a visual spectacle and I really enjoyed just walking around, enjoying the music and marvelling at just how Windows 95 Text boxes could be used for so many different textures. However at a point the game started trying to tell an overarching story which I wasn’t really expecting but I was intrigued enough to keep going and find out more about. This however lasted until the last third of the game at which point the events became so vague, convoluted and up to interpretation that it completely lost me.
Now don’t get me wrong, I like complex stories. Hell I even like stories that you need to do a bit of research into to figure out. However the insane tone jump and off the wall story points the game suddenly goes into feels like I’m being thrown into a gaming creepypasta rather than a cohesive narrative and as such I left the game feeling like I didn’t enjoy it as much as I wanted to. I think games have to strike the right balance of mystery and standard storytelling to really captivate an audience and in this instance, I guess you could say I was un-captivated.
How do you all feel about this form of storytelling? Do you like it when games leave a lot to your interpretation or would you rather a more streamlined and focused story? Let us know! That’s all for now, and as always. It’s not just a game, It’s a Life.