now playing: "The Road"

The Road
Genre(s): Art/abstract, weird/unknown
Credit(s): Brendan Stubbs, date unknown (last modified August 2011)

As I briefly mentioned in Wednesday's pixel thought, the process I use to discover new casual games is haphazardly reliable at best. If a game title looks even remotely promising, I mentally stash it away and sometimes even commit to using it (officially by using it as the preview hint in the "next time" teaser) before I've really had a chance to play it. In case you were wondering, I'm patenting it as the "how to get nothing accomplished on Google" search method. So for me, playing The Road was a living lesson in why you always do your research on a game before committing it to a post. Don't get me wrong; I don't regret having selected it. But first, a few disclaimers are in order:

-It's apparently an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 2006 novel of the same name, describing the emotionally-draining journey of a son and father traveling through a post-apocalyptic nation, desolate and devoid of life except where cannibals cluster together. That said, I enjoyed it without knowing a thing about the background story while I was playing it.
-Second of all, its true nature as a "game" is highly debated among the very few people who have played it at all (it's located on a personal directory from Standford U's site, so I wouldn't have found it from any game review sites), and some have even expressed doubts about whether or not it's even interactive. While the play mechanics are admittedly more depressing than even the storyline, I'll leave its status as "interactive" open for interpretation.

With these words on our minds, let's start our journey!

Narrative quote at the top: "Watching the ashen daylight congeal over the land. He knew only that the child was he warrant. He said if he is not the word of God God never spoke." Stats on weather, travel distance, & protagonist health at the bottom.

Placed in an omnipotent third-person role (or less auspiciously, "the reader"), you navigate the actions and choices of two pixel-figure characters, "the man" and "the boy," across an Atari-2600-esque side-scrolling monotone landscape. Apparently they're headed for a distant coastline, although their reasons for doing so, and on foot for that matter, remain an aloof and vague subject throughout. It's a point-and-click "adventure" (oh, if I had a dollar for every time I've seen that cliche) so your actions are limited to controlling the speed of their travel with your cursor location and clicking on various objects to: pick up food, read what I'm guessing are supposed to be profound meditations on the universe, and select textual options.

In this scene I can use a gun or a knife to stop a mysterious stranger. I'm guessing that red thing is supposed to be him. Or maybe it's his heart. Or maybe it's blood. Or maybe it's just a random assortment of pixels.

When you click on the sky, you'll observe one of the more academically-constrained formats of interaction—a Google Maps dynamic panorama, yet static throughout the game.

Initially, the forlorn narrative and the OneRepublic-"Secrets"-esque classical intro on loop fascinated me. Who was "the man" and "the boy"? Why were they alone? Why were they traveling? It was a mystery, a puzzle, a story with an undoubtedly striking twist ending. But by the time I had traveled 99 miles and I was only "getting closer" according to the stats, I realized I was reviewing my third or so existentialist game in a row. (It appears that these themes are particularly suited for the casual outlet.) I realized there would be no satisfactory ending and no definitive gains for the player. It was simply, yet so obviously given the title, a journey for the player. Earned rewards and pains didn't matter in the end. Even when I encountered few significant scenarios (such as the stranger example above), the choices I made there didn't change the narrative.

Ironically enough, interactive-media adaptations of books and movies have a historical tendency to fail not only as games but also as faithful companions to the original work. I wouldn't know enough about the book's details to accurately judge The Road's latter quality, but given the little I do know, as well as its performance as an interactive art piece—I'd venture that this particular game adaptation really works. In all honesty, this is probably the most poorly-designed title yet featured on transcending pixels. And yet, its very nonsensicality, nondescript protagonists, and pixelated abstractions create a coherent theme all its own, one that figuratively embodies "the road," regardless of its literary origins.

Next time: Monday will be Labor Day in the United States, or should we say, Laborless Day. What better way to commemorate a day of relaxation and play than by amusing yourself with the antics of someone who will do all the work for you?