Genshin Impact - The 103% Review

There is a free to play videogame called Genshin Impact.

This is the logo for the videogame Genshin Impact.

This is the 103% Review of the videogame Genshin Impact.

(Get the game here)

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REVIEWING LIVE SERVICE GAMES

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A moment of sympathy for those who review video games on a deadline. A standard $60 boxed game with no DLC can easily require 40 hours of playtime for just one playthrough. You might be pushing closer to 60-100 hours for some of the meatier RPGs on the market. And that's not to mention user-generated content, expansions, and repeat playthroughs. Even if you're like me and have no particular deadlines to meet, the reviewer must eventually write and submit their review, omitting at least some non-negligible amount of the potential gameplay experiences offered by the game itself. 

A skilled games reviewer can usually hope to play enough of the game to develop some potential thesis statements that say something meaningful about it that won't be later overturned in a catastrophic fashion by someone else who played the game for a longer time. You don't need to have caught all of the Pokemon to give me a solid 900 word summary of the latest entry in the series. Just *how much* Pokemon the reviewer deems necessary to play is really down to their judgement. In the case of paid games journalists, deadlines also simply must factor in, especially if you're an outlet that does not benefit from access to review builds from major publishers. Part of the skill of a reviewer is judging how to best experience a potentially vast experience in a very limited time.

This is where we talk about live service games, also known as "games as a service" - or GAAS. These are often free to play games (sorry Nintendo, "free to start" doesn't seem to be catching on) but they don't have to be. They can be paid games with a free DLC roadmap, they can be paid games with additional paid content options released over time. And yes, they can be free to play games like Genshin Impact. Now imagine that it is your job to review Genshin Impact. The first question isn't even 'How?' here but 'When?'

I'm painfully aware that I've not said much about the actual game yet. We'll get to it.

Genshin Impact came out in September of 2020 and it has been updated on an ongoing basis ever since then. I started writing this review in May of 2021 and will probably complete it by the end of summer. I've never played it before, but I read a little about it when it came out. When I went to read reviews of the game from September of 2020 they often remarked about how much the overall look and feel of the game reminds them of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and how the sheer ungodly sum of money it seemed to be making. 

I see the writers behind these reviews making the shame shrewd choices they always have to make. What are the most salient points I can talk about before I have to submit this review? They made good choices. But the thing about GAAS products is that they are only ever in a complete state once the developers behind them stop adding new content. There is no one ultimate and best time to review a GAAS product. Anyone reviewing Genshin Impact has to just take the game as they find it and comment on what they find at that point in time, adding to the overall history of things people have said about it as it evolves.

For me, that involved starting at the very beginning. The game won't let me start anywhere else.

Now I have worked on a number of GAAS games in my time and I'm glad to see that Genshin Impact has a very generous Honeymoon Phase. The Honeymoon Phase is what I like to call the time you spend with a GAAS game where you are able to forget that this game is looking to monetise some of its players, potentially very heavily.

Download a free game with in-app purchases onto your phone at random and chances are that it will be painfully obvious how they intend to monetise your experience within twenty minutes. You almost certainly won't *need* to spend any money yet to continue having fun, but already you grok the gameplay loops and systems that will eventually start placing demands on your real-life cash money.  

I know in my heart that Genshin Impact *must* have something up its sleeve to make me monetise down the road. But at Adventure Rank 20 and several hours of having a mildly good time, I'm not even close to being there yet. I do not appear to be in any way stymied by economic paywalls or the feeling of being a second class player as a result of playing for free. 

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DEATH OF THE MILD

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To say that Genshin Impact is ripping off Breath of the Wild is to say that Fall Guys is ripping off Super Mario Oddysey. Just because two games are about platforming in colourful environments doesn't mean that they are trying to do the same thing.

A better comparison might be any film that was later adapted to a TV show. Think about Snowpiercer the movie versus Snowpiercer the TV show. The two products have a lot of shared characteristics and features, but their core purposes are so different that the end products naturally diverge a great deal.

Breath of the Wild was created to take gamer's breath away and redefine how we think of both open-world adventure games and how a Legend of Zelda game works. Given the whopping commercial and critical success of the Link's first Switch outing, it's reasonably safe to conclude that the development team achieved what they set out to do. 

When you explore the hauntingly empty wastes of Hyrule, very little is given to the player on a silver platter. There are very few quest markers to use as a crutch, and the player must rely chiefly on their sense of exploration and survival to gradually master the environment and piece together a network of fast travel points piece by piece.

Genshin by comparison isn't here to break new ground. It shouldn't be judged on its failure to do so. It's perfectly legitimate to criticise its lack of overall creative ambition, but not on its failure to reach new heights. It was never shooting for the moon in that way in the same way that The Big Bang Theory wasn't trying to redefine serial storytelling. Genshin Impact's core goal is to command your attention for long enough that you eventually spend money within its ecosystem, or persuade other people to play the game for longer so that they might spend money instead. 

Not surprising given that Genshin Impact is free to play, but that means that Genshin is completely unable to trade in the kind of player antagonising gameplay that Breath of the Wild routinely deploys. 

There's a whole lot of world here, but it's all about as foreboding as a theme park

Where Breath of the Wild will often leave the players fumbling around to define their own moment to moment short term goals, Genshin Impact strives with all its might to ensure that you always have something clearly-defined to do. Go to this place to advance the story. Here are four quick fetch quests if you don't have time for something more involved. Here's a scrapbook full of different achievements to chase after. Play Genshin Impact for just ten minutes and you'll be able to select a quest, go to the quest area, complete the quest, and get some loot and an 'attaboy' from the game's UX. 

In Breath of the Wild, it is highly likely that at some point during your playthrough that you will run around an icy mountain for twenty minutes and fight exactly one wolf to get exactly one piece of cold meat. You might not even know why you were there in the first place. Genshin has a lot of systems, sub-systems, and menus, but you never feel lost, stupid, or particularly challenged. If you need to be stronger, you usually need to upgrade your weapons, characters, items, or choose a lower level quest. 

You'll never truly be mystified with Genshin Impact, but that's the point. Being lost is uncomfortable, and Genshin Impact doesn't want that for you. It just wants to keep giving you a steady supply of dopamine hits. It's the gaming equivalent of binge-watching a TV show. I would argue that the whole genre of mainstream MMORPGs is to create the endlessly binge-able game. Comparing Genshin Impact to Breath of the Wild may have been what we all did when we first saw the two games side by side. 

A better comparison may have been World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV, but I have decided that deep-diving into two subscription-based MMORPGs in order to review this free to play MMORPG is simply more time and money than I think is appropriate to spend on this review. If that bothers you I refer you to the previous segment where I have set out my case for why I have a perfectly good excuse not to do that.

But to conclude this segment, I will say that as far as my overall experience of Genshin Impact has been on a personal level and the sheer financial success that it has so far enjoyed on the market. Genshin Impact seems to succeed by letting players get very comfortable in its world. It doesn't seem to be in a big fat hurry to extract money from me or direct me to storefronts that I don't want to see. 

If you've ever played a mobile game that seems to feel more like a mugging than a videogame. Don't worry. This game leaves you alone to have a jolly good time, and there's plenty to do.

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A FEW WORDS ON INDUSTRY-STANDARD IZEKAI ANIME STUFF

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One of my games journalism pet peeves is when a western reviewer encounters a game with an anime art style and spends a lot of time ensuring their presumed western audience that they are as distanced from that culture as possible, so much so that they find the idea of Goku to be simply baffling. Oh, those weird Japanese! What will they come up with next? 

I also don't care for the idea that you can't look at something like Genshin Impact and criticise it from any other point of view than a dyed in the wool lifelong enjoyer and expert of anime. As far as my own 'power level' goes as a consumer of anime, I would say that I'm far more powerful than a detached casual observer but far less powerful than the all-powerful otakus of the world who usually have a handful of different anime shows on the go at once. 

Rest assured that I am not here to shit on anime, nor am I here to advocate for anime. I'm here to tell you what the hell is going on with Genshin Impact.

Simply put: there's not much going on.

My partner asked me to explain what was going on with this character and I just said
"It's exactly what it looks like, what do you want from me?"

Anime isn't a monolith. It has a rich and varied history just like anything else in the art world. But just like any other genre of entertainment, there are different levels of risk that are tolerated by publishers. There's wildly experimental storytelling in anime, there's anime that pushes the technical limits of what animation can do, and there's stuff that's just absolutely baffling, even to hardcore anime fans.

Then there's stuff like Genshin Impact. I'm not going to use the phrase "lowest common denominator" in a derogatory sense here, because that's exactly what the product developers were aiming for here and they hit the nail squarely on the head.

Genshin Impact has a silent protagonist who begins the game by entering the game world due to a freak dimensional accident in another place. This protagonist also has a SPECIAL QUALITY which means that they have a SPECIAL DESTINY TO FULFILL in this world. This world is populated with every conceivable fantasy world character trope from mainstream, family-friendly anime products. Everyone may dress in conservatively racy cosplay outfits, and it may not be entirely clear how old everyone is in this world, but there's absolutely nothing in here that could cause all but the most conservative player to take offence.

Speaking as someone who has enjoyed anime for more than a decade, Genshin Impact is rammed to the gills with generic anime trash (GAT) and you already know if you're down for that or not. I end up skipping through almost all of the cutscenes, and I have no time for the entity known as 'Paimon' but it also doesn't get in the way of me having a good time with this game. I will also say that even if this is game is filled with GAT, it is a very well presented piece GAT. There's a generous amount of competent voice acting, the game is a pretty thing to look at. Nothing about this game will blow you away, but it is perfectly possible to have a chill time with it.

If you've ever re-watched old episodes of Dragonball Z for hours on end with some snacks, or mindlessly replayed Skyrim for the fourth time, that's the kind of experience you're going to get out of this. Go forth and binge!

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THE VERDICT

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Genshin Impact offers a very competitive value proposition to players looking to play something for free. From what I've played so far, the world is vast and dense with activities. Those activities may be simple and derivative, but there's an assload of it, it runs well on a variety of machines... and it's free. It's an all you can eat buffet that someone else has paid for so you may as well dig in.

Paid MMOs may offer richer experiences that cater for specialist tastes, and are usually the sign of a legacy game like World of Warcraft or similar. If you're looking to jump into a new epic fantasy world and either enjoy (or can stomach) the cutesy anime narrative stylings then I would strongly urge you to consider Genshin as the title to beat. By all means, pay subs for something that appeals to you more, but just make sure that you're getting a worthwhile deal! 

Genshin doesn't use dirty tricks to keep me coming back. What keeps me coming back is the promise of a massive world to explore, plenty of things to do, and a reasonable guarantee that I will be able to make progress even if I don't have a lot of time on my hands. Yes, they'll eventually want to try and squeeze some money out of me, but that feels a long way off from where I'm at, and if they keep showing me a good time, I wouldn't grumble at the prospect of giving this team a little of my money down the line. In the free to play the market, you can't really ask for a better result than that.

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THE EXTRA 3%

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Welcome back to The Extra 3%! I hope you enjoyed my review of Genshin Impact. It's okay if you didn't, but I hope you did. 

That's three reviews that I've done in this series now. If you liked this one, then you might also enjoy my reviews of Sludge Life and Loop Hero, especially since I'm currently BANNED from reviewing games published by Devolver Digital (at least for a good, good, while)

BANNED FOR ALL TIME (or at least for a good, good, while):
Published by Devolver Digital

I've reviewed games on the PC so far, so I should really strive for a console exclusive. Probably something on Switch? I don't know yet. We'll see, eh?

BLIND SPOTS:
A console exclusive

Please consider interacting with me on Twitter @jak1oh3 and explaining to me what the hell the entity known as Paimon is and why everyone accepts its presence uncritically. I'll wait. 

Otherwise, thanks again for reading, it goes a long way :)
Jak

Loop Hero - The 103% Review

Free to play games on all platforms have an uphill battle amongst gamers who grew up in the same millennial generation I did. They barely stand a chance with people who are even older than I am.

The mere presence of *any* free to play mechanics is seen as a black mark against any game that would dare to include them. 

Microtransactions are the most obvious villain but energy mechanics, needlessly complex economies, appointment timer systems... these are all dead giveaways that gamers of a certain persuasion will use to dismiss a game entirely and move on from it.

But the truth of the matter is that free to play game designers, particularly those on mobile, know that they are fighting an uphill battle for your attention and some of their efforts to keep you hooked have already made their way into 'real games'. Games that you like. Games that you tell your friends to play.

Games like Loop Hero.

This is the 103% Review of Loop Hero.

(Get the game: Loop Hero)

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ENTER THE VOID

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Loop Hero was developed by Four Quarters and published by Devolver Digital. 

This also marks the second game in a row that I've reviewed that was published by Devolver Digital, so I shall refrain from reviewing another game that they've published for a bit. See 'The Extra 3%' in this reviews' postscript for more details on this, along with some other goodies.

Loop Hero is a very nice video game, and I've been playing it on PC via Steam. I actually paid for this one unlike Sludge Life, which I got for free on the Epic Games Store. I paid £12.49 for Loop Hero.

That's a pretty good deal whichever way you look at it. But where Sludge Life is a nice little exploration game to play between larger games. This is the game that devours any time you happen to have going spare. Just be glad this thing isn't on your mobile phone asking you for money.

So what is Loop Hero? 

You play as the nameless Hero who has amnesia. Don't recoil from the cliche because the narrative of Loop Hero takes the amnesiac hero to its extreme limit. 

The whole world has amnesia. Not just the people either. The creatures, the towns, the very land itself. It's all been consumed and forgotten due to the machinations of The Lich. As the nameless Hero awakes in a void lit only by a campfire, a road spontaneously appears to form the eponymous Loop. 

Trapped in a reality with nothing but this Loop, the Hero automatically walks along the path and returns to the campfire at the end of each lap. 

You encounter a slime and start to fight it automatically. The game has lasted about 20 seconds at this point and you haven't actually done any gameplay yet. The Hero approaches and fights the slime with no input from you other than a few mouse clicks to advance dialogue. What's going on? When do I, the almighty player, get to do anything?

Eventually, things start happening, none are fully explained but all make enough intuitive sense to tease at the player's brain. A weapon drop from a slime zips over to an inventory, which can be equipped onto the Hero's strange loadout area. Strange playing cards depicting locations such as mountains, or meadows will appear in a sort of 'hand area' at the bottom of the screen inviting you to play it onto the black nothingness around the Loop, or onto the Loop itself. You do these things not because you have any strong sense of what the consequences should be but because this is a video game, and you do things in video games.  

You equip weapons, you play cards onto the Loop. You see what happens.

Things happen.

That graveyard you put down said something about 'spawning skeletons at the start of each day'. What is a day? Why would I want to start spawning skeletons anyway? You notice the day counter in the top left ticking up, you notice that the skeletons have their own loot tables for weaponry and resources. You notice resources. You notice that the enemies get stronger as you complete laps of the Loop. You notice a mysterious 'skull' meter that fills up as you place cards onto the field. You wonder what happens if you can fill it...

You die, most probably. You encounter a town. A town that you can develop with resources. The buildings in the town all have effects of their own. You venture to the Loop again but this time you notice that you can deck build. You haven't mastered each card's nuances yet, and you won't for some time. You experiment, you learn, you discover new cards, creatures, classes, secret interactions between cards...

You just keep going. You keep trying. You keep building, discovering and learning. 

For a game world set in an endless empty void, this game has a lot of systems crammed into it, and you'll want to master them all.

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THE (CORE) LOOP HERO

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And when I talk about 'the systems' of Loop Hero, what I really mean is 'the metagame systems' of Loop Hero. So I should make sure that everyone reading this knows what I mean by that as I don't think I can take that for granted.

Most games can be boiled down into two distinct types of 'gameplay' and the bridges that connect them to one another.

The first type of part is the 'base layer' which is usually what people refer to as the moment to moment 'gameplay' of a game. In Pong, this would be players moving paddles to deflect the ball. In Mario Kart, it's the driving and the firing of weapons in races. It's what you tend to show off in a 'gameplay trailer'.

(Any excuse to type 'Mario Kart 8 Press Kit' into my search bar, honestly)

The 'metagame' tends to be everything else. In Pong, as with most classic arcade games, the metagame layer is the high-score table on the arcade cabinet. Aside from entering initials and trying to secure a place on said board, the player barely interacts with it at all. In Mario Kart, the player earns trophies and star ratings for their performance in Grand Prix events, and time trial records act as a sort of local leaderboard. Again, not much interaction there. 

However, even these bare-bones metagames with next to no interactive parts provide a strong sense of meaning to the base layer. What would Pong be without a high-score table? Where would the tension be in single player Mario Kart without the pressure to get a gold trophy? Even a basic metagame adds a lot.

The ideal videogame gets the player to focus on the base layer for a short while, but not so long that they get bored or tired. Once the base layer session is done, the player is kicked back out into the metagame layer, which should hopefully persuade the player to take part in more base layer fun later. In the Pong example, you play Pong, see your high score and think "hmm, I think I'll try that again". This back and forth between base layer and metagame is typically referred to as a "compulsion loop".

A more complex game may have many such compulsion loops, but there is usually a dominant one. We call this the Core Loop. 

When games were new, and largely skill-based diversions, the base layer did most of the heavy lifting in establishing what made a game good or interesting.

Then complex stories were in games. A desire to see the plot and world of a visual novel became a metagame just as engrossing as the base layer verb of 'read text'.

Then RPG systems were in games. The term 'grinding' refers to often monotonous repeat battles of an often unchallenging base layer battles because the metagame of myriad character-building subsystems and a good story was worth it.

Then achievements were in games. Many a player has doubled down to play games they would otherwise have discarded long ago in search of trophies and gamerscore points, which in turn fed a 'meta-metagame' system of tracking progress across a whole library of titles on one platform for the purposes of showing dedication and skill in gaming.

At some time during all of this, we were told to catch 'em all. The Pokedex metagame layer became far more important than any single battle in the entire experience of a Pokemon player's career.

And of course, along came mobile, and the base layer was all but crushed in its wake, at least for a time.

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STEALING BACK FROM MOBILE

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Successful mobile games with a 'twitch skill' base layer are very rare. It's just very difficult to make that work on a small touch screen where real estate is at a premium. Not to mention that any given app needs to target a cornucopia of device types and screen sizes. Control schemes and camera placement choices are necessarily constrained so the base layer experiences on mobile tend toward simplicity, even when one isn't targeting a casual audience.

When it comes to designing for fun on mobile, the metagame layer ends up picking up a lot of the slack. Strategic games with complex meta-layers lend a sense of tactical cleverness to games where the player isn't actually doing a great deal with their hands. Even supposedly twitchier games like Temple Run rely heavily on their upgrade and mission systems for their staying power.

And of course, it's largely through the meta-layer that free to play mobile games monetise a small fraction of their player base. The laser focussed design works to establish a long term end goal for the player, much like a traditional boxed product video game. Defeat the final boss. Reach the final level. Build the most awesome secret base... that kind of thing. Except rather than design a tight 20-40 hour experience that gets you to that established goal, free to play games allow you to progress relatively unimpeded towards that goal over the course of 2-3 weeks and then start making it difficult to continue making meaningful progress at the same rate without either monetising or through grinding which would be above the odds for even the most punishing late-game challenges of JRPGs.

(*cough*)

To finally bring this back around to Loop Hero, we find a game that is part of a subtle movement to throw out the free to play bathwater from traditionally 'evil' free to play design and keep the delightful meta-heavy, input-light base layer design (babies) from mobile. Core video games do not need to be centred around complex input systems and combat to be a worthwhile challenge. Loop Hero engages your brain in its entirety in every run but still allows one to keep a free hand to sip on a brew or check what's going on in chat.

I've long maintained that there is a degree of snobbery from long-time gamers toward games that find popularity on mobile. They are dismissed as sub-par experiences for sub-par audiences who need to hurry up, smell the coffee and upgrade to a nice console/PC experience. Games like Loop Hero show us that even ardent PC gamers can celebrate core gameplay loops that have been honed in the mobile space, just so as long as the core business model reverts to a more traditional 'one-and-done' financial transaction and that the game lives in the more culturally accepted confines of their Steam library.
 

But let's not kid ourselves, Loop Hero is a game that raided the treasures of the mobile space and dressed up the loot for a self-described discerning PC audience.

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THE VERDICT

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Loop Hero isn't designed to monetise its players, but there are times where I would be tempted to spend gems or some form of premium currency to pick up the pace a little. There are plateaus in progress that can seem almost too much like a mobile game. That being said, I often find that the game rewards those that are willing to think deeply about optimising their builds towards key objectives. The game doesn't shower you with praise for figuring these things out but provides something of a neutral laboratory environment for players to test our strategies and praise themselves for their own cleverness.

I've only played this game in small doses, rather than longer sessions full of back to back runs, so I will admit to something of a blind spot in my research here. The game provides a tight 15-20 min experience that will fill up the back half of a lunch break, or as a welcome break from study. I can easily see the game satisfying a much longer gaming session much in the same way that one may decide to watch a single episode of a TV show and end up bingeing the whole season. The core loop of this game simply is that compelling.

As I said earlier, I'm very fortunate that this thing isn't on my phone. If you're looking for a new obsession, you would do well to consider Loop Hero. It's a mobile game for people who don't like mobile games.

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THE EXTRA 3%

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Welcome to the back pages! Thanks for reading this far. I hope you enjoyed my Loop Hero review!

My previous review in this series was Sludge Life, another game published by Devolver Digital. To keep things fresh my next review will absolutely not be a game published by them. 

BANNED FOR ALL TIME:
Published by Devolver Digital

Although if you're not entirely familiar with Devolver Digital's offerings, they're a label worth looking out for. Games in their portfolio are rarely boring, often very good, and always worth the price of admission to find out. If there was a fringe arts festival of games, Devolver Digital's acts would be the one's that get talked about by the less insufferable hipsters. 

If you like what I'm about please do consider interacting with me on Twitter @jak1oh3 and continuing the conversation there. I love talking to people who make and play video games so I look forward to hearing from anyone that fits that description :)

Thanks again for reading, it means a lot to me,
Jak

Sludge Life - The 103% Review

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild invites players to scale mountains and towers to make it easier to discover the hidden secrets of a serene post-post-apocalyptic Hyrule. 

Bowser's Fury invites players to scale lighthouses and brightly coloured abstract geography to make it easier to gather the Cat Shines of the inviting and generous waters of Lake Lapcat

Sludge Life invites players to scale sewage processing buildings and ruined dock equipment to make it easier to vandalise everything, smoke cigarettes, and get the mother of all vibes going.

This is the 103% review of Sludge Life.

(Get the game: Sludge Life)

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ENTER THE SLUDGE

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I've been claiming freebies on the Epic Store for a long time. Not exhaustively. Not selectively. I've just been stuffing free games in my cheeks like the grubby little hamster that I am.

Now finally, after months of hoarding, I'm actually playing one of them. I'm playing Sludge Life 

Sludge Life was developed by Terri Vellman and Doseone and published by Devolver Digital. You can get it for PC and Switch.

Sludge Life is a very nice video game, and it was made better by the fact that I got it for absolutely nothing. You can get it for free on the Epic Games Store until the end of May 2021 so get it while you can, even if you put off playing it for months like I did.

You play as a vandal named Ghost.

When you first enter the world of Sludge Life, and indeed each time you enter the game world from the main menu, you will start out in Ghost's home. Ghost's home is a shipping container in a lake of sludge.

When you leave your shipping container domicile for the first time the game softly hints at a goal. You may wish to vandalise a highlighted wall and get a point for doing so. You may feel compelled to set a more self-directed goal and explore and climb your way to one of many vantage points. 

Your self directed goal may be one of immersive roleplay. You're a street artist living precariously near a sludge processing facility. Who says you necessarily care about being a productive artist today? You may spend any given session of Sludge Life trying to find strange beauty in your surroundings, or take pictures using your infinite supply of single-use cameras.

Like I did that one time:

It's a sludge processing station enjoying a giant cigarette. The street art was delayed in favour of photography.

Your goal may not even be to *solve* anything or even *produce* anything. 

The goal may just be to *vibe*...

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VIBE CHECK

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As an elder millennial, I can't truly claim to have ever truly perceived any moments of my life as a 'vibe' or a 'mood' as they were happening to me. Once I felt like I had a good grasp of what these terms meant, I was only able to retroactively apply these labels to past experiences and even as I did this, I did so with minimal confidence.

When I played Sludge Life, I experienced first-hand and in real-time, an unmistakable feeling of vibing in this virtual environment with its cast of laid back NPCs. I climbed to the top of the tallest pile of trash this side of  Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy and smoked a cigarette.

I vibed with this bird person.

This bird person had a 'take a seat or don't, I won't judge' aura when I met them. I joined the bird person and took a load off, holding the crouch button down so we could interact at eye level. 

There are many opportunities to vibe in this game. I have spoiled one of many. I will resist the urge to spoil more of these moments, but I could easily populate a sturdy list of vibes and moods from memory alone. 

These vibe moments, whether they be constructed set pieces like 'couch bird' or those that are spontaneously created by players as they frame their own experiences with Sludge Life. That is not to say that Sludge Life doesn't have a hand in shaping what those experiences will be. 

The world of Sludge Life is uncaring and determined to grind its inhabitants down, including Ghost. At times it feels as if there is no escape at all, but Sludge Life offers players a chance to forget their troubles in between their hunts for tag locations. You will experience the phenomenology of vibe at least once during your playthrough of this game.

Vibing in this environment is a form of rebellion. But what against? Glad you asked.

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BROKEN WORLD

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The revolution may come tomorrow, it may come in forty years' time. It may never come. We may all burn to death on a planet that is beyond repair. In a world where billionaires control more and more of the world's wealth and power than ever before, it seems that things will get a lot worse before they even stand a chance of getting better. This can be distressing, depressing and leave the human mind in a state of existential misery.

But the human spirit can also be trained to set all of their worries aside and seek out the best experiences possible given the circumstances. One can spend their free time and energy worrying about corrupt politicians and the dire conditions to which we subject our least fortunate workers. Sludge Life argues that this energy and time is wasted. Sludge Life says why not squeeze every last drop of joy from your environment.

Go talk to weird people. Drink fizzy drinks. Smoke. Risk life, limb, and liberty for the sake of creating art. Engage in outsider culture. Smoke again. Waste more cameras than Joseph Joestar. Piss with lacking accuracy at someone else's toilet. Piss off the edge of the world. Swim in toxic sludge. Listen to great music.

Do not descend into despair.

This world is broken, but it can not truly break you. You get to decide how broken you want to be. Sludge Life invites you to define your own rules.

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THE VERDICT

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For a game about exploration and finding hidden surprises, Sludge Life can leave you at a loose end sometimes. As it became harder to find new tag spots, Sludge Life often left me without a clear goal. Ludic Boredom and anxiety set in quickly and I almost turned to guides (or straight-up putting the game down) a number of times. 

But I didn't. I explored the world again. I talked to those quirky NPCs again. I scoured the sludge for clues and leads again. I had Eureka moments as I managed to squeeze just a little more out of Sludge Life and I did get to the good ending eventually. 

But there were long stretches of nothing. These moments gave me an opportunity to succumb to a seemingly inescapable world. I vibed. I thought about this fictional world and how it made me feel about my own place in the real one. I found my own fun until I could make tangible progress.

I have my reservations about recommending such a jagged experience to anyone. There are games that give you more dopamine for your time and money. But this is a short game, and if you're seeing this at an opportune time, you can get it for free. Download it now, and play it before starting your next Big Game.