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.