6/8 – Everything
Hello and welcome! My name is Katosepe and I’ll be your host for today’s Video Game of the Day!
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Today’s game is easily the weirdest game I’ve ever covered on this show. If it fits into a genre, I honestly couldn’t say what that genre would be called. Meditative? Exploration maybe? Whatever you want to call it, today’s game is called Everything, developed by David O’Reilly and released on Windows, Mac, Linux, Playstation 4 and Switch.
Everything is quite literally, a game where you can play as everything. At any point, you can swap bodies with whatever you happen to be looking at around you. You can be a bear, or a wolf, or a cow. Not just animals, though, you can be a palm tree, a rock, a cloud. Want to be something bigger? How about a galaxy? Or a nebula? What about smaller? Ever played a game where you can be a hydrogen atom? Or just a dot? Ever wondered what being a house is like?
Well wonder no longer! Just don’t expect to be able to do much as any of these things. You can move around. Animations are non-existent though so everything either slides around on the ground or literally flips over itself to move. Nothing has any unique actions though beyond moving, talking (or thinking) to other things, and dancing. Everything has a slightly different dance it can perform with each thing able to dance with other things of its same type. Get a bunch of houses together and have a dance party! Why not.
While you play Everything, you can listen to lectures by philosopher Alan Watts about the nature of everything. This seems to be the crux of the game, as it wants players to think about their place in the universe. Personally, I’m pretty liberal with the use of the term game. Some people say narrative games like Gone Home or The Stanley Parable aren’t really games but I reject that. Everything, however, is maybe stretching the limits for me. If push came to shove, I’d probably still call it a game but only just. There aren’t really any goals or meaningful experiences beyond the meditations into the meaning of everything. I suppose it’s a meditation tool more than anything else. In that, I’d say it succeeds. I definitely found myself thinking about it and feeling calm but I’d be hard pressed to recommend this to anyone as an actual game. If you want to check out this very strange thing, it’s available for most people at the relatively high price of $15 US dollars. Even if it sounds interesting, I’d probably wait for a sale.
Thanks for listening! Remember, #loveindies goes until June 14th so we have many more indie games to go. If you want to share your own reviews, send me a tweet @vg_oftheday using the #loveindies. Don’t forget to check back here tomorrow for another Video Game of the Day.
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