This week's retro prose is one of the few pieces I wrote that I legitimately still stay behind to this day. It was not just a review of an artsy narrative focused Steam game, but one by a creative mind that I still keep an eye on to this day for her focus on human interaction and earnest emotional momentum contextualized in game form.
In other words, I love that her games are more about the journey than a high score. My review of Nina Freeman's Cibele.
Also you should check out her other game, Kimmy on Steam if this sounds anything resembling your bag. She's also working on that sci-fi game Tacoma so... hinty hint hint.
Cibele Review (Originally Posted on Gamespresso.com)
Videogames have an
odd relationship when it comes to romance. The only types that seem
to be explored are either chaste pre-existing romances, Mario and
Princess Peach, Link and Zelda, or even Shovel Knight and Shield
Knight, or romance is seen as a reward in a mini-game like in most
Bioware RPGs. Both have their place in games, but love comes in many
flavors and types that could be made quite compelling in an
interactive setting. In the case of Cibele, the type of romance
explored is not just young love, but one made over a videogame, and
it's just as sweet, intimate, and awkward as it sounds.
The best way to
describe this game is it shares similarities with the indie detective
narrative, Her Story. Instead of pouring over a facsimile of a police
database however, you control the faux computer desktop of a
nineteen-year old woman named Nina. Between the old website designs,
amateur poetry, personal photos, college work, and e-mails found
scattered around the screen is a client for a fictional MMO called
Valtameri. You can look over the text documents and photos all you
want but once you log in to the game, you meet another player named
Ichi, and over the span of several months, your bond grows from a
mutual friendship to something more intimate.
If there's one
thing that is distinctly unique about Cibele is that the game is
actually autobiographical. Yes, Nina is not only a real person but
she was the lead writer for the game, took the actual events of her
life with no noticeable changes, adapted it to a game, and even stars
as and voices herself in the FMV sequences between each act. That
level of personal, heart and soul investment shows in every second of
the project. The dialogue between her and Ichi is awkward, but in a
much more honest and sincere way than the stiltedness of Life is
Strange. The photos are clearly taken straight from Nina's actual
life and the slow change from being paralyzingly self-conscious to
the self-confidence provided by her relationship is subtle but all
the more genuine. It's an approach to storytelling that I honestly
have never seen before in an interactive medium, and the result is
very engaging.
In fact, one of the
curious things about Cibele is that it makes its otherwise bare
minimal gameplay work. As mentioned before, the closest thing to
traditional gameplay occurs when you are in Valtameri, with
background details like Nina's current standing with her friends,
family, and teachers informed by the documents and photos throughout
the acts. But even then the gameplay basically amounts to clicking on
the screen, similar to the Java-based MMO, Runescape. Click to walk,
click to attack, click on an icon to emote, click to pull up your
message inbox, and so on. There's also no real failure state or real
concrete MMO trappings, with things such as boss fights and
level-grinding being highly abstracted and boiled down to fit the
click-based gameplay. It's an approach that works really well from
both a budgetary and narrative perspective. Creating an entire RPG
system as nothing more than a background detail in what amounts to a
love story would be a horrendous waste of resources and time, and it
keeps the focus where it needs to be, the time Nina is spending with
Ichi.
The various acts
follow this “less is more” approach as well. The various acts are
bookended by various time jumps of several months, with the desktop
containing new material, as well as there being new messages that
interrupt you while in Valtameri. What little exchanges that can be
found between Nina and her other friends do manage to tell a lot
about her emotional state, and also pulls double duty of keeping the
focus where it needs to be without diverging into several tangents,
intended or otherwise. This is a narrative that could have easily
been read as a defiant and ultimately defensive shoutdown of the
problems of interacting with people solely online, been made trite by
a subplot about the dangers of game compulsion, or a cautionary tale
against the all too real practice of catfishing. But while these
issues are addressed and pacified with sharp efficiency, Cibele
actually maintains several parallels that wouldn't be out of place in
a regular narrative of its kind, like wanting to spend more time with
the special person in question or going to great lengths to see them.
One of the more powerful resonating moments I had was a sequence
where Nina finally started speaking with Ichi outside of the game on
the phone and the following chapter showed notes of her trying to
calculate how much money she would have to save in order to travel
out and see him for real.
It's in moments
like these that Cibele shines, not as a traditional game but as a
mood piece. It does a great job of not just immersing you in this
quintessential part of Nina's life, getting you invested in wanting
to see these people make things work despite the extraordinary
obstacles in their way. The otherwise banal gameplay echoes Nina's
real struggle perfectly by having it be secondary to her true desire,
wanting to be with the other person on the other end of the screen,
while not glamorizing it or reflecting it as an unhealthy obsession.
If I had a
complaint it would have to be the game might be a little too light
for its own good. The entire experience can easily be finished in one
sitting, my Steam account claiming completion easily took a little
over an hour, and what I was left with was an experience begging for
more parts. The narrative isn't missing anything vital, in fact its
ending comes from a genuine, bittersweet and ultimately empowering
place, but a few extra messages or exchanges happening outside of
Valtameri would have gone a long way.
It would be easy to
write off Cibele as another cheap and short artsy game, but it's raw
emotional base makes it an experience I won't forget for a while.
It's an experiment in autobiographical mood setting that ultimately
works as something both deeply personal as well as relatable. Give it
a look if you enjoy the more atmospheric side of games compared to
the interactive and you might be surprised what you take from it.
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