Translated by
Microsoft from Italian
Microsoft from Italian
Product received for free
Completely crazy! A weird collage of Lynch's Eraserhead, Yellow Submarine (the animated film), Svankmajer animated films, underground comics (R. Crumb, J. Sacco, A. Spiegelman etc.), Kafka and Burroughs novels, Escher illustrations, pixel art and... 2D RPG! Literally crazy!
See here for a complete walkthrough (from stream 1 to stream 13):
You Tube
I found it not so much playable, but i'm not so accustomed to RPG and keyboard controls. It's not easy to understand what's happening here! Who your avatar is? What's your mission? What's the story? I have no answers, sorry! At first, it seems completely no sense!
What have you to do? You can fight, use weapons, cast some spells, converse with strange beings, interact with weird objects and environments, etc. But gameplay is not the point. Aesthetics is the point! Play time is very very long: hours and hours of varied surreal situations, disturbing scenarios, weird characters, abstract drawings, absurd conversations, alienating soundtrack, etc. Graphics is not always pleasant, but its artistic value is out of the question.
At first, the flux of psychedelic and surreal visions leaves you astonished and asking: what the f... is happening here? Then you realize to be in front of something unclassifiable, an artistic multimedia crossover. While playing, I perceived a sense of alienation towards all life aspects. There are a lot of suggestions: procreation, technology, smartphones, TV, weapons, job, religion, demons, esoterism, love, war, cancer, medicine, biology, death, communication and information, family, etc. They are usually represented in a pessimistic and negative way, but there is also room for cinism, irony, sarcasm and.... philosophy... Yes, a bit of sophistry!
Probably WTCTR is too ambitious, pretentious and deliberately crazy, alternative and experimental as many contemporary artworks; you know: all that glitters is not gold; probably content is not so deep as it would you to believe. It's art for art's sake, a sort of collage of pre-existing artworks, perhaps not so expressive or genuinely inspired, but there is undoubtely a really hard, long and original job behind all such drawings and illustrations. Very impressive! I think there are no games like this, perhaps it's not only a game. It reminds me of experimental short films by Man Ray, Leger, Ruttman, Duchamp, etc. at the dawn of Cinema. That's not a matter of " I like it" or "I don't like it", may be the most of you will find it boring or ugly. The existence of such game is an added value, an enrichment for our beloved medium.
I think that the best comment is the following from the author of the game, John Clowder
<< This game is for the outsider aesthete, the outcast mutant, the curious observer, the subversive and those who can appreciate what others can’t—and those who don’t appreciate what others do. >>
John Clowder is a college artist who has previously developed other two art games: Middens and Gingiva, but i've not played them yet.
Review by Video Games & Art
Steam group:
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/VgArtInt
Curator page:
http://store.steampowered.com/curator/26168615-Video-Games-Art-International/