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Redder by Anna Anthropy
Dec. 10th, 2014 05:50 pmREDDER
This is a critique of REDDER, a puzzle game game by Anna Anthropy. The game can be found at newgrounds here: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/529992
This is not a review (it's not going to tell you whether or not the game is good or you should play it.) It's a critique. Thus, it will contain spoilers, as it is impossible to discuss a game without discussing its contents.
If you want a review without spoilers, here it is: REDDER is a good game. It is almost certainly worth your time and attention. Play it.
(Notes on accessibility: the game involves red / green switches which may be inaccessible to colorblind people. The game contains intentionally distracting elements which may be inaccessible to people with ADHD or similar conditions.)
--
I have been struggling to write this critique for five years. This struggle has been puzzling for me. REDDER is a fairly simple game, but the emotional aspect of play elusive. I've finally decided to give up waiting for insight and just describe the game, hoping that others might be able to offer me the missing pieces.
In REDDER, the player controls an astronaut who, after running out of fuel, has made an emergency landing on an abandoned planet, implied to be Mars. The planet seems uninhabited by humans but has a base, abandoned except for robots. Scattered around the base and environs are crystals, which you need to repair and/or refuel your spaceship. Getting each of the crystals requires solving a puzzle of some sort. The puzzles are organically worked into the environment, usually involving switches, robot drones, and moving blocks. There are no gated areas or power ups: every puzzle can be completed at any time and every area can be accessed by walking and jumping, right from the start.
To win the game, you must find all but three crystals, and return to your ship. There is a special ending if you get all the crystals.
As you get more and more crystals, the game begins to exhibit increasingly severe glitching. Blocks are replaced by static, the robots change appearance, and so on. There is no explanation for this, it simply happens, and you have to deal with it. Many players have been confused and thought that this represented real bugs in the game. The intensity of the glitching can make the game very difficult to play. If you collect all the crystals, the game converts into a geometric, wholly representational form of colored dots that is much easier to read.
None of this, though, conveys what the game is actually like. What I've described is a fairly accessible puzzle platformer, simple without being simplistic, but my primary experience of REDDER is not procedural, but emotional. The game conveys an intense, clear, profound emotion that is, to me, deeply comfortable, and very hard to describe.
First, there is a sense of solitude. Not loneliness, when I play REDDER I don't feel a longing to encounter another human. The character, the astronaut is alone, but she is alone at the start of the game as well. She is a person, alone, doing what she needs to do to survive as cleanly as possible. The game has no words, because there is no one to talk to, no one else in the room, or even the world. REDDER feels empty in the way that a solo hike feels empty, if you hike in a remote enough place that you won't run into others.
I struggle to put my feeling on why the game makes me feel this way. I mean, obviously, the character is alone, but other games with a single protagonist and no other characters don't manage to provoke the same emotion. I think part of it is the masterful music, which definitely conveys a sense of peace at the same time as loneliness, part of it is the exact nature of the controls (they are weirdly precise, and make you feel weirdly precise in the same way that, when alone in the woods, making a fire or pitching a tent feels precise), and part of it is some ineffable artistic aspect I have never been able to put my finger on.
Second, there is throughout the game the growing feeling of foreboding. Obviously, this comes from the glitches, but also simply from your situation, stranded in space, going from who-knows-where to who-knows-where-else. "Something has gone wrong," you think, "something is going very very wrong." But, again, there is no sense of urgency to this or, at least, there isn't for me. It is a passive sort of doom: I will die, and I might die here. I will do my best to not die, but perhaps my best won't be enough.
(this has nothing to do with "dying" in the game which merely causes you to return to one of many checkpoints. It is an attempt to describe the emotion.)
Playing REDDER feels like being alone, in the wilderness, coming to peace with your eventual death while trying your hardest not to die.
Why? You've got my best guesses. But it's a beautiful game, and a subtle, strange experience. I wish we had more like it.
This is a critique of REDDER, a puzzle game game by Anna Anthropy. The game can be found at newgrounds here: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/529992
This is not a review (it's not going to tell you whether or not the game is good or you should play it.) It's a critique. Thus, it will contain spoilers, as it is impossible to discuss a game without discussing its contents.
If you want a review without spoilers, here it is: REDDER is a good game. It is almost certainly worth your time and attention. Play it.
(Notes on accessibility: the game involves red / green switches which may be inaccessible to colorblind people. The game contains intentionally distracting elements which may be inaccessible to people with ADHD or similar conditions.)
--
I have been struggling to write this critique for five years. This struggle has been puzzling for me. REDDER is a fairly simple game, but the emotional aspect of play elusive. I've finally decided to give up waiting for insight and just describe the game, hoping that others might be able to offer me the missing pieces.
In REDDER, the player controls an astronaut who, after running out of fuel, has made an emergency landing on an abandoned planet, implied to be Mars. The planet seems uninhabited by humans but has a base, abandoned except for robots. Scattered around the base and environs are crystals, which you need to repair and/or refuel your spaceship. Getting each of the crystals requires solving a puzzle of some sort. The puzzles are organically worked into the environment, usually involving switches, robot drones, and moving blocks. There are no gated areas or power ups: every puzzle can be completed at any time and every area can be accessed by walking and jumping, right from the start.
To win the game, you must find all but three crystals, and return to your ship. There is a special ending if you get all the crystals.
As you get more and more crystals, the game begins to exhibit increasingly severe glitching. Blocks are replaced by static, the robots change appearance, and so on. There is no explanation for this, it simply happens, and you have to deal with it. Many players have been confused and thought that this represented real bugs in the game. The intensity of the glitching can make the game very difficult to play. If you collect all the crystals, the game converts into a geometric, wholly representational form of colored dots that is much easier to read.
None of this, though, conveys what the game is actually like. What I've described is a fairly accessible puzzle platformer, simple without being simplistic, but my primary experience of REDDER is not procedural, but emotional. The game conveys an intense, clear, profound emotion that is, to me, deeply comfortable, and very hard to describe.
First, there is a sense of solitude. Not loneliness, when I play REDDER I don't feel a longing to encounter another human. The character, the astronaut is alone, but she is alone at the start of the game as well. She is a person, alone, doing what she needs to do to survive as cleanly as possible. The game has no words, because there is no one to talk to, no one else in the room, or even the world. REDDER feels empty in the way that a solo hike feels empty, if you hike in a remote enough place that you won't run into others.
I struggle to put my feeling on why the game makes me feel this way. I mean, obviously, the character is alone, but other games with a single protagonist and no other characters don't manage to provoke the same emotion. I think part of it is the masterful music, which definitely conveys a sense of peace at the same time as loneliness, part of it is the exact nature of the controls (they are weirdly precise, and make you feel weirdly precise in the same way that, when alone in the woods, making a fire or pitching a tent feels precise), and part of it is some ineffable artistic aspect I have never been able to put my finger on.
Second, there is throughout the game the growing feeling of foreboding. Obviously, this comes from the glitches, but also simply from your situation, stranded in space, going from who-knows-where to who-knows-where-else. "Something has gone wrong," you think, "something is going very very wrong." But, again, there is no sense of urgency to this or, at least, there isn't for me. It is a passive sort of doom: I will die, and I might die here. I will do my best to not die, but perhaps my best won't be enough.
(this has nothing to do with "dying" in the game which merely causes you to return to one of many checkpoints. It is an attempt to describe the emotion.)
Playing REDDER feels like being alone, in the wilderness, coming to peace with your eventual death while trying your hardest not to die.
Why? You've got my best guesses. But it's a beautiful game, and a subtle, strange experience. I wish we had more like it.
