Graphic artist Jason Nelson has released a new "art game creature digital poem" called Evidence of Everything Exploding. Like his past work it takes snippets of phrases, images and sequences we recognize, then mashes it all up in a digital rabbit-hole blender.
It's simple but it will frustrate you. What I love about it is that at the start of each level you have to stop and reorient yourself, understand what's going on, then slowly venture forth into a world with no apparent order. Sometimes you have help; many times you die.
But mistakes made in the game are integral to understanding how it works: what's your friend, what isn't. Slowly, a logic -- a benign intelligence, even -- starts to manifest.
The game's like life: beautiful, destructive, whimsical but wedded to a code. And, as you often discover in life, the rewards for succeeding each level are decidedly meaningless. (For people that dig gold coins, anyway. If you like delicious little epitaphs about matchstick packets, you may merit them treasure.)
It's also an interesting study-in-action of how humans actively contrive meaningful connections -- stories, even -- out of unrelated snippets and flagrant disorder. Some more than others.*
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*People in advertising.
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