2010, the year that our newborns slide from birth canal to snug monogrammed jumpsuit. The crushing emptiness of space has been hugged into submission by the interstellar arms of man. Your own private mindgarden IGF champions won the prize with the stupid name, and technology has rendered sex obsolete.

However, artistic revolutionary Fiona, if indeed this non-cyrillic pseudonym can be considered valid, has a drastically different vision of the utopian future of the 80′s that we find ourselves in. The entire game is based on a maddening and infuriating falsehood. In Scavenger, the universe has been torn apart by Space-Capitalism. It was the innate nature of man to subvert the laws of Space Eden. Slowly, over the years, a once lush field filled with the endless majesty of the universe gave way to the detritus of the Space Man, which he now wallows in, filthy, the smell of stale recycled Space Urine on his breath, unable to break the cycle. Addicted. Addicted to that which is inherent. Addicted to his own greed.

Politically motivated lies, though they make for a great gamepiece.

As Adam the Space Addict, you claw your way through the perpetual dark, in search of the next big score. But in space, man is like a fish out of water, his very life reliant on his tools, at the mercy of his own engineering, his own fallibility. Weak of conviction and jittery of hand, you clasp down on the tractor beam button, syphoning up junk with a childlike glee, and attempting to pawn it off to the faceless God of Space-Capitalism. He is a cruel and unloving God, and yet you shall return to kneel at his altar uncountable times, the ghosts of a life you once lived quivering in your grasp, ready to be sacrificed for Credits. He relieves you of your bounty and offers nought in return. Dejected, disbelieving, you return to the infinite ink, your search growing in scope. You recognise the ashes of your former life. The space-frivolity you once knew is dead. A tear forms in your nasolacrimal duct. It flies, a perfect sphere, towards the viewing screen, free of the laws of the lesser men who stayed behind on the surface.

The old languages seem a distant memory, cold and unfamiliar. The only thing that is certain is the necessity of the space sale, the one that immediately preceeded it, and the one that shall follow.

I am ouroboros. Listen to my tale. Tell of my space deeds. Warn the others before the same fate befalls them. The rest is silence.

Scavenger (direct link) by Fiona

This entry was posted on Monday, January 4th, 2010 at 5:22 pm and is filed under Adventure, Gamepiece, Indie As Hell. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.