In this week’s game, There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension, the genre of the game is largely undefined. Is it simply a puzzle game? A point-and-click adventure? A narratively driven game? Or is it an eclectic grab-bag of different cheap knockoffs of other games. I would argue that There Is No Game (or TING) manages to engage the user in a unique manner, with breaking the fourth wall.
Breaking the fourth wall is no unique aspect to media, but the developers of TING use this concept in a literal, and innovative way within the game. To start off with, the game immediately constructs a satirical analysis of typical video games, even from the very start in which you choose your language selection. A game being aware of its own status as a game is a very unique psychological experiment, as it made me question my own actions when launching the game. I actually had to pause to check if I should really select my native language, or if it was a test. After starting the game and after our first encounter with Mr. Glitch and entering the Holmes point and click adventure, that was really when the meta-game showed itself to me.
In the point and click adventure chapter, you’re playing as a User (or THE user) as you navigate with a sentient Game (capital G) as you navigate with characters inside the computer game, with characters outside the computer game, as you (outside the computer) control the in-game-outside-of-computer User. The meta aspect of playing as a user inside of a game playing as another user forces the player to evaluate what goes into the act of playing a video game. For example, it made me question my own reality in which…. what if there is a higher level User playing as me, and I am simply Holmes in the game, unaware that I myself am in a video game? Or, within the Zelda-esque RPG chapter of the game, you control a mindless protagonist through challenges. How about physically unplugging the computer to solve puzzles in a psuedo-3D space? All of these are unique gameplay elements to force the player (you, yourself reading this) in how video games make us question our reality… and what if there is another fourth wall behind you right now, just waiting to be broken…
Breaking the fourth wall has definitely become a hot topic in recent games & visual novels & films. It’s very interesting to what extent these works indeed evoke the chilling in the player. I think the visuals in There is No Game (idk if it’s really the purple color bugging me all the time jeez) has definitely served as a huge distraction for me to generate any sort of identification with the player character, but I really don’t know how everyone falls on the spectrum.