Ancient Greek Punishment showcases four tortures and one torturous philosophical problem in game form, and the player is unable to assuage any of the suffering. The object of the game is failure, as you put yourself in the shoes of someone facing eternal torment. No matter what the player does, the characters will never succeed at their task. Ultimately, what stuck with me after playing was not the unattainability of success but rather the simplicity and mundanity of the assigned tasks. Each trial features something Ancient Greeks would have done everyday as part of their survival; pushing an object up a hill, drinking water or picking fruit, running a hundred meters, filling a container with water, and waving an eagle away from eating your liver. Ok maybe not that last one.
All five stages call on the player to control specific actions: fill, run, push, drink, eat, and dislodge. The lack of any mechanical difficulty (other than finger soreness) leaves the player plenty of time to desperately try to outsmart the game. Unlike the other stages, Prometheus’s punishment is an embedded narrative, where the player can momentarily alleviate his pain but cannot stop the eagle from arriving in the first place. Conversely, Sisyphus, Tantalus, the Danaids, and Zeno only move through player input, making their tortures an emergent narrative that one plays out. The player begins rolling the boulder, filling the container, trying to eat and drinking, and running towards the finish line. But the eagle comes on its own.
Ancient Greek Punishment presents two different types of failure. Every torture other than Prometheus’s is dependent on the character’s actions, but the fallen Titan complete lacks any agency. He experiences failure through the hopelessness of his situation, the knowledge that the eagle will not stop coming and its feeding can only be temporarily interrupted. Every prisoners experiences failure through external forces (the game mechanics), but unlike the others Prometheus receives no false hope of escape. The objective of the level is not to free him from his chains or kill the eagle, but instead to alleviate his pain. The other four prisoners experience failure in watching their labors amount to nothing, day after day, their illusory agency providing a false sense of hope that disappears in an agonizing moment of realization.
Is it worse to know that you have no chance of success from the beginning or to have a fleeting chance at success snatched away in the final moments? Tantalus, Sisyphus, Zeno, and the Danaids fail at simple tasks and leave the player with a desperate sense of failure, a desire to somehow circumvent the predetermined fate. Can you cheat the game mechanics somehow, or exploit a coding error that will allow some success? Ultimately, the you fail to circumvent the simple mechanics just as the characters fail to accomplish their menial tasks. Prometheus watches the eagle come each day and perform its duty, and the player essentially has no control over the situation. Dislodging the eagle only shows the limits of your agency, in a more overt way than the other four levels. Prometheus receives no mercy. Thinking you can meaningfully effect a situation and failing and knowing your efforts are in vain but still struggling are intrinsic aspects of human experience. Failure is human. Repeated failure without the ability to improve upon your actions or correct your mistakes is the worst form of torture.
I really like how this game basically solely extracts the torture elements from ancient greek tragedies – from myths rather than real criminal punishments employed at that time. And I am very curious if this selection, paired with the simplistic, modern high-contrasted visuals of the game somehow brings us back or away from the deterministic (or religious) theme?
A) I like what zzeren pointed out about the juxtaposition of the highly-stylized pixel art with the ancient Greek tragedy inspiration.
B) That’s a really interesting thing to note! I didn’t realize that, but the role of the player is different for Prometheus than the other four avatars. To do nothing is to do nothing in the other four. But to do nothing with Prometheus, you see the effects with the slow draining of the your “Liver Bar” and inaction means the Ticker (DAYS) goes up. In Sisyphus, it’s only through action (aka failing) that the Ticker (FAILURES) increases. In Danaids, the Ticker (BATH FULL) increases with action only to quickly fall down again. Zeno, action is how the Start Point increases (until it doesn’t). In Tantalaus, no matter what you do, the Tickers (FRUIT and WATER) do not increase. For the four games where change in the Tickers is possible, it’s only Prometheus where inaction brings the Ticker up. In all these games, there’s no way to win, but only in Prometheus does pointlessly struggling forever stave off the days increasing.