Mind Melting Confusion

First thing that comes to mind is probably, "What?" which was my thought exactly when playing these games. When I first launched 'Catacombs' I was a little confused to what my end goal was. It felt as if I was doing a 3D game test for the first time, but as time went on in the game, things became a little 'different'.

My guess is as good as any one else's when it comes to the goal of the game. My first instinct was just to explore, see what the game had to offer. Only a couple of minutes into exploring and illusions became a major part of the game. I walked down what I expected to be a hallway, to realize I was running into a corner of a wall. Nothing but confusion and questions were running through my mind on this encounter.

The image above displays one of these mind boggling corner illusions Catacombs presents further into the game play. The next game, 'Bernband' is a very similar game. You are placed into the games universe and granted the same question as when you start playing Catacombs, "What?". Although this game isn't as much of a brain strainer in the way that Catacombs uses its large colour palette and illusions. But in a way the graphics of the two can be very similar. Both games use a pixelated view and Bernband does it in an odd way. Meaning that the view in the distance seems very pixelated and even objects close to the camera seem to be projected in a funny way.

Similarly to Catacombs, you are placed into a room with no clear objective other than your own to explore. You leave the room into an empty hallway and have to start making choices on the whereabouts you would like to explore first. I played the game for 20 minutes before I had come to the conclusion that I may have explored everything there is to explore, but that didn't stop me from trying to see if there was more to the world than what I have already seen.

When you do spot signs of life, you start to realize that you're not on a human planet and that you are from another world. You will come to find that the world is a little more alive than you may expect it to be. There are dance clubs, bars and even a school. But there is more to the world than that once you explore. The player must pass through elevators to go to new areas in the world and there are heaps of them around for you to go into. 

Being an exploration based game, there are bound to be secrets hidden in plain sight. A room you encounter not too far along has a floating orb in the center of the room and beneath that is a secret door. Where this leads isn't anything you would expect. You free-fall into a tunnel which leads into another free-fall, not knowing what is down the next hallway makes you want to explore more. Along the way you see pure banter, an alien using a urinal. Nothing out of the ordinary on this planet, but going along further leads to yet another free-fall, but it leaves you in pure darkness, a void to nowhere it seems. At the end of the short fall you land on a platform with a small bar.

Now how are these two games, that look totally different, similar? Both of these games are simple at the core and allow for one main purpose, to explore an unfamiliar world that we have not seen before. Although these games do seem very different, their function is the same. How they differ involves a little more. Beyond their graphical differences, the main diversity is between the worlds they're set in. Catcacombs doesn't have much of a story behind it, you are left with more questions than there are answers provided. In Bernband on the other hand, you are in a world that feels alive. There is more to to the world to interpret. Even though there isn't a story to be told, you can gather a story from the environment presented to you.

These games offer an experience distant from what AAA games are offering now. Both games offer a chance to create your own story and interpret what is happening in each game your own way. Most games give you a backstory and/or tell you the story throughout the gameplay. Although both games differ, they can provide questions for the user to answer for themselves, use some imagination and explore the world to uncover what secrets it may hold.