Forgotten Ways

There's a rather simple game available right now on Steam called Forgotten Ways.  In its simplest terms it is a maze exploration game.  You navigate a 3D maze that is aesthetically pleasing interspersed with notes and clues left behind to guide you on your way.  The game feels unfinished, more of a beta than a final release as it appears to have been originally designed in Russian and translated into English as the translation is somewhat lacking.  At £1.69 [$1.99] though I wasn't expecting much from it, the main appeal was the visual design which reminded me a lot of The Witness by Jonathan Blow the developer behind Braid.  They have a number of shared elements predominantly the lack of enemies, no time constraints, no pressure, and minimal use of audio, effectively creating a relaxing experience.

With everything going on in the world right now I've taken to exploring games once again.  I've mentioned in the past that I originally wanted to pursue games design as a career and tailored my education to that goal with the ultimate prize being my degree in Computer Science with Games Technology.  However gaming has been something that I have had a love hate relationship with, again I have discussed this before on this blog.  Games like The Witness and Forgotten Ways however appeal to another side of me, that is the side that questions how far you can stretch the definition of a game.  I know how to solve a Rubik's Cube, by definition it is a puzzle, and therefore considered a game, but once you learn the algorithm to solve the cube, if you use that algorithm to solve it then you remove the gameplay element and pursue instead something else, more akin to instruction.

The Witness and Forgotten Ways both have one thing in common in this regard, that they are games you can really only "play" until you learn how to solve the puzzle you are presented with, once you know the solution then it's not really a game anymore.  Don't get me wrong, I like both games, and I would like to be able to do more with them, but neither one incorporates dynamic puzzle generation - except for one particular part of The Witness which I won't discuss here as this post is intended to be spoiler free for both games.

This hints at a much deeper problem with life itself, there are many things we only get the pleasure of enjoying once, after which no other experience will be able to recreate that moment, you can't re-experience epiphany.  On a somewhat macabre note, I have been contemplating the possibility of life after death, and one of the possibilities that is often thrown around is the concept of getting to live life again, to do it over but with different starting conditions.  The main criticism with the possibility of this happening that people tend to have is that if it were de rigueur the preferred path onward then surely evidence would exist, some hang over would remain, some hint that you had been here before and had these experiences prior - the more I reflect on the desire to have novel experiences once more the more I would have to argue if this were possible then you probably wouldn't want to remember anything from your past lives.  Really the only motivation to remember prior experience would be driven by ego and the desire to have an advantage next time round by knowing things so you would not have to relearn them. 

You can replay The Witness, and Forgotten Ways, and still have some form of gameplay to those subsequent experiences if your memory doesn't hold up.  If you can forget the path and forget the solutions then you can approach both games with an analytical mindset, but in both cases without completely forgetting what you experienced the first time round your memories will inevitably be jogged - it's ironic that this is the main obstacle to replay when they are both considered "walking simulator" games.  The only other conclusion to draw is not to consider them games at all but instead to considered them interactive art installations - 3D virtual landscapes with limited interactivity intended to encourage the viewer to explore and reflect on the experience.

If you think of life itself in the same way, what conclusion do you draw?  How would your experience of life change if I were to tell you life exists as one big art installation that you are born into and allowed to interact with for no other purpose than to experience it and reflect on it?