Minimalism

Now, what an intriguing little game!

Minimalism is a short, artsy piece in a world of black and white. Right off the bat, the game lets you know what it's about-- Dreary contemplation is backed up with haunting ambient darkwave while a flickering film grain coats the screen. The prose can get a bit... Well, lets just say it leans a little too far into "boy's first film class" for much of it, but it's such a short game I didn't find it a detractor. If anything, it just let me know how clear of a vision the author had for this world.



The assets of the game are all presented as <words>. The bed is quite literally <bed>, and interacting with these objects will bring up an image with more detail-- Or rather, more words. The logic the world employs is so literal it rounds back around to be whimsical.



Unfortunately, this literal text adventure carries some of the issues of its ilk. Despite the short overall runtime, checking all the objects is a noticeably slow process, with the more detailed image sliding in and out every single time. This is made worse by the fact that you have check objects multiple times in the correct order to activate the right event flags. It would help if the detailed item images also included the items that supposedly sat on top of/surrounded it, but they are absent and thus the only way you'd know that key item existed is if you very slowly clicked through all the objects in the room until you triggered it's appearance. The game is short enough that it's not the worst thing ever, but if another project was made in this style, it would help to be more telling with the images/dialogue presented!

The game ends colorfully with the same artistic flair it was presented with. Overall, it's an interesting little peak into a world that disappears with a click. I'd love to see more from this mind.