I played Journey on my iphone which is a game created by Annapurna Interactive, and a game that is targeted toward players ages four and up. This is a single player game where the player walks around a world and discovers their character’s abilities as they make their way toward an unknown goal. The game follows simple mechanics of walking forward, moving the camera, and jumping when eligible. As you make your way through each level, you find out more about the story’s narrative through impressive visuals and absolutely no dialogue. Journey creates a story for the user to discover through multiple challenges and context clues while simulating a controlled freedom to the user.
At the beginning of my journey with this game (pun intended), I found myself a bit confused on what to do. There were no instructions, and the only context that was given to me as a player was the hill with objects on top of it that you see at the very beginning of the game. Naturally, I made my way up and found myself gifted with visuals that allowed me to infer on what to do next, and I later found out that this was what the game mostly consisted of. It was a continuous cycle of receiving very little context and figuring out what to do with it. While I feel that this made the game unique to a certain degree, there were some points where I got impatient with the game and decided to do something else on my phone (yet I always yearned to go back and complete the level). However, the levels were never too difficult to solve, and I always managed to move on fairly easily.
The game’s design is beautiful. From the details in which the sand surfs the breeze to the animation provided between levels, each aspect of the game provides satisfaction for the player and allows for further immersion into the world and story. The visuals were also partnered with great audio that was also soothing and majestic. These elements paired excellently with the free roam aspect as the user is able to explore at their own will and bask in the sensational pleasure that the game provides.
Looking back at Journey, I find myself wanting to complete it if not to know what happens then to just experience the sounds and visuals for as long as I can. Although the game could provide a bit more context to the player in order to pick up the pace, I do believe that the lack of context does allow for a more complex experience. The absence of dialogue and visually dependent narrative allows the player to effortlessly fall in love with the world and its challenges while also getting a fun time out of it.
