For this week’s critical play, I played Journey, a walking simulator developed by Thatgamecompany. The game was originally released on the Playstation 3, but was later released for the Playstation 4, Windows, and iOS.
Journey is a game that depicts a traveler making their way through a desert towards a distant mountain. On their journey, the main character wanders through traces of an abandoned civilization and uncovers the story of what happened to leave it in ruins.
The game is likely targeted towards a wide audience as there is no combat in the game, and there aren’t any scary scenes outside of a couple with the stone dragon/serpent, so it would be suitable for kids as well as adults.
There are few explicit instructions in the game– the only thing the game instructs you how to do is on which button is used to jump. Players are able to take one of three actions (procedure)– they can walk, jump (for a certain duration depending on how long the player’s scarf is and how charged it is), and sing. Singing has a couple of interesting effects– by charging a note, the player can absorb cloth nearby and charge up an extra high jump; it can also be used to activate cutscenes and murals.
However, the game provides a subtle guide for where to go in the map through the use of fluttering pieces of cloth and cloth creatures, along with beacons of light in certain areas.
One of the game’s intended forms of fun is narrative. The game utilizes an embedded narrative– the story is revealed as the player explores the world and discovers clues. The story is revealed in two different ways– there are mid-level cut scenes, but also murals scattered throughout the world that reveal hints to the abandoned civilization’s path. In this sense, walking through (and interacting with) the world expands on the game’s narrative. In addition to needing to walk through the world in order to physically reach the locations that trigger cutscenes, there are multitude of hints as to what happened to the civilization in the game scattered throughout the world (such as in the murals, but also simply in artifacts in the world, like the abandoned trains and buildings).
Another kind of fun present in the game is sense pleasure. As the player walks through the game, they’re greeted with beautifully designed, if not a bit eerie, scenes, accompanied by haunting music. In addition, the controller (in this case, my phone since I played on mobile) vibrates with certain sounds, immersing players further into the world by combining visual and audio stimuli with tactile stimuli.
The primary objective of the game is to make it to the top of the distant mountain. A secondary objective is to collect all of the glowing artifacts, but this isn’t necessary for the completion of the game. However, one particular failure for me was when I ended up stuck in the first area for about an hour since I couldn’t figure out how to progress. I ended up going back to the start area several times because I was convinced that I had gone the wrong way. Part of the issue was that I misunderstood the objective at the beginning– I thought the main objective was to gather all of the glowing artifacts (while this is an objective, the main objective was to progress through the map) since those stood out to me visually in the environment. I only got past this by haphazardly button mashing in the right place. In this situation, the game could perhaps be improved by offering hints or more explicit direction if the player requests it.
Walking in Journey provides a way for the player to interact with the environment and uncover the story for themselves. The game reveals almost nothing explicitly to the character– it is only by experiencing it by interacting with the world for themselves does the user begin to understand some of the mechanics (for example, how singing works) as well as the story. The user can walk and interact with murals to uncover more of the lore, or walk to checkpoints in the world in order to trigger cutscenes. In addition, walking as the main mechanic of movement helps provide the player with a sense of scale for the world they are in. For example, there was no other option but to walk across the desert for long periods of (real and in-game) time, which underscored how far the main character was traveling to reach their goal of the distant mountain.
Caption: The aforementioned mountain can be seen in the distance. This is also coincidentally the starting area that I got stuck in for about an hour.
