The Indigo Parallel

this game is immaculate i have no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ clue whats happening or what im doing but its amazing

So, this is one of those games that I almost feel more comfortable calling an "art experience" more than a game. Don't get me wrong, there ARE gameplay elements and I am not the one to say "walking sims" don't belong in the video game canon, but this feels different than that. As far as I am currently aware, there is no end to this game. I ran through branching paths for four and a half hours and never really got a grip on what one might need to do to "conclude" this experience. I got to a place where it felt like the story I was unraveling met a decent break off and felt like that was where my time with this would end. I did not play around with the different insanity modes or anything like that, so there is a decent possibility that I missed a chunk of material. C'est la vie, that's the nature of experiences like this. I also have never played Yume Nikki or LSD: Dream Emulator so any comparison points that others have drawn can't connect with me. I think the art, music, and soundscapes in this are stunning. They are deeply surreal, as you might expect, and kind of lulled me into a trance like state. I was legitimately scared a few times! I think that speaks to how immersed I got in the shifting landscape, so flowers for that. The narrative pieces I was able to pick up were compelling and emotional. I stuck around re-treading paths I had already gone through to see if there were any more kernels I could pick up because I am loathe to miss out on narrative. That's where the frustration point for me came in: I am still not entirely sure there is an ending to this. I think if I was able to give myself permission to finish the experience when I felt I had had my fill, I would not have gotten as cranky as I did in the final 20 minutes or so. So I guess that's all I can really say to people considering checking this out: give yourself permission to explore without need for conclusion. I haven't experienced a lot of games in this vein, so it was a good learning experience for me in that regard! This experience simultaneously feels like a dream, a nightmare, and a webpage you stumbled upon on the family computer at 4 am when you were supposed to be asleep. Take that as you will.