A short analysis of Loneliness (The game)

Poetry in motion


http://www.necessarygames.com/my-games/loneliness/flash

Did you give up; Lose hope? Lose hope, find it, then have it crushed again? Were you mad or indifferent? You probably learned a little about yourself during this experience, about how you react or would react to perceived or real isolation. But whatever your attitude is, the end gets trickier and trickier to see until it's completely blotted out and you lose your way. You lose your control and slip deeper and deeper until you finally find the end of the road. Either way, real or delusional loneliness becomes blackness.

Loneliness is the best representation of mechanics with meaning we have at this time. The entirety of this game is purely representational(Apart from the message at the end which grounds the experience in reality). Represented mainly in motion. It's a feeling. It's the video game equivalent of poetry.

These groups of blocks mostly seem to be having a joyous time. They spin around and are structured in many different ways. Like real human people and their relationships. And you come along and mess everything up. These blocks are repulsed by you, literally repelling away and disappearing. Some of these blocks were desperately trying to find each-other, but you ruined that too.

The second most important part of this game, the music, is a very good representation too. It embodies both sadness and suspense. This is critical to the feeling of the game. The music goes through the not-quite-the-same cycles all the time, like the player is probably doing. As you go past the many groups the music gets higher in tempo and then straight down again in slightly different ways as you pass the slightly differently structured social groups.


This game is pure meaning and metaphor, it is gaming's own poetry.