| ULTRAWORLD EXODUS NeonSerpent, 2014 |
  UltraWorld Exodus is a game released by NeonSerpent in 2014, It's kind of a "walking simulator"/"exploration"/"existential treastise"/"art exhibit in digital form"/"whatever-the-heck". It's free on Steam and not particularly popular as far as I'm aware.
It's meant as a mix of the things above, but in story mode you are a prophetic hero brought to Ultraworld to help the Sentient A.I. running it with his existential problems that might lead to the destruction of the world....by his own hand. This is done by exploring the world and talking with him and other inhabitants of UltraWorld. There is also a free-roam "Vacation Mode". So much of the game is just a walking simulator exploring an abstract 3-D landscape that falls somewhere between the old Dire Straights "Money for Nothing" video, and some kind of retrowave futuristic "trapped in the computer" landscape. Apparently the A.I. that builds and runs Ultraworld is having some kind of personal crisis and you're some prophetic hero. Basically, through communication, you're helping a Sentient A.I. through it's own personal breakdown or existential crisis...I'm still making sense of that part as of this writing. It seems to have gained some cult following, and does have some good press surrounding it. It's even self-described as "pretentious". I'll confess, it has a pretty bangin' soundtrack.Synthwave in a Neon Landscape - My Experiences I picked up Ultraworld: Exodus at the suggestion of some filters on Steam because I was looking for a pile of free "Walking Simulators" to roam around in. This one was picked up in the same round as I snagged BABBDI, and Endless Becoming - Apartment. This is the oldest of those three being released in 2014, but you have to understand something, 2014 sucked for me personally, but when it came to games, gaming was kinda' my "savior". I was 31, working stiff at a huge fortune 500 corporation under contract, making shit for my level of work, and depressed. Five Nights at Freddy's came out at that time. I was finding a new genre for myself in "New Retro Wave" - basically, Synthwave, a ironic form of musical "Retro Futurism". This game, to me, is like a Synthwave Cyberpunk serenade with some deep dialogue. I'm still making sense of some of it. THIS is what I look for in liminal space games and fantasy spaces like this: ESCAPISM. In my personal opinion, the world looks a lot like what I imagine the inside of an ATARI 2600 game would look like as a modern 3-D world. A vibe I wholeheartedly like. The game features a kicking soundtrack. There's not a whole lot in sound-effects, but the music really makes the whole digital-cyberpunk-Atari-Meets-Milkshake-3D vibe of the whole game. It actually has a lot of what I liked about V.R. games on my cell phone with a Google Cardboard Headset if you ask me. Anyway, I still have a lot of exploring to do in this one, but I have a video of me playing it on my latest gaming computer that I'm currently building (before the 32GB of RAM upgrade coming Tuesday) and it came out looking pretty good though I'm a bit chaotic getting back to my old Logitech keyboard and trackball. VIDEOS |
