We’ve been waiting for it for years but the moment is finally here. A game where you can control everything you see. Did you ever want to be a camel? Or a flying pizza slice? I know you did at one point in your life. Everything is hard to explain on paper since it’s one of those games that aims for the ‘journey’ instead of gameplay. It’s a game where you can control everything you see and that’s incredibly strange but awesome at the same time.
I am the camel
You start your adventure as a camel, rolling its way through the desert. Yes, I said rolling and this can be taken literally. The game doesn’t care about physics and handles objects as something that’s falling down from a table. Seeing your camel roll through the desert is a hilarious and mesmerizing sight. There’s something about it that triggers you to see more of this strange world.
The world of Everything is crafted with care but isn’t filled with incredible details. Instead, the developers focussed on the objects and animals that inhabit this strange new world. With a push of the shoulder buttons, you can access each object you’re seeing. Ranging from the rocks on the ground to the smallest insect floating around in the air. If you create a certain bond with those objects by singing to them, you’ll be able to take control over them. It even feels a little like Katamari when you gather around a group of objects by calling them out. Imagine rolling through the desert as a huge pile of camels. Yes, dreams are coming true here.
What’s the goal here?
So what’s the goal of the game? Well, after spending a couple of hours with it, I’m still not sure. The game wants to demonstrate how small we actually are compared to the countless objects that are found on Earth or that we created. You can control everything in the game. Ranging from plants to huge buildings in big cities and even galaxies. It’s strange that you’ll never see persons running around in the world. Humans aren’t the center of the universe, so why would you want to control them, right?
Some objects are marked in the world, indicating they have something to share. Those objects share hints on how to advance or let you think about some deep-thought messages. Nothing that challenging but there simply isn’t that much to achieve here, you’re here to enjoy the experience and that’s that. The closest thing coming to a gameplay element are the stats, showing you how many objects you’ve controlled, controlling them all being your end-game.
The scale of things
What’s really impressive about Everything, is its scale. It really pushes you to think outside our human perspective. As human beings, we see our city as something big, something that’s worth noticing. On the other hand, we barely think about the grass we’re stepping on and how big such a field much be for a small ant. Everything puts those things into the right perspective by using an impressive scale model. Remember the camel I spoke about first? Crossing the desert as the camel was very easy to do and it even felt like a small place. Imagine that you transform into a small plant afterward. The world of the plant is just a fragment of the desert and it feels so big. It’s great to have these things put into perspective, especially once you start messing around with entire galaxies. This is without a doubt one of the strengths of Everything.
Alan Watts
This brings us to the other feature that makes Everything such a unique game. Instead of other games trying to deliver lectures, Everything has the exclusive right to include lectures of Alan Watts. Alan Watts is a known British-American pop philosopher that gave a lot of interesting lectures about a kind of universalist outlook. The lectures appear at certain moments in the game and you can continue while you’re listing to a lecture, transforming the experience into a more philosophical one.
Alan Watts talks about the universe as a bigger picture where the human race is a small part of. There’s no us or them, there’s one big universe and we are the children of the stars. You know what kind of vibe I’m talking about and personally, I liked listing to those lectures. Of course, judging a game on these lectures would be madness since everybody responds differently to philosophy. If you’re open-minded, it’s definitely worth giving a shot!
Verdict
Judging a game like this is a hard nut to crack. It’s a game that’s hard to recommend since everybody has different ideas when it comes to philosophy and games like this. I’m rating this game based on my personal adventure and I must admit it’s an adventure I won’t forget that easily. I didn’t always understand what I was doing, but I kept going, trying to find more interesting lectures and objects to control. Everything is one of those special games that’s definitely worth trying if you’re able to think outside of the box.
4 out of 5:
