And the month of three smaller episodes instead of one big episode and one smaller episodes comes to a close. How’d it go? I’m not sure myself. It was a bit of a mad dash to get all of these episodes out, and while I definitely like shining light on smaller titles and having a broader set of games to discuss it also feels like I didn’t get to dig into the meat of any of it. All three games could have conceivably been turned into a full length episode if I’d had more time to meditate on them a bit. Instead this was very go-go-go. Still, it was a neat experiment. Maybe I’ll make it a recurring thing in September to cover small titles I’ve missed throughout the previous year? We’ll see. I still have stuff I’ve been meaning to talk about - Cart Life, Shelter, etc - but maybe it’s better to have material stored up for slow months.

Anyways, here’s the YouTube link if you’re so inclined to watch there. Script’s below the cut.

Continue?9876543210 is the latest indie game with a virtually unpronounceable title like AaaaAAAaaAA for the Awesome and VVVVVV. But as hard as it is to pronounce, Continue is also surprisingly hard to describe. Though I would expect no less from the developer who brought the world the Perfect Strangers video game. So bear with my explanation of the setup here, because the premise is both a bit complicated but also sort of necessary to understand the game.

In Continue you play as one of six randomly selected video game sprites that have been killed in their respective game but who is still in resident memory. See, in languages like Javascript (which, it’s implied, is what the player character’s game is written in) stuff exists in memory until it’s not needed anymore, and one way to check and see if it isn’t needed is whether any other bit of code is currently pointing to that memory address. If nothing is pointing to it it will get picked up in the next garbage collection cycle. Except garbage collection can be process intensive-ish, so it’s not kicked off but once every so often. So it’s possible a bit of data can exist in something akin to limbo - still existing, still in memory, but no one references it and it’s slated for deletion. And that’s where Continue starts: with the player character sprite sitting in a computer’s memory waiting for oblivion, having served their purpose to the video game.

They decide that that doesn’t sound particularly fun, so they take off and try to survive for as long as possible in the recesses of the computer’s memory. Your travels take you all over, from trailer parks to prisons to volcanos to ruins. But each area you visit is awaiting its own turn for the garbage collector to come and wipe it out, and a clock ticks down the time as each reference to your location is deleted. Each time a reference gets removed you play a minigame to fend off garbage collectors, and when the final reference gets cut the whole area gets wiped. So while it’s still there you need to simultaneously make sure to blast open the exits so you don’t get deleted along with the zone and also build up a central town square to avoid the main garbage collection cycle that comes for you every two levels. To do so you quickly do tasks for townsfolk - buying door access, remembering local lore, or returning sacred artifacts to the right temples. So that’s the tenthousand foot view: a little Half-Minute Hero here, a little Zelda 2 there, all sprinkled with a bit of Reboot.

Interspersed between those comparatively tense gameplay segments are slow paced cutscenes that reflect a bit of the player character’s internal dialog as they stare out to sea, lie face down in a field, or reflect on their childhood pet. The natural environments and human longings espoused in these cutscenes stick out in stark contrast to the artifice of the NPCs and fantasy worlds in the core game, and it tremendously helps flesh out a bit of pathos that might otherwise be absent. It confers the game a meditative feel at times, and gives the player a chance to connect with their avatar before the end inevitably comes.

And that inevitability is what brings the game together. It is very much a game about mortality and the certainty of death. And not just any death, but oblivion. The game makes it pretty clear it’s not worried about afterlife and judgement but the very cessation of being itself. And it’s not treated like some heady, abstract concept talked about by NPCs but far removed from the game itself; the mechanics hammer home just how close to that oblivion you are. Every reference that gets deleted gives the garbage collectors a chance to take precious RAM from you, and as each level draws to a close the world begins to fall apart in a mad dash to the exit. Then you’re asked to do it again, only this time it’s harder. And harder. You’re a doomed character in a doomed world, and it’s not a matter of if but when the collection algorithm will come for you. And then when the main garbage collection cycle executes after every other level, the gameplay consists of taking shelter in the town you’ve built as your player character literally prays oblivion doesn’t come for them just yet.

Speaking of praying - the denizens of these memory blocks have begun to worship the garbage collector as a god. It’s not hard to see why - the garbage collector creates the garbage pile, the garbage collector expunges the garbage pile. It is the alpha and omega of everything these characters see. Some sects view deletion as an ultimate answer that removes want and need and others cower in fear from an entity they view as capricious and vengeful. Either way, though, that religion gives context, meaning, and solace to those trapped in this limbo. “My lightening, my prayer” is sort of their version of “amen,” but it’s not just a slogan: it’s also a motif carried throughout the game. Lightning is force; it is power; and it is wholly destructive. When the garbage collector comes, it comes in the form of lightening. But it also comes when the player relies on the lightning of NPCs to clear the path out of the levels. In contrast prayers are are meditative, passive, and reflect the desires and beliefs of those who hold them. They are what you collect to build up your town, they are the shield from the chaotic forces of destruction. They are also what you often take with you from these villages as you walk away - assuming you make it out before it’s deleted. And it sets up a dichotomy between action and idea, between destruction and creation, and between short term and long term resource management. Immediate action can get you out of trouble, but it’s beliefs, faiths, and ideals that shelter us against the true storms to come.

As the game closes it becomes less about fighting oblivion and more about making peace with one’s own mortality. It can become clear early on - before a garbage collection cycle even starts - that you won’t make it through another one. If you’ve had to expunge a few buildings to free up some RAM after being hit by garbage collectors too many times, you may well know you’re going to your death. And in a lot of games this is a really crappy feeling and it’s where you turn off the game and quickload another. But the game wisely uses a single save here - you have to carry your character into oblivion before you can even start a new game. And here, at the end, you get a glimpse into the character’s passing - the places they’ve been and what they learned there, who it helped them become before they died. It’s where those contemplative moments alone with them, that build up of pathos, really pays off. Then moments before deletion you learn the emotion they went into the void with. It’s surprisingly affecting, owing to the fact that you not only watched this character you sort of got to know die but in some weird abstract sense guided them to this moment. And you hope whatever that last fleeting moment was, that it was good.