
And if I’m not sure why the road is there, if I’m not sure what the destination is, then it leaves me to ask why the obstacles are there–and that’s a particularly dangerous question. A dystopian isometric adventure, following a lonely office worker as he attempts to return home in the face of impossible odds. It tells the story of Solo, a nondescript worker in an unnamed office in an unnamed city of a futuristic, dystopian world.

It is an object of time and effort, and I’m not sure why it’s there. The Plane Effect is a game developed by Innovina Interactive and Studio Kiku, published by Pqube in 2021. Someone had to build that road, even digitally. (In part, because very few games can claim to be “necessary” in any meaningful sense, and because necessity is very rarely a useful limit on the existence of a cultural object.)īut even in The Plane Effect’s relatively short play time, I found myself asking why it had me spend a not-insignificant amount of time walking and driving in a straight line, simply to reach the next obstacle. Helpless over the cosmos, all you already know is that you need to return to your household, as quickly as you possibly can. Even as a critic I’m inclined to spend more time dealing with what is in front of me, and how exactly it does what it does, than in attempting to deal with why this particular story or system might be necessary at this particular time. The Plane Effect Free Download (v) It’s your closing day on the workplace, it’s time to clock out and return house loomed over by a cosmic anomaly with an oppressive, otherworldly drive. If I come down leaning toward the negative on the second half of that question, I do have to acknowledge that “why” is a troublesome question for a lot of video games. A Space For The Unbound is a slice-of-life. Was he trying to escape from a Kafkaesque office environment? Was he trying to find or recover his lost family? Was he an automaton rather than a person, and if so, did that have any impact whatsoever on his status as an office drone or his connection to his apparent family?ĭo these things really matter in a puzzle game, or are mood and a clever set of gears sufficient? The whys and hows For The Plane Effect on the Xbox One, GameFAQs has game information and a community message board for game discussion.


While the unnamed office worker I directed was repeatedly haunted by spectres of his apparent wife and child that would appear and fade away, I was never sure what exactly he was trying to do beyond the demands of overcoming the immediate obstacle. Its willingness to embrace non sequitur in its storytelling leaves an impression of randomness rather than cohesion. And yet, I’m not entirely sure that the game justifies the time it demands.
