Impersonal is a game about light, relationships, and how those relationships can influence people. In the game, you control a ball of colored light navigating through a maze. Your goal is to explore how different lights and colors interact with one another, discovering multiple potential endings. The core of the game lies in understanding these interactions, making choices, and unraveling the maze of possibilities in this cyclical experience.
This game was created in 2014, inspired by a talk from Jonathan Blow (the renowned game designer behind Braid and The Witness). In that talk, Blow discussed the concept of dynamical meaning in games, referencing The Marriage by Rod Humble as an example. In The Marriage, the game is filled with obscure interactions and symbols that only begin to make sense through exploration, it kind of have a narrative shaped by its mechanics. Though Rod states that he feels it is flawed from his own perspective because people don't seem to really get how the rules explains marriage.
This approach to storytelling captivated me. Although I too recognize Impersonal has its flaws in narrative delivery (the same way rod said), I believe it still offers an intriguing and unconventional way to tell stories—one rooted in interactions. To me, this is how games should convey their stories: through the player's engagement with the world and its systems.
At the end of the day It's a pretentious game, with minimal and experimental art. It's not a game made with the idea of being a good game, in fact the attempt here was to focus on dynamical meaning. Where the game mechanics are responsible for telling a story and not the art or story embedded in the game itself.
The game contains:
- 4 different endings
- an open map where you can explore
- some puzzles
Thank you for playing.
