Imagine being able to go back to the happy years of adolescence, when you thought you were very busy at school, but in reality you could spend most of the afternoon chatting with friends and acquaintances on forums and major social networks. Whether it was MSN, Miiverse or other platforms, the possibility of meeting video game enthusiasts from anywhere in the world was real, and significantly expanded the narrow views of your bedroom. Here, Lucy Blundell (aka Kinmoku) wanted to capture this experience, photographing it and reconstructing it with meticulous care.
Reinforced by the Critics' Choice Award within the framework of the Indie Cup UK '23 (we already told you about the interesting initiatives of the Indie Cup in our report on Ukrainian developers in times of war), Videoverse It turned out to be a great confirmation. Between casual chats and reports of toxic comments, through Feudal Fantasy games and days waiting for that special person to reconnect in Videoverse, the video game developed and self-published by Kinmoku is undoubtedly one of the most interesting releases of this already very rich 2023 . .
We tell you about Kinmoku Shark, the rise and fall of its gaming social network, and the lives of Emmett, Vivi, and company in our Videoverse Review.
Shark, dolphin and all the lives in between.
Germany, 2003. Emmett, a young fifteen-year-old video game enthusiast, enters the gaming social network associated with his Shark console. Videoverse is a platform where you can chat with friends (even with the help of a rudimentary video camera), as well as post comments and drawings. What immediately catches the eye is Kinmoku's ability to build a simple, intuitive and totally convincing interface: Videoverse could well be a real social network of the early 2000s, and the care instilled by the developer is an excellent springboard to allowing the player to feel involved in the events of Emmett and his companions, which last approximately four hours.
Emmett He is what we would call a normal teenager. Coming from a fairly wealthy family, he may have concrete hopes of receiving a Dolphin for Christmas, the console announced as the successor to the Shark. All this will lead to a change in the balance of Videoverse, or rather, to its definitive closure: the social network associated with Shark will be replaced by Ocean Online, which will be available on Dolphin with a subscription service. This imminent change upsets the fragile balance of the Videoverse, overwhelming Emmett and his friends, and in particular Vivi, a recently registered user on the social network, capable of attracting Emmett's attention thanks to her wonderful drawings inspired by the video game. Feudal Fantasy.
Videoverse becomes like this A small precarious world, suspended between the present and the non-future., marked by users' fear of losing contact with their virtual chat partners. And sometimes even something more. Thanks to a simply excellent level of writing, Kinmoku manages to carry out a compelling narrative and create authentic characters, transporting us to other places and other times, without creating an effect of nostalgia as an end in itself. Blundell's work, in fact, manages to stimulate critical reflection on the Internet and its evolution, on privileges, disabilities, adolescence, emotional addictions, and does so with a light touch, without ever being pedantic or didactic.
One life, many crossroads
en Videoverse virtual space Small and large dramas develop, friendships are built and we try (if we want) to maintain order, helping the moderators - less and less as the closure of the social network approaches - to keep toxic users under control and to real cyberbullies. The dialogue and comment options on posts within the Videoverse open up to different developments and endings, making Kinmoku's work interesting to play over and over again. Depending on our behaviors and interactions with other users, some possibilities could be opened or impossible, giving rise to crossroads and, therefore, different situations. We would like to point out that a good knowledge of the English language is necessary since, at the moment, Videoverse does not have a Spanish translation: this is totally understandable, since it is a video game created by a single person, with the help of some collaborators external for the creation of the music and for some aspects related to programming.
Videoverse is a powerful reflection oninteraction in spaces dominated by large commercial companies, spaces that users take for granted, but that are actually subject to the will of amorphous and distant entities. Emmett, Vivi, Zalor, Tifa-Chan, MarKun666 and everyone else will find themselves dealing with a rapidly disintegrating virtual reality and the awareness of the fragility of everyday relationships, but anchored to an unscrupulous commercial system. Kinmoku tells it all thanks to simple, effective and straight-to-the-point pixel art. On the Internet we found reports of small "stumbles" related to some errors in the continuation of the story, but in our test we did not find any problems. The soundtrack composed by Clark Aboud (Slay the Spire) helps us go back twenty years, full of chilling sounds very suitable to reconstruct the atmosphere of that era of the game and our lives.
Conclusions
Tested version PC with Windows digital delivery Steam Price 12.79 € Holygamerz.com 9.0 Readers (5) 7.7 your voteThe videoverse engages and shocks, moves and exalts, but above all it makes us reflect, with a pinch of nostalgia, on what it means to grow up and deal with the infinite diversity of other people's lives. With writing that is never pedantic and always natural, Lucy Blundell brings to life characters that we will remember for years: Emmett, a teenager who will learn to recognize his privilege, Vivi, a young man who faces events he would never have expected, along with The rest of the cast manage to create a fresco so full of life that it seems real. To achieve this effect, the meticulous construction of the interface, incredibly immersive in its simplicity, should not be underestimated. We're sure Videoverse will be talked about for years to come and we recommend it without reservation.
PRO
- Excellently built virtual world
- Top-notch writing
- Flawless interface
- Emmett and Videoverse's stories have a lot to say
AGAINST
- Some bugs reported by the community to be resolved
