In my first attempt to understand Problem Attic, I looked for symbolism and narrative progressions -- signs of legible details -- in order find comfort in familiarity. I was inclined to do so because this was a platformer game, whose form (to me) harbors a sense of fatalistic progression.
Their presentation suggests that there exists a direction to which the player must proceed: up platforms, across platforms, below platforms. The layers of blocks and surfaces upon which the protagonist has to progress therein oblige us to move our characters toward predetermined paths. Items, resources, movement -- all such things are equipped and/or are directly bestowed to our given avatars.
Our job then, is to familiarize ourselves to our champions’ abilities and mechanical nuances in order to gradually conquer the terrain -- to accumulate knowledge and apply them accordingly. The concept of accumulation and familiarization is shattered in Problem Attic. The most naked mechanics of platformer games (jumping and moving in four cardinal directions) is the only consistency that threads it together (though the intensity of movement also varies). Nothing else remains reliably consistent: everything is subject to distortion.
As I explored each room dotted around the map, I was subject to varying problems, challenges, discomforts; all of which made a pungent statement: your reality is subject to my domain. Defamiliarization, uncertainty, discomforting visual and auditory details, non-linear progression; all such elements of this game rendered itself an unpleasant experience all the while reintroducing the concept of platformer games.
I did not have an objective, the assistance of items, special abilities to protect my character’s identity from nihilistic identity crises, other characters I could see myself in relation to: it was purely an experience with myself, looking into rooms I/the character/the designer may have locked willingly; now exploring them one by one as I familiarized myself to defamiliarization.
As I heaved on through the problems presented in the rooms in Problem Attic and became familiar with uncertainty; as I saw the prisons (wall formations in the map) in which each problem was contained remain unchanged despite having “solved” each problem; as I descended into the chaos that is Problem Attic only to find myself separating what I thought were avatars representing problems from the intrusive crosses that assisted my very progression, I found myself disturbed at a cruel irony. The cross without which I could not have completed this journey was so aggressively oppressive and predatory, and the avatars I perceived as problems so vulnerable.
Admittedly, Problem Attic is not a game I understand in entirety. There are so many nuances and details I do not understand or even observe. But I think that’s okay. It has acquainted me with certain sensations -- perhaps ones I’d prefer to live without -- but at least I’ll be familiar with them when I face them myself, or even better, be able to identify it looming in others.
Comments