The Somerton Man - Itch Game of the Week
A true crime game that bumps up against some of gaming’s oldest rules.
The Somerton Man is a game created by Colestia. It can be found at the time of writing at this page.
Gaming’s greatest weakness is its need to be conquerable. Modern game design conventions don’t loan themselves well to portraying impossible odds. Even the hardest of games are still heavily obfuscated breadcrumb trails laid out to lead the player to success. So how does one make a true crime game about a mystery that’s never been solved? The Somerton Man’s approach is to focus more on the tangled web of details, to focus on the experience of being overwhelmed. Created by Colestia as the first of a series of experiments in adapting crime stories, The Somerton Man is an interesting test in the field of documentary gamecraft.
The Somerton Man relays the story of an unsolved poisoning that took place in Australia in 1948. The eponymous man in the case has to this day never been conclusively identified, and the case is full of equally directionless clues. It’s a story full of coded messages, Persian poetry clippings, abandoned briefcases, potential international espionage but yet no answers.
So to depict all this, Colestia made a game that’s explicitly about the details of the case. The Somerton Man would be familiar to those well versed in Twine games. The work is comprised largely of text, with particular key words or phrases serving as links unveiling further details on that concept. Unlike your traditional Twine game layout though, none of the text ever disappears. Instead more and more text and photos are added to the playspace and the player has to start panning across to read all of it as they won’t be able to keep it all on screen at once. For example, finding a clue that refers to a specific place will mark it on the map but the player has to scramble over to the image to see that. The game space ultimately turns into a tangled web of clues and details that may or may not be related. Wading through it all the player starts to feel like the stereotype of a paranoid conspiracy theorist, tying together strings on a tackboard that stops making sense after taking even one step backwards.
The Somerton Man really captures the feeling of befuddlement. Just when the player thinks they have the clue they need to see the story through to its conclusion, it all comes to an abrupt halt. This pattern happens again and again and is a novel approach to the central problem of needing to win. The game is ok with simply presenting the reality and leaving it there. If documentary games are going to become a larger part of the medium, it’s a sentiment that designers and players are going to have to get accustomed to. And The Somerton Man suggests that feeling of unresolved angst has a place at the larger table of games.
The Somerton Man was the game of the week for February 12th, 2017.
