Itching For More: Under The Tree
Every Wednesday …let’s not kid ourselves. Extremely late on a Wednesday night, but usually very very early on a Thursday Morning, even if impending assignment deadlines loom close, Itching For More shall spontaneously explode into being. This week, teeny tiny story game, Under The Tree
As always, spoilers-a-plenty.
Under The Tree, by Feng Pan is a small wordless story, primarily focusing on loss, made for Ludum Dare 35. You begin, next to a gravestone. Your only options are to move left, back towards your house, or right, towards the grave. As time passes (shown through a change of background colour and the growth of small grass), a tree begins to grow.
Under The Tree’s main mechanic is a continuous cycle. Walk left, walk right, repeat. All the character does is walk steadily, to and from the grave of his lost loved one, as the tree steadily grows. When dealing with the death of someone you often find yourself stuck in cycles, unable to cope without them. Under The Tree shows follows character’s journey through loss.
Ludum Dare 35′s theme was Shapeshift — the process of changing or morphing into something different. A perfect fit for this is loss, which Feng Pan explores in many ways. The first are the simple graphics. When losing someone, the world often seems to lack fidelity and passion, mirrored in Under The Tree by the simplistic colour scheme and pixel graphics. The repetitive colours and animations also continue to reinforce the cyclical nature of grief.
Occasionally in Under The Tree, you reach the dead of night.
This is a time when you can see nothing. Enveloped in a velvet black, your mind wanders, unable to sleep, walk or think, you wait it out. The black is all consuming, bar the small light of hope from home. And yet you barely make it through the night, transformed, shapeshifting into an older, more fragile state, no longer walking briskly, but slowly, each step an effort.
Part way through your journey, you befriend a dog, a happy little thing, who is free to come and go as it chooses. The dog’s narrative purpose is to reflect how trapped you are, how you are stuck Under The Tree, with only your constant walk to comfort you.
Eventually, the grief will be the death of you, whilst the grass grows and falls constantly, you lack that constant reassurance, instead once falling, you join your lost one under the tree.
Yet, there’s something pleasant about the entire experience. There is relief in death, a transcendence from the infinite cycle of walking to the peace of Under The Tree, finally reunited with your loved one. Under The Tree is a brilliant allegory for emotional anguish and the journey through it and past it, no longer stuck under a growing tree.
Under The Tree is a free game, available here
