Passage, The Game

I'm a bit of a gamer
Not just that, I'm pretty knowledgeable about a LOT of games—even games that I have no interest in playing. And because of this, I was slightly surprised when I heard about Passage. With good games, the word usually gets out quite quickly, and so there aren't many that I need to do research on. There are a few notable exceptions of games that were not popular and I did have to do some research on, but for the most part, this is a category where I truly know my stuff.

But passage is something different
I'm rarely this emotionally affected by a game. I mean, I'm writing a blog post because of it, so that means that it must mean a lot to me, no? Just like most every game, you move around, accomplish your goal and finish. Unlike most every game, there are no enemies, there is no clear goal and the finish is something entirely unexpected.

It's 2D side scrolling game with only 4 inputs—Up, Down, Left and Right. And those do exactly what you'd think they'd do.



But before I continue...
That was literally all that I can say about it without spoiling anything major. If you are to continue reading, I recommend that you take five minutes and play the game. Yeah, you got that right, FIVE minutes. And the file size is teeny tiny—less than 80 MB unpacked. There's no install, just run it from the .exe. It really couldn't be easier.

I really recommend it, and unfortunately I cannot go into further detail about how it affected me without giving anything away. So I really, really recommend that you play it. I can hardly recommend it enough, please try it out, it's only five minutes that you have to devote to it.

Download

Yeah, I'm waiting.
Seriously, just go download it already.
Waiting.

Waiting.


Waiting.



Still waiting.

Okay, you back?

You saw it, you experienced it.

If you are like me, you probably played the game for a few minutes more than 5, trying it again and again with alternate paths.

I played it a total of 2.5 times:

1. With the girl (but I didn't know what I was doing)
2. With no girl (Career hunting bro)
3. With girl (And I quit the game because I didn't want to go through that again)

1: With the girl

The first time I played this and I walked along, and I immediately met the loveliest pixel girl I had ever met (her being the first because you apparently get the love of your life right off the bat, which is nice.)

So I roamed about for a bit, found the path with the least resistance and I pushed forward. I kept wondering what in the heck my pixels were doing as I was shifting around the screen. I realized that I was getting older, but I didn't get the big picture till later.* I just ignored it and kept going.

I started seeing that little number thing popping up there on the screen and thought, "That must be my age!" and then I realized that I was REALLY old if that was the case.

But then I got this bright idea to break the game and just walk backwards, you know, reliving the glory days. I did that until my wife died and I was just left kinda confused until I died. I was honestly surprised that there was no heaven sequence but I think that not including it was a smart choice.

2: With no girl

What started out as "I wonder if I can skip the girl, and go do this by myself." quickly became macho wonderland. I roamed about free to explore and started opening boxes of stuff that made me rich and have these great big blue stars that gave me absolutely no satisfaction and no joy.

Realizing that I didn't have any joy that way, I decided quickly to abandon my life of exploration in the lower section of the map to walking my journey in front of me. I started walking and walking and walking and walking. I walked myself to death, actually. What I thought to be the finish line just ended up being a checkered room. Well played, well played.

I continued walking until I started to realize that I had nothing. Sure I got points, but what good is that going to do me when I'm dead?

*It was only at this point that the whole metaphor for the scrolling of the pixels kicked in. I realized, oh, it's life! You have expectations and goals when you are young, and you have only a few experiences to look back to. When you are older, you have tons of experience, but few goals and aspirations to look towards.

3: With girl

I decided to look around and gather treasures, then come back to the love of my life later. I expected a glitch, maybe she would be young. But she aged and I aged. I wasted a bunch of time on a career, when what I really wanted was her.

Dang.

Well, anyway, I went on trying to go into careers with her. She wasn't very helpful, to say the least.

But as I started roaming around, all of the undertones became so obvious. It was plain as day. Everything in the game made sense in an instant. I quickly was brought to tears and I exited the game before my girl died.

Tears

So bleak. The game paints a bleak future, one that's filled with endlessly searching for something that doesn't even matter in the end. The game even makes a point to say that love doesn't mean any more than riches do.

What type of a future is this? Do I want to live in a world that has this as the future? 

NO!

Which is why I refuse to store all of my treasures on earth. My hope is up in heaven, not here. I cannot say exactly how depressed I was after playing this game, but I left affected. I felt what the author was saying so clearly, and I became almost overwhelmed by it. This game has a powerful message, but how much more powerful is the message:

There is a life after death, and in that life I am free to explore, and free to live life without fear of a time limit, basking in the glory of my Father. That is the true message of our passage.



Feel free to post a comment about your experience in this game. There are many ways to play it, how did it affect you?