PEGBRJE: GNOG and The Fall of Lazarus
Abstract Colours and Realistic Isolation. Happy Friday the 13th?
GNOG is a puzzlebox game made by KO_OP, a worker-owned indie team out of Montreal, and was published with the help of Double Fine. GNOG revolves around the idea of the player attempting to explore and open a virtual ‘puzzlebox’, a toy in which the name sort of says it all: its a puzzle with the restrictions of being within a box. Using brains, wit, and possibly some psychedelic inspiration, players will slowly unearth what is within this box, and find the prize may not be exactly in the box.
As is my history with sucking at puzzles, I nearly didn’t get to play the game as it starts with a puzzlebox to set the stage. My inability to understand puzzles asside, it was a fantastic way to get players thinking about how to manipulate the box and what the possibilities were with this virtual landscape. Buttons could move, slide and twist and animated characters could appear to transition into the next aspect of the puzzle. Everything is so lively and bouncy, with sounds and animations to give feedback on nearly anything that can be clicked. If you are able to solve the puzzle that the box gives, you are treated to a final animation full of colour, music, singing and boxes. One that solidifies my next point: this game is trippy.
On its own, a puzzlebox is usually just interesting at best — the way it manipulates space is cute and the solutions are fun, but it isn’t so exciting on its own. So GNOG decided that they would bolster up the puzzlebox by making use of the fact that its a game; everything is alive. Everything. The box has life and may have eyes to follow the cursor as you click on everything to find the next piece of the puzzle. Things inside the box are alive, usually living and wondering who is breaking into their home. This doesn’t even cover the atmosphere created by the art and sound team is nearly more alive than the boxes themselves. The neon colours that glitter every object, the sound effects that sing on every button click or slider, the music that blends into the background to almost feel as if it is being created by the sounds as you click them (the PURPLE box actually does this and its amazing). Each element compliments the other to make everything so vibrant and eccentric that it’s hard to not keep playing. It draws you in to find out how much more exciting it can get, how the next victory song will tie every puzzle aspect into it.
GNOG is a virtual puzzlebox made to bring together the creativity of puzzles with a surreal artistic style, wrapped with a polish that makes the chaos and colours so clean. It’s even available to play in VR to add even more immersion, so I’d strongly recommend trying it out in a virtual space to really enjoy the colours. For those of us without the headgear, GNOG is still worth the time to invest in solving a few of the boxes. There are only 9 to solve so it won’t take up your whole day, but it will send you to another world.
Speaking of sending you to another world…
The Fall of Lazarus is a mystery exploration game made by No Wand Studios, a sadly shuttered studio of two Spanish indie devs (we’ll come back to this later). You play as a currently unnamed female aboard a bizarre spaceship known as the USSC Lazarus, one floating in deep space and manned by a uncomfortably friendly-sounding AI named Hybris. Her objective is simple: figure out why in blazes she is on this ship, how she got here in the first place, and why the ship keeps disappearing sometimes from her vision. All the while searching for the rest of the people supposedly on the ship. Welcome aboard.
The Fall of Lazarus makes sure that everything you experience as the player is as unsettlingly simple from the start. Awakening from cryo with no memory to an AI that dismisses your questions? Having to go through a ‘procedure’ to be given clearance for some reason, even though you’re not even sure you are an astronaut in the first place? A ship named Lazarus devoid of all life besides yourself? It checks all of the boxes immediately, and would’ve been considered quite cliche if it wasn’t for the amazing atmospheric work done by No Wand. The lighting is consistently low, but never does that trick of flickering the lights constantly — that’s unnecessary when reminded that this ship is currently unmanned by a human and floating in space. The only sounds usually heard are of your own footsteps on the differing float types, the voices of Hybris or the protagonist, and the occasional apparatus that may or may not be malfunctioning. I fell completely into the ship’s clutches during a sequence in which I went to a new floor to find the medical bay, only for the doors to grind open with a terrifying screech, and continually attempt to open properly before being forced open. The constant metal-on-metal scratching kept echoing through the halls, only offset by a sinister melody playing softly in the background. Needless to say, I ran away quickly as I had no business sticking around with that.
Unfortunately for me, this is also a puzzle game, and boy was I stumped for a lot of them. They are usually in the form of location searching and mind-bending puzzles, either due to Hybris convincing the protagonist that breaking into a computer was ‘fine’ or because the ship disappeared and the location altered. Add that to the list of bizarre story elements to confuse and unnerve the player. Regardless, I must admit that I had to look up a few of them due in part of their difficulty and due to my inability to solve puzzles in general, so do be aware that those of us that suck at puzzles may have a difficult time finishing the game.
Overall, The Fall of Lazarus has a fantastic setpiece and atmosphere that it uses to its fullest, albeit with a dozen difficult puzzles. It wants you to explore its enclosed world, to solve what is going on to the protagonist and why the AI is so crazy and spooky. If you are confident in your puzzle solving ability and enjoy scary games that utilize atmosphere and mystery then this might be a game you want to add to your library and try out. Especially since it has two games in it?
Yes, The Fall of Lazarus contains its own prologue, similarly structured to the base game but following a man named Caleb instead. One that I can confidently state I finished and according to the fact that it’s called a ‘prologue’, must give context and clues to what is going on in the main game. Whether or not you piece them together is up to you, detective.
I’d also like to mention that No Wand, while they have officially disbanded, the developers have gotten back together to form a new studio named The Brodevhood. Their story is actually quite the tragic one, with after the release of The Fall of Lazarus they were hit with quite a few setbacks that aren’t unfamiliar to me while in this industry. I’m glad they were able to bounce back and reform, as falling into the brink of existence as an indie dev team is all too common. If you wish to know more about their journey as No Wand, I’m linking their Gamasutra article below with the game page so you can read for yourself. As a warning, if you plan on playing The Fall of Lazarus, there ARE spoilers within their article, so avoid those if you can. Otherwise, enjoy your time in space.
Links Below
https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JonathanPrat/20181029/329509/This_is_not_another_postmortem.php
