Mezzanine

weird ass game but ok i guess???

Janky and buggy, but also really really cool.

Mezzanine is a PORTAL to the not-so-lost era of pre-Y2K dotcom boom, and a CONJURING of the supersaturated idealogical swamp of the SF multimedia gulch. It places you in the swirling NEXUS of counter-cultural libertarianism, massified mind control experiments, counterinsurgency psy-ops, new age personal wellness advertisements and secret-society occult rituals, all propped by the good old fashion Capitalism and Imperialism of late 20th America. This is basically what the game publishers themselves wrote about MEZZANINE, but the hype is as real as the detail in the gameworld. As in, it's all there: Look up IN-Q-TEL, read Yasha Levine's Surviellance Valley, ask yourself who actually designed our hellish digitally networked world and ask yourself WHY???! MEZZANINE replaces the density and complexity of puzzles found in MYST with rich and darkly hilarious plot via an abundance of *highly researched* textual and visual arcana. It can be read as a text, it be played as a work of art. It's a real VIBE. Literary reference points: ISHMAEL REED's 'MUMBO JUMBO', THOMAS PYNCHON, ILLUMINATUS TRILOGY As other reviewers note, the gameplay is buggy, but the game is short and simple enough that total exploration can be achieved through multiple runthroughs. This reviewer PLEADS others to ENTHUSIASTICALLY play, support, comment on MEZZANINE so as to prove to future funders there is ample demand for MEZZANINE 2, and M2 is made with additional development resources.