[h1]Back to the classics[/h1]
In the beginning there was a word .... um, a letter? or maybe nothing at all (it depends on the difficulty setting).
Meh, let's start again! I haven't written a review on this site in almost two years (damn!), so in place of a bombastic opening, let's take it easy. After such a long hiatus, and many games put on hold, why this game? When you're unable to completely immerse yourself into the Dreaming (that sweet oblivion strange worlds of games bring), because the Waking is constantly knocking at the door as soon as you begin to dose off, not letting you fall asleep too deeply, keeping you sharp, on edge and tense (aka awake), the best temporary respite you can find is in the lobby, hovering over the portals into different worlds, but not quite plunging into them. (Convenient for quick exits too.)
It's a very cosy lobby though - a whole library - perfect for a weary (and wary) traveller to momentarily find shelter from all the reality storms.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3683334973
It's a soothing game like that, starting from the comforting crackling of fire, always present beneath the meditative classical piano, that puts your mind at ease, mends the cracks of your continuously overwhelmed nervous system, stuck in a fight-or-flight survival mode, and focuses it on the singular task at hand, everything else begone - a simple, minimal word game that lets you be in the moment, sorting things out, putting them back together.. Great for decluttering your disquiet mind. Then there's a clean user interface, restrained in elegance, giving off that timeless noble simplicity, neatly organised into several genres of classic literature. Oh how I enjoyed the slowness of my gameplay; just taking it all very unhurriedly, deciphering/absorbing every quote with purpose and contemplation; then checking out the book on Project Gutenberg, reading the synopsis, the introduction, even the whole first chapter; then sometimes (oftentimes) downloading its epub form, continuing the reading session in my happy place. If the fancy struck, I would research more on the writer and their other books (there are some overlooked gems here), take notes, sip tea, warmed by the ambient sound of a blazing hearth... like leisurely spending quality time in an old library, the whole thing. I could almost smell the book ink in the morning and hear the reassuring swishing of pages flipping amid their "centuries-old murmuring".1
As I hinted at the start, there are 3-4 difficulty settings, up to three hints per encryption page, so if you want a more serious challenge, play on hard (in the beginning, there was nothing, not even a letter), and use no hints at all. Reward is your own satisfaction, as there are only four, very humble, achievements, all to do with engaging with the books themselves. Meaning: there are no achievements for this or that accomplishment (for hints used/unused, for speed, for sentence difficulty), no metrics and dopamine chasers, just an enjoyable stroll through the library, ruminating on the wisdom pearls from great thinkers who sought it, or getting a taste of an adventure of a lifetime; excitedly opening your eyes at the heartfelt recognition of an old favourite; getting a peek at a house party in an English manor, full of suspicious guests being offed on by one; being in awe at the "unfathomable distance ... out of the unknown past into the unknown future"; while still feeling the chilling shiver from "once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary"; laughing and crying while frolicking on 'this great stage of fools'; looking at the stars from the gutter... - many such good old stories of "hating the sin and loving the sinner".2 Better than dopamine; it's longer lasting and deeper felt, whatever is the feel-good humour that secretes during calm contentment.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3680060409
A different kind of contentment made me come back to this puzzler over and over, a sort of a deep sigh... of reliefff.. when after every thought put back together the world made sense again. That was the most soothing thing of all: when it feels like everything's falling apart, as if we're at the end of history, or, on the precipice of something new that just won't come, you can weave the shattered pieces back, for a while... Remnants of some long lost meaning, signifiers that have lost the signified and are now just material printed images (codes, letters), floating over the abyss (I mean, over encoded broken lines), isolated, disconnected, discontinuous, waiting to be synthesised into a coherent narrative. In a way, reading and writing is like bridging the abyss between disenchanted signs, connecting them in our minds, seeing beyond the materiality, shape of the image, catching the meaning floating above and behind it and in-between, in the interrelation between words, re-enchanting them. There's no better feeling than when you catch on to the thread, and in that moment, there are still boundless possibilities of where it can end, a multitude of thoughts swirling around, an infinite number of worlds between words; but as you grip it firmer and follow its lead as it defines itself, all other potential sentences slowly fall into the void for that one to live. And this satisfying but bittersweet moment reminded me of what one great critic (or a few) said - that the sentence is a way of murdering the outside world.3
I found it rather natural, this killing. I'd start with identifying the articles first: 'the', 'a/an'; then common prepositions, conjunctions, demonstratives, double letters; bit by bit, nouns and verbs and adjectives are revealed, parts of clauses finish themselves; before you know it, you killed the outside world along with many possible worlds, following the syntax to its inevitable conclusion. Quite often, very long sentences proved easier to solve, because they usually have all the expected elements, while the shorter ones tended to be more unique in structure. You'll observe what letters appear frequently in English, which is very useful for deciphering, especially on hard. Also helpful, and quite interesting, was noticing different genres' beloved words and phrases, not to mention themes and prose style.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3729041376
The selection is impressively thorough, covering everything from unmissable, well known classics, to more obscure, overlooked gems; almost 500 hundred quotes from public domain works divided in 8 genres, spanning a wide timeframe, from Antiquity to Renaissance, to Romanticism and Realism, to Modernity, but most works are from the golden age of the novel, though, that is 19th to early 20th century. As such, you will find a diverse range of writing styles, of course, a glimpse into an adventure of literary form, bold use of vocabulary, an imaginative network of words, creative syntax building and prosodic nuances, surprising turn of phrases, non-generic, authentic authorship. It's simply refreshing going back to the classics and remembering what genuinely good, inspired prose looks like. All traits that are now poisoned in the age of AI and rapid homogenisation of language, where you're never quite sure if you're reading a human using a machine or a machine using a human; because everybody be sounding like a chatbot, like the same ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ person, any individuality dissolved in generic/generated slop of milquetoast mediocrity, bland predictability and boring mimicry. That's yet another reason this game gave me comfort at this time in this place, and soothed my soul... by being my happy place, my line of flight into the words I know are faithfully human.
[b][u]Continued in the comments...[/u][/b]
[h3][quote][b]I wrote this review with my brain [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/40848670-Drugoja-In-The-Dreaming/]between Waking and Dreaming[/url][/b][/quote][/h3]
