Continue?9876543210 ruminates on the meaning of life and death. But rather than attempt to provide any answers itself, it asks the player to look within themselves and attempt to decide what meaning they find in the concept.
Developed by Jason Oda, Continue? was inspired by a real-life incident where the creator had his own brush with death while hiking in the Mexican mountains. If the game’s art-style looks familiar, that’s because Oda also created Skrillex Quest, an homage to Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda series commissioned by the famous dubsteb group. With its long-legged, small-head approach to its characters, it also brings to mind Superbrothers: Swords and Sorcery EP.
In Continue?, each playthrough randomly assigns you one of 6 characters, and randomly selects 6 out of a possible 11 levels. Cast as an abandoned videogame character, you run through a world of Random Access Memories, attempting to escape permanent deletion. As in life, death is inevitable - but each play through the game is steeped in metaphors designed to have you questioning the nature of existence. If it sounds a bit pretentious, that’s because it is; Oda makes no apologies for that, and readily accepts that the game’s “artsy” approach isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you prefer something a bit different from the usual run-of-the-mill “kill the bad guy and save the world” approach to storytelling then it definitely might be something worth considering.
Gameplay is actually pretty simple in practice, but it will be a while before you truly realize how simple it is. As in Skrillex Quest, the game takes cues from Zelda in some of the dungeons that spawn in each level between ropounds, while you’ll speak to plenty of NPCs and either pay a fee to unlock building doors, or gain information that will help you correctly answer a series of simple multiple-choice questions posed elsewhere in the level. Giant mouths - resembling something of a cross between the Chain Chomps fromSuper Mario and Pac-Man - will also spawn, and can be attacked with your sword to defeat them.
Each level is divided up into a number of rounds, with a timer ticking down until the next round is due to commence. When the timer hits zero, you’re plunged into a dungeon which can take many forms - either a simple side-scrolling level, a top-down Zelda-like area, or even a simple green-screen gameboy-esque variant on Space Invaders. While these areas break up the pace a little, the gameplay and controls are so rudimentary that there’s little actual fun to be found in them.
Your goal in each level is simply to reach the exit, though to start with it’s usually blocked off by a series of barriers which can only be removed through talking to characters and answering their questions. Speak to the NPCs wandering around each area and they might open a door somewhere in the level. Inside that door could be another NPC, a shrine you can dedicate an object to, or some other event. Successfully answering questions or making the choices from the game’s list of responses lets you request either Lightning or Prayers as your reward: Lightning strikes randomly around the level, removing any obstructions it hits, while Prayers erect shelters for you to hide in when the Garbage Sweeper comes calling, casting down bolts of lightning in an effort to permanently delete any remaining data in the world after every two levels.
All of this is alternately easy to grasp and incredibly confusing. While the game does offer a tutorial of sorts, it doesn’t do a particularly good job of helping you to understand how things actually work, and so it’s not until you spend some time actually in the game, that you’ll feel as though you have sufficient knowledge to play it properly.
Another issue comes in the form of the game’s controls. You move in one of four directions, and attack or talk using a single button. The problem is that enemies come at you from all directions, so it can often be frustratingly difficult to actually hit something. In the side-scrolling dungeon areas, pressing up launches you into an incredibly high and floaty jump so that you can attack enemies coming down at you from above; unfortunately, the floatiness of the jump means that you’ll collide with an enemy just as often as you manage to hit them with your weapon. There’s just no sense of weight to movement; you feel as though you’re gliding above terrain rather than actually walking over it, while the animation can be charitably described as “basic”.
Visually, the game is going to be as divisive as its introspective subject matter. Some people will find the graphics attractive, with their lo-fi, almost voxel-like approach to rendering worlds and characters and some bright lighting and desaturated color. Others will find it ugly. They certainly have a distinctive look about them, but whether or not that is a good or bad thing or not will be down to each individual to decide for themselves.
Sound, unfortunately, is another matter entirely. The sound of text trickling on to the screen gets annoying pretty quickly, while the music endlessly repeats on a 10-second loop that quickly annoys. Some more work on the audio could have given each level its own unique aural as well as visual flavor; sadly, you’re more likely to find yourself muting the music altogether.
And that’s about it really. While there’s some replay value to be found in trying to see all of the games 11 levels, there’s little actual fun to be had. Oda describes the game as “meant to be played when a person is quiet and alone and sitting in bed late at night with a glass of wine or some weed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about their life.” But while game aims to be deep and meaningful, it ends up feeling simply under-developed and pretentious, as though a sullen teenager got his hands on a game-making program and decided to show the world his unappreciated genius. Some of the dialogue does succeed in making you consider your own mortality and what may lie beyond this life, and no doubt there will be plenty of people who will find the game’s approach rewarding - but ultimately the actual gameplay is shallow, bland and unfulfilling.
While Oda says that you’ll either love or hate the game, it’s hard to conjure up enough strength of feeling about Continue? to select either of those options. So instead, how about another word? Apathy.
Dale Morgan
@spamdangled
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