Agentia

Agentia is a poetic 2D exploration game.

You take control of something (that might be a human, animal, or even a plant or a thing) over some time of its existence. Depending on what you are, you have the ability to move around and interact with your surrounding world. In some cases you are a passive being and have to wait while the world moves around you.

In either case, things will happen: Clouds move, landscapes shape, birds and butterflies pass by… Your world is always different, depending on your current form of existence. Your encounters with it will spawn thoughts which appear as short sentences at the bottom of your screen. Certain words can be clicked with your mouse; doing so will replace the strings with associated phrases. Up to three strings will remain on your screen. They are a manifestation of the played character, their world, and their way through it, formally somewhat reminiscent of haikus. This generation of poems can be regarded as the game’s core mechanic, and works exceedingly well. The texts are beautiful and poetic embodiments of existence created by the means of digital emulation .

Despite being technically simple at a first glance, Agentia utilizes ideas drawn from poetry and philosophy that lie outside of the usual repertoire of game development. The result is a game that comes very close to making good on the hope that Timothy Leary once formulated for the medium of video games as portals that allow their players to enter another form of existence. However, while one might assume that many of its contents are mainly procedural generated, comments made by the developer about the – still active – development suggest that every world and existence featured in the game is carefully constructed to create a randomized, yet pointed experience by the selection of things and thoughts you will encounter: A donkey roving through sparse mountains might think about space and eternity, a discarded houseplant visited by butterflies about the value of life, and a jellyfish at an atoll about the tides, temperature and colonialism. Chance always plays a role, but probably a minor one. And then there is the very basic premise of the game: The way of drawing and describing the world is poetry in itself – nothing here is arbitrary – every layer of Agentia is a intricate poem, open to interpretation.

What else might be said? The graphical and sound design are simple, yet pristine. This game is a masterpiece. Runs fine on OpenSuse Leap 15.3 using Firefox.

The developer, Richard A. Carter, made a few other games. This one was also featured on RPS; thanks go out to my friend A. for pointing it out to me.