Review for The shattering. PC game, the video game came out on 21/04/2020
Many people have no idea how difficult it must be to remember for a patient in psychiatry. The Shattering does not deal with this subject on a medical level, but it does it perfectly on an empathic level. It is an adventure game and thriller character, developed by Super Sexy Software and published by Deck13. It is currently available on PC via GOG and Steam. Made in Unity, it features between various languages.
The game develops entirely in a single psychiatric session. To be specific through hypnosis. You play the role of John Evans, of which at the beginning the player is not given any kind of information.
As the title itself suggests, The Shattering is an introspective journey carried out in four acts through the reconstruction of fragments of memory. John's past emerges from these, and at the same time destroys that false mental refuge created by the protagonist in order to forget the terrible memories that come from the past itself.
Whether or not it was wanted by the developers, the name John is what in US legal jargon is given to a man whose real identity is unknown: John Doe. As just said, nothing is known about him, but the goal of this particular session is equally clear: to remember the name of a woman.
The gameplay must therefore realize this sense of research, of discovery, of fragmentation of the present and recomposition of the past that is found in the midst of memories that are fluctuating between nostalgic and trauma. He succeeds fully, through an experience similar to that of a sort of short-lived walking simulator in which the player's actions dynamically modify what is the very small environment around him.
The Shattering experience is embellished with some visual tricks, not far from those seen in Layers of Fear. One example is the suffocating and claustrophobic shrinking of some rooms.
It is precisely the visual aspect - and therefore belonging to the graphic sector - that particularly strikes the player. On the one hand there is the almost total choice of the abundant use of white and less of black, in which, however, blue, red and yellow are strongly emphasized. On the other hand, there is an incredible perfection in the textures: every single object that can be examined or of an environmental type is extremely defined. These two characters were similarly found in Darkwood as well.
The latter aspect could be described as watching an old movie having a great photograph, and on a screen with a resolution equal to that of 8k. Probably it takes advantage of the fact that the game engine does not have to render a vast and varied environment, so you can focus on a large margin of optimization in order to make every single detail literally visible to the human eye.
One major flaw is the abuse of light intensity. As just mentioned, the whole environment is tending to white, and certain light sources literally have a dense and intense volume of light that provides a lot of discomfort to the eye, even if you play with the brightness at a minimum.
“But why is everything so white?” One might wonder while playing. The developer Marta Szymanska in a devlog he states that "this white and sterile environment was also created in order to create the same sensation that one feels when looking at a black and white photograph, because the mind tends to fill this photograph with colors".
In fact, suggestion is an always present aspect within The Shattering. It is realized not only by the visual sense with colors and text, but also by the auditory one. Each sound is pure and clean, suitable for what it wants to represent and never out of place.
Not only that, because for this purpose the animations form an elegant outline, which in addition to being fluid are a characteristic of expression. For example, an airplane flying into little John's room is the will to represent through a metaphor in physical movement the carefree nature of when the protagonist was in his youth.
This awesome yet empathic introspective journey is a great way to tell an incredibly dramatic story, while still making The Shattering gameplay interesting. Maybe it is proposed to the public through a not very low price given the short duration, but a video game should not always be considered based on the hours of gameplay it provides. The emotions that the work of Super Sexy Software arouses in the player are many, and not trivial.
► The Shattering is an Adventure-type game published by Deck13 for PC, the video game was released on 21/04/2020
