Equaboreal 12.21


Jul 11, 2020

Equaboreal 12.21

It might be a little presumptuous to say this when I'm only about a dozen games in, but... actually hold on, a dozen games is still less than one percent of the bundle.

Here's to not burning out, huh?

Anyway, it's really hard to know what to expect, especially because I'm grabbing these at random. I was definitely not expecting a bit of fiction about plant people (not even humanoid anthro-plants, actual plants) and concerns about their latest import of light. And yet, Equaboreal 12.21 happened, and I'm glad it did.

Equaboreal 12.21 shows a fascinating, surreal world, made all the more surreal by the constrasting assets used: 2D graphics of plants with clothes hanging around 3D assets of varying textures, with genuine lightning effects going on too. The "game" part is pretty barebones: you can move around a little, there's a universal interact button, and a cute "Contemplate" button for our protagonist to think about what's going on. That sort of thing is never really the point, though, since what you actually are here for is the setting and dialogue, which I thought was nicely-written and set the stage and characters well given the brevity.

The game's page suggests 15-20 minutes, I'd say my playthrough took me closer to 10, though I did a second run to see if I missed any text (I did). As much as I'd like to see more of Equaboreal 12.21's setting, perhaps keeping it brief was for the best, leaving the rest of this speculative world to... speculation.

I enjoyed it. Equaboreal 12.21 is a good game.