‘now what?’ Explores the Destruction of a Beautiful Place
now what? is a short game about a planet and how destructive people can be even when they can’t really fix the damage they do.
Some games feel like little interactive toys or puzzle boxes. now what? is one such game, where you can complete the entire experience in under 5 minutes, but that doesn’t make it less of a game. In this experience, you are given a planet that you need to interact with, watching what changes around it.
This game starts with a pretty barren planet and encourages you to sort of poke around at it until something happens. The cursor does change when you are able to interact with something, so if you get stuck you can just move it around until you see something change. The world itself doesn’t have a ton of options on what to do, though, so you probably won’t find yourself getting stuck.
Over time, the world changes as you interact with it, becoming something more than the little blank rock that you started out with. It twists in unexpected ways, creating something beautiful. But, things that are beautiful do often end up…not so beautiful. You cannot stop it – the world is going back to the badness. The developer has stated “The process was deeply influenced by the ongoing war, which heightened my feelings of injustice and frustration as I witnessed the destruction and cruelty around me, mirroring the planet’s fate in the game. The project reflects my contemplation of how humans often see themselves as the center of the universe, yet are powerless in the face of larger, uncontrollable forces.”
now what? is a short, retrospective experience on what is going on with the world and why things are being constantly destroyed. It’s a game well worth playing, especially with the amount of polish that has gone into it and how fantastic the animations are.
now what? is available now on itch.io.
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