Football Game was one of those rare instances where I was intrigued the moment I saw the banner above. There is something about titling a game or book or movie something so very plain that has me intrigued - like you're attempting to dislodge something hidden in plain sight. A quick glance through the images on the store page and you'll see that was most definitely what developers Cloak and Dagger Games were going for. Aesthetically hearkening back to roughly the Maniac Mansion era of point and click adventure games, Football Game uses a dark color pallet and a pixelated portrait style art to key you into something unnatural and threatening. Backdrops are black with vague pixel bars ghosting in and out similar to CRT scan lines, wide shot characters and environments are pixelated and undetailed, and close ups are crude and off putting. There is a vague Lynchian element at play in the execution of Football Game, immediately recognizable before you've even purchased the game.
Football Game ends up running about an hour long, roughly as long as it really needed to be, but even with its impressive aesthetic and its haunting, stylish soundtrack (which deserves praise all its own, to be sure), there is a gap whistling wind at its center. The story follows Tommy, high school football star, sometime in the 80s waking up late at night with beer bottles strewn across his room and the sudden realization that he is late to the big game tonight. But the game can take a back seat, because it is who is at the game that really matters to Tommy. Suzy, Tommy's apparently attractive and popular girlfriend, is supposed to be there, and Tommy has a present for her. If the beer bottles didn't tip you off to something being weird, then the odd behavior from Tommy's mother should definitely start sending signals. She seems normal until she decides to rest for a second, going catatonic in her chair and unable to be awoken. Tommy, ready to look his best for Suzy, goes into the bathroom and shaves and a nearly industrial tone begins to creep in ever so slightly in the background soundtrack. When Tommy gets to the game, he finds that not only can he not find Suzy himself, but no one else has seen her either.
Football Game wants to make you think something terrible is afoot, that there is a dark, potentially existential secret waiting around the corner to devastate you, but the reality of the plot turns out to be incredibly banal. Football Game rides entirely on its incredible aesthetic and sense of place and characters (caricatures, the whole lot of them, but they service a particular vibe that runs really well with the rest of the game's execution). There isn't much in the way of meaning within Football Game, and that's truly a shame because it really feels like this is going somewhere. What Football Game turns out to be is an exercise in craftsmanship, of creating a world and a tone that encapsulates a certain feeling, that feeling being somewhere between Twin Peaks and Silent Hill 2, a great praise if you know anything about me.
But a feeling only does so much for a game. The gameplay is precisely oldschool point and click adventure games, down to your inspect, use, combine verbs and a small inventory. (Thankfully there is no verb dictionary like you find in games such as Maniac Mansion, because that is a design that should stay in the past). I wouldn't say this was much of a criticism in and of itself - there is plenty of life for a modern point and click adventure game, a genre literally about interacting with and observing your environment, to work in these darker themes games and media explore nowadays - but when combined with a plot that ends up leading somewhere painfully traditional, well, we just don't end up with much outside of an impressive demo. There is a sliver where this could have been a radical vision on a slice of life story, but that would have taken far more twists and turns, and more than likely twice the length, to really pull off. As is, Football Game is a neat little game with screaming potential for its creators. Make this a part of your reel, Cloak and Dagger, because I want to see you do something a little bigger.
6.5
No comments:
Post a Comment