The Silent Age

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

The Silent Age is a mobile app time-traveling game that takes players between the present world (in the game) of 1972 and the dystopan future of 2012. Playing as Joe,, players must wander interchangibly through the worlds using a time-travelling device (given to Joe by a dyng old man from the future) in order to figure out where things went wrong. The only dialogue is at the beginning of the game, and players must play with headphones in.

The game itself is a very minimal one -- simple animation and graphics, and the gameplay is pretty straightforward. It is clear from the beginning that the game only advances if you explore literally everything in the world, from doors, objects, to blood. joe's thoughts guide players in the right direction by dropping hints. For example, if you encounter rope, Joe will say that "I can cut it, if only I had something sharp...", thus, he is indicating to the player that they must look for something sharp to use to cut the rope. As Jenkins, in games with embedded narratives, "essential narrative information must be redundantly presented across a range of spaces and artifacts, since one acnnot assume the player will necessarily locate or recognize the significance of any given element" (Jenkins 8). This was one of the things about the game that -- while frustrating when I didn't understand what Joe meant -- I appreciated. It guided me in the right direction to find the tools I needed to open doors, file cabinets, etc. And after about the second try approaching an item, Joe would simply say the same things over and over again until you got what he was trying to tell you to get. For a non-gamer like me, this helped me to understand the significance of every item in the world.

One critique I had about the game was the ending. I understand there are two episodes, and point of the game (at least in the developer's mind) is to buy the second episode, but frankly, it got my vocal disapproval. Jenkins, citing Mary Fuller, accurately noted that "not all travel narratives end successfully or resolve the narrative enigmas which set them into motion" (Jenkins 6). The actions of the game were all set in motion by Joe meeting the dying old man. You play the game thinking that every tool you find and use is getting you one step closer to figuring out what happened to the old man (and in turn, the world in general). *spoilers* You get to Joe driving in the ambulance at the end, read his ramblings to himself, only to read the big fat "to be continued" after about two minutes. I should have seen this coming from the start (I knew you were trouble when you walked in....) knowing that there was an episode two, but I thought maybe I would at least find out what happened to the old man at the end of this one. But i guess time travel games don't work like that!

The other major critique I had about the game was how restrictive it was. Jenkins describes the diffuclty game designers have with creating games, either having too much player interaction interfere with story, or "the hard rails of the plotting [..] overly constrain[ing] the 'freedom, power, self-expression' associated with interactivity" (Jenkins 7). There were times where I thought of different ways to use some of the tools that Joe had with him, but if I tried to use a metal bar to, say, open a rusty paddlock, Joe would tell me I couldn't. Excuse me Joe? I think I could make it work. It is clear throughout the game that events must happen in a certain sequence, things have one and only one use, and Joe can only take certain courses of action. Thus, you're never really given the opportunity to be crafty or resourceful -- even though you'd have to be in a dystopian world.

The one redeeming quality about the game was that I kept having the urge to play it. I wanted to figure out how to make it to the next chapter, wondering what would happen next. It had a level of intrigue to me. So despite it's rigidity, crappy ending, and frustrating stalemates I faced throughout, I enjoyed playing my way through the game. Thus, I give it a decent three out of five stars.