I can appreciate a game that hides meaning beneath its surface, but Everything doesn’t have a surface-level story for that meaning to hide under. Alan Watts’ philosophy lectures are intriguing, but it’s not very interesting getting from one lecture to the next. I was never able to be engaged or immersed in the world. Despite being a game about how all things are related, I found the silly, empty experience of Everything very unrelatable.
Everything
David O'Reilly · Mar 21, 2017
About
Everything is an interactive experience where everything you see is a thing you can be, from animals to planets to galaxies and beyond. Travel between outer and inner space, and explore a vast, interconnected universe of things without enforced goals, scores, or tasks to complete. Everything is a procedural, AI-driven simulation of the systems of nature, seen from the points of view of everything in the universe.
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Critic reviews
- 8.5Reviewing Everything feels so embarrassing. After discussing it for a few minutes, I feel like I want to thank you all for coming to my TED talk. That’s because it’s so impressionistic, existential, philosophical … all the things people invoke when they want to convince you that video games can be art. But Everything has a leg up on a lot of those art-installation-as-games. Everything is also a lot of fun!
- 7.0Everything really does deliver on its abstract concept, but only if you’re willing to boot it up with an open mind. There’s no action, or even a cohesive plot. There are no XP bars to fill or loot to collect – just a universe and you, and a desire to determine just who ‘you’ really are. The basic textures and colours (and the hilarious way creatures just roll about like possessed statues) might stifle some, but Everything’s worth is more than skin deep.
- The trouble is, I’m already a hippie vegan with an interest in quantum mechanics. I already know everything is connected. So, I can only conclude that it’s not for me, but it isn’t necessarily a bad thing because of that. It isn’t a game though, it’s just a thing to start up and experience. Just don’t play it while on drugs, I feel like it’d do a lot more harm. Also just don’t do drugs, go and do push-ups and read about quantum entanglement or something.
- 7.0Everything is a philosophy lecture turned into a game, and if you’re looking for some new insight on life and a sandbox to play in while you listen, it’ll provide. While the game offers up hundreds of choices of objects to become, it comes at the sacrifice of everything feeling the same.
- 8.0I thought it was slightly pretentious and a bit dull and ponderous. But after a slow-burning first hour, when I started ascending through the cosmos and descending into the microscopic building blocks of life, I fell in love with it. It makes you think about life and your place in the universe, but it’s silly and playful too, which is a combination that shouldn’t work as well as it does.
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