Cibele brought back a lot of memories of early online dating. While the story of Cibele is unique to Nina Freeman, it is familiar enough to anyone who had similar online dating experiences when it was more associated with online chat rooms and MMOs. OkCupid, Tinder, and a slew of other services may have brought online dating to a mainstream audience, but there was a time when exploring romance digitally was seen by the public as the domain of nerds and sexual perverts. Cibele not only effectively recreates the story of Nina Freeman’s romantic exploits, but also reminds the player of their first attempts at romance, which were just as stilted, awkward, and for the most part destined for disaster as anything that happened in cyberspace.
Cibele is an extremely honest tale from start to finish. Freeman uses blog posts, journal entries, emails, IMs, and photos from her own life to recreate her actual experiences for the player. Her decision to star in the game airs such a level of authenticity to the piece that it is easy to understand why some have complained the game almost feels voyeuristic at times. You feel almost like you’re an invisible presence staring right over Nina’s shoulder as events unfold.
The player is able to learn about Nina Freeman the person by exploring her computer’s desktop. One of my favorite touches was thumbing through the files representing Nina’s personal web site. It not only serves as a great info dump, but it is an effective vehicle for further allowing the player to occupy Nina’s space. Most players will be able to recall at least something from their young adult life, be it writing poetry or emailing their high school friends, that helps them play the role of Nina even if they were never a young female in love with a boy they met online.
I found Blake to be equally as interesting a character even if we only get to know him through his interactions with Nina. It would be easy to hate him as the game seeks to accurately portray a rather socially inept young male who is not exactly the best at conveying his emotions. The script does little to sugarcoat his clumsy attempts to flirt with Nina, and he has some rather unfortunate views shall we say that might allow him to be dismissed as a “bad” person at the end of the day. Freeman is careful to help the player understand though what she saw in Blake and why she saw past those flaws to pursue a relationship with him.
On top of Nina voicing herself, she also stars in the game’s FMV cutscenes. There is only one other actor in the game, and he also very intentionally either is an amateur actor or at least attempts to come off as such. This fits well with the game’s authenticity. Every moment of the game feels like something any average person could be going through at any given moment. Even in more mature storytelling mediums, amateurism is typically, and quite unfortunately, shunned.
While Cibele’s gameplay is fairly simplistic, it does a superb job in realizing the full experience of online RPGs from the 2000s. Valtamari is Cibele’s version of something like a Ragnarok Online. While the game boils down the mechanics and systems these games possess to a lot of left-mouse button clicking, the games being mimicked here became background noise for the social experience most gamers seek. As Nina, you’ll often initiate combat and quickly switch to a chat interface to send someone a message while at the same time engaging in a voice conversation with Blake. While I can’t speak for others, I can certainly attest to the fact that I stuck around games such as Diablo for months and months after I had grown bored of the game simply because it became a device for socially engaging with friends. That experience should be easily recognizable to anyone who have played such games, and quickly understood for anyone who hasn’t.
What I found myself really appreciating about Cibele as well as several other recent games such as The Beginner’s Guide is that developers are starting to solve for the medium’s version of a short story. Cibele is a short game and not one anyone calculating out their dollar to length ratio should consider. What it is able to do effectively though is get in, convey an interesting story for about the proper length it should, and get out. While the ending to the story may feel somewhat abrupt (the downside of telling a real-life story is that most real-life situations end anti-climactically), It is not an experience that would likely be better if it were stretched into something three to four times as long just to fit the “proper” notion of how long a game should be. And while there have certainly been games in formats such as Twine that have dabbled with the concept of a short story, I appreciate these efforts to deliver a bit more complex a game.
Cibele might be a short game, but it uses its time well to display the unique devices video games have at their disposal to convey a story. I couldn’t help but be reminded of several friends who went through similar experiences, which is about as good of a testament to its realism as I can think of. Beyond that, it is simply a great, intimidate story of young love and all of its quirks and pitfalls.