I feel extremely lucky to live in an era where games largely developed by one person can exist. Unlike those AAA titles made by teams of over a hundred people with individual tastes and ideas, single-person projects allow a window into the mind and soul of its creator. This leads to a cohesive vision that I feel brings about some of the most unique and insightful experiences of the modern gaming era. NaissanceE joins my list of these games quite handily, a perfectly unique world infused with personal ideals and closely-held beliefs. When you play it, you’ll almost feel like you’ve passed through a portal directly into creator Mavros Sedeño’s head.
NaissanceE drops you into its world with the smallest of premises: a woman runs away from a creature and falls deeper into a bizarre world in her desperation to escape. The game then leaves you to your own devices, stumbling through its strange surroundings in hopes of finding a way back to reality. Your only goal is to make forward progress by any means necessary while avoiding harm or death to your character. It’s clear that the creator of NaissanceE was more concerned with presenting a unique environment than any tangible narrative. There isn’t any speech or other characters, only a world that feels as if you are the first to explore it. You are completely alone for the entirety of the game. This actually helps the experience more than harms it. It becomes more about the journey itself than any contrived reason for progress.
You move through NaissanceE in an ever-present first-person perspective. A unique sprinting mechanic gives you something to do during the long stretches of walking/running through the environment, requiring the player to time mouse clicks to keep the character’s breathing regular and continue sprinting. Each breath also escapes from the character in an addictive tonal rhythm, urging you to keep the combo going. This may seem like a pointless mechanic, but it actually adds a sense of responsibility to simple movement, further engaging you in the world. Obstacles occasionally bar your progress, such as brief platforming to overcome or light puzzle-solving needed to open the way forward. Most of these obstacles are simple and don’t feel the need to explain themselves, believing instead that the player can figure it out. For the most part, the game is right: I rarely got stuck. Those few times I did get stuck, however, were extremely frustrating. Every time, it was figuring out where to go that stumped me, not a puzzle. The way forward is often clear, simply due to the fact that it’s the only way out of an area, but not always. Atypical geography plays a role in many of these confusing sections, obscuring the path through the inherent cryptic design of the world.
One particularly confusing section (located near the very end of the game) features what I consider NaissanceE’s biggest misstep. This section places you in a HUGE area--easily the biggest area in the game--with very little idea of what to do. Enough stumbling around and you’ll eventually find a signpost with four images on it, pointing out the way to move forward. This “clue” is naturally cryptic in order to fit into the alien world it inhabits, basically establishing a reference point and a direction to travel from that point. While I found the reference point, I could not interpret the clue in a way that worked. The only way I could figure it out was to go online and look for the answer. To my surprise, it revealed a path that made no sense, pointing a direction that seemed completely opposite from what the image shows. Sadly, I was forced to break my full immersion in the world in order to make progress, slightly harming my otherwise flawless impression of NaissanceE. I still think it’s a hell of an experience, one well worth seeing even knowing this section exists, but I would have appreciated a focus on smart game design over the overall vision in this one instance.
NaissanceE has a stunning visual style. What makes this style extremely impressive is how it relies on right angles and cubes for nearly everything. Circles rarely appear, actually making a noticeable impact when they do. This design choice allows the developers to create a world that actually feels alien. It results in some amazing vistas and had me hammering on Steam’s screenshot key numerous times throughout my playthrough. Where things get even more astonishing are the moments when light and dark come into play. This duality is a huge theme of the game’s look, with several areas casting intense shadows or using blinding light to astound or even fool the player. One of my favorite instances of this is a section that is pitch black, forcing the player to rely on a seizure-inducing light flash to navigate as best he/she can in those moments of brief clarity. It’s a confusing mess to navigate through, but it’s such an amazing visual moment that I loved every second of it. There are several more “tricks” like this used by the developer that are a treat to see, making NaissanceE a recommendable experience solely on visuals alone--something I can’t say about many games.
The soundtrack completes the game’s mood, joining together with the visuals to create an intense feel. Each track has an ominous sound, using haunting instrumentation to heighten tension and push the player forward in an attempt to dispel that tension. It’s a shockingly minimalist sound as well, using very little yet still creating intensely evocative sounds. I also particularly liked how concordant or even cacophonous the soundtrack could be at times. Harsh whines or repetitive sounds add to the tense, alien atmosphere. I absolutely loved this soundtrack. At the same time, I don’t think it would ever work outside of the game. It’s one of those soundtracks that is so cohesively intertwined with the rest of the experience that it would lose some of that oomph that makes it great if experienced outside of the game. If anything, this makes it even more impressive in my mind. Few games can tie audio and visuals together so tightly that I couldn’t imagine experiencing one without the other.
To fully appreciate NaissanceE, you have to be willing to go on its odyssey. It may sound awfully trite of me to say, but it’s one of those games that works best with all the lights out, headphones on, and a willingness to sit there for the entire 2-3 hour length at once (alcoholic beverage optional). There’s really no better way to experience it: fully immersing yourself in the world the creator imagined, letting it take you away to a singular headspace, feasting your eyes and ears on everything it has to offer. Even though it is flawed in spots, those flaws feel like a part of the creation, a human element that speaks to its creator. I can’t think of many other games that so beautifully manage to create something that feels like an entirely new gaming experience. NaissanceE is a journey you may not fully comprehend, but it’s one that’s worth taking nonetheless.