Overview
A 2017 video game in which players can possess and play as everything they can see. Unique features of the game include the fact that it's possible for the game to play itself, with players selecting various attributes for the computer to use in doing so. The game is also notable for its land animals' walk animations, which technically don't exist, instead the models simply roll around on screen.
Philosophy
Scattered throughout the game are recorded audio excerpts from lectures by the late philosopher Alan Watts. The game's developer, David O'Reilly, has stated that Everything is an attempt to describe in an interactive experience the same root idea that Watts was describing verbally.
Gameplay
Everything might best be described as a toy box simulation of the natural world, because its design prioritises playfulness over realism. The gameplay is free-form exploration in which the player can roam the simulation at 7 discrete scales: particle, tiny, human, landmass, planet, galaxy, and "collapse" – this last being an abstract dimension the player can enter to transition between the particle and the galactic scales. The player moves about the environments and between scales by possessing the various non-player entities in the simulation and leaping from one to another.
Every entity in the game has only three behaviours: to sing, to dance, and to think. When the player possesses an entity, they can sing to other nearby entities in order to group together with them and then cause the entire group to perform a dance of intricate interlocking movements. Non-player entities will occasionally generate text-based thoughts that the player can choose to read. Once the player has read enough thoughts the game will generate a thought of the player's own. The player's thoughts are procedurally generated from fragments of recent thoughts they have read and are usually quite nonsensical.
Everything uses a lengthy tutorial to introduce the mechanics and gameplay possibilities to the player. It does not specify any long-term objective for the player to achieve, but it does keep count of how many different entities the player has possessed from the total number existing in the game.
System Requirements
PC Minimum
- Operating System: 64-Bit Windows 7 Service Pack 1, or Windows 8
- Processor: 2 GHz Dual-Core 64-bit CPU
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 660 or AMD Radeon™ equivalent
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 2 GB available space
Mac Minimum
- Operating System: OS X 10.8
- Processor: i5/i7 CPU
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: R9 270, GTX 660 equivalent
- Storage: 2 GB available space
External Links
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