Taking a Smoke Break in RUIN: Chapter 0

uh ruin chapter zero is um the 35th anniversary edition yes of the game ruin that we all know and love from way back in the day just kidding that is a uh narrative framing device um this is a uh i couldn't even tell you what kind of game this is because it um changes uh so uh frequently um But it is sort of an homage to a kind of retro pixel art type games.

You know, with this framing device of this is supposed to be the 35th anniversary of the original release.

And it's sort of like recreated hilariously over four floppy disks.

Yeah.

And yeah, this is a browser game you can play for free on itch.

It takes about 10 minutes.

It has an incredible, like, like super saturated, colorful pixel art style.

And I like this.

I'm struggling to say a lot about it without spoilers.

Yes.

But I will say it is very surreal.

And this developer, Official Electric, they have a bunch of other games like this that are all browser games that you can play for free that are...

Really short experiences and and all a lot of them very surreal or weird or tongue in cheek.

And it feels like they're creating this like entire sort of like it almost feels like this is a smaller part of like a performance art project.

Yeah.

And it's really fascinating.

Really cool shit.

I think saying it's a performance art project is really bolstered by the fact that the website officialelectric.com is A, a real website that you can go to, and B, is just some of the most striking merchandise I've ever seen for 12 games that you can all play in less than five minutes.

Um, it, it really does feel like these games are an extension and, and Ruin Chapter Zero specifically are an extension of AJ Gonzalez's like design sensibilities.

Like this is merely just another, like his itch page is just another medium, uh, in which, uh, you know, he can, he can do art in.

It's just like so sick.

this game is hard to comprehend for me not in like a bad way but just like it swerves about every minute and there is approximately 10 minutes of it and so like you're i was just like grasping on to like anything like please

yeah

allow me some surface to hold on to here yeah and it doesn't really give you that which is you know that's fun that's cool yeah yeah how do we talk about this game without spoiling it

Yeah,