Genre: Adventure
Release date: December 31, 2016

Ever since personalities were created via animation, people wondered if they perhaps had a life of their own off the screen. The concept has been explored in Tron, Cool World, and Little Computer People.

But if characters have lives of their own, where are they? Do they only live while the movie or program is running? Or are they still active on the disk? And if they are alive on the disk, what is happening in that old adventure game on the 5 1/4” floppy laying in the old box in the basement? Do the characters age along with the disk? What happens as the disk slowly degrades and data corrupts?

In forgotten you find that old RPG game on the 5 1/4” floppy that you used to play incessantly. So just for old times’ sake you decide to fire it up in all its CGA glory. It starts successfully, but something is different. Something more than just the artifacts from decaying bits…

forgotten is a small Twine game which you can play online in your browser for free. How small is it? It took Sophia Park and Arielle Grimes a whole week to write, and it shouldn’t take you half-an-hour to play. But that is more than enough time to start you thinking.

And that is about all I can say about it without making this review larger than the game itself.

The bottom line is that they wrote a minimalist game which perfectly captures the look of the original IBM PC and uses it to present an intriguing idea. For two developers to have accomplished exactly what they intended with almost no budget, I award an A.

OK, I can’t just stop there without adding one more thought. The Tibetan Buddhists teach that if enough thought energy is focused on an imaginary character, then that character will actually come into being in the etheric realm. This thought creature is called a tulpa.

Now consider all the thought energy being focused on computer games. Can you expect to meet Mario when you finally cross over? How about Sonic? And just what will you say to Laura Croft?

+ Accurate retro look + Thought-provoking   +/- Long enough to get the point across, but you will want more