Monday, December 29, 2008

The Case of The You Testament


Now, this is a site about controversial games, and if this game were mass-market at all, this would be huge news. The You Testament is a game in which you play as a lost-to-history thirteenth disciple of Jesus, and you can be anything from white male to black female. Jesus also teaches you about meditation, and harnessing the power of chakra. The game also apparently ends with you hanging on a cross for hours, waiting to die (I haven't been able to play it this far). Thankfully, the only people who know about the game are basically open-minded and fair about it.

The game is the final work of the independent solo game developer Mat Dickie, who has been creating games entirely on his own of fairly large scope for years. A quick look at his other games after playing The You Testament will show you that this game uses bits and pieces of all of his other games, including some really interesting wrestling sims. This does give an odd feel to The You Testament that you don't find often, because it is 3D and nearly polished enough to appear to be a well produced game, but certain elements appear weak because you are actually playing the design of one man. The eyes don't really look right, you'll find almost immediately, and Jerusalem is oddly chaotic and weird, but that makes sense when again you consider that one guy had to program the AI, graphics, sound, story, and everything else.

Anyway, it's really a very interesting look at the Jesus story from the perspective of another man at the time, and I'm very glad that there aren't legislators out there citing this as destructive to our children or anything. I'm just very glad this sort of thing exists in gaming and sad to see such a productive game designer quit his post.

No comments: