![]() ![]() ![]() These 2D characters wander through dark environments that have been stippled and bruised to give texture, and then vector-style environments have been layered on top. You can tell Feral Cat Den’s background is in visual design rather than gaming: the simple line art of the characters allows for expression through animation, and a look or a wink is characterful. While its palette is barely more than black and white, it’s an astonishing game to experience. It points towards another of Genesis Noir’s real wins. Yet, the only interactions are moving your character over a few dots and stripes on the floor, like an interstellar version of the Billie Jean video. A mandala towards the end of the game is so sublime, a confluence of audio and visual design that is so beautifully crafted, that you wished the game ended there, rather than stuttering on for a few more scenes. They’re like playing with living puzzle cubes, as you poke and prod at things, and they react in unexpected ways. There’s a limp fetch quest randomly in the centre of the game, while a frequency-matching puzzle towards the end of the game both outstays its welcome and introduces too much in the way of trial and error. Occasionally these toys can teeter off to the extremes: some are a touch too abstract, and you’ll be screaming at the devs to get off their pretentious high horses to help you out with some hints others will be surprisingly conventional, and feel drafted in from other games. There’s rarely a conventional cause-and-effect here, as you’re toying with celestial bodies, primordial gloop and black holes. Games like Florence and If Found… have a similar approach to these toys, but Genesis Noir’s scope is outwardly greater. You’re often just tapping, spinning or pushing things to see what they’ll do, getting a reaction and then taking their cues. In that foliage will be birds, which you can interact with to make them fly off, so your aim – you presume – is to prune where there’s room to grow, and send more birds flying. A particularly memorable one starts you off with a small shoot, but by pruning that shoot, more and more branches appear, eventually leading to foliage. We say toys, because the puzzle is often working out how you interact with them. The best way of describing Genesis Noir is that it’s a series of toys, tied together by some very simple exploration. It’s all chopped up into chapters, presented as stars, with grand titles like Reflection and Thaw, each showcasing a principle of existence. No Man’s journey takes him chronologically through the Big Bang, from the first moments of darkness and explosive creation to the seeds of life – from primordial soup to civilisation – and then onto the universe’s decay and reversion. ![]()
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