Everything is an experimental Indie game in whose goal is not to reach its end, but to keep repeating a cycle time and time again. You play as a mysterious floating orb that’s purpose seems to simply be to collect information on every living and nonliving thing in existence. This goes from trees, fences, animals, and individual atoms. We don’t gain the knowledge from observing from afar, instead we take direct control of said object or animal then walk around a bit to observe life from its point of view. It only takes a few seconds of walking around before we learn all there is to it and an in-game Wikipedia entry is unlocked for us to read, if we actually want to learn a bit about whatever it was that we were controlling.
After your temporary vessel has been studied, it is time to move on to your next subject. You only have to move towards a larger or smaller object to send your consciousness into them and gain control. Rinse and repeat until either you have discovered everything this game has to offer or you simply get bored. Aside from moving around a bit, you have no further actions to take or things to do with whatever you control. You will gain the ability to sing, dance, and gather more of the same creatures to follow you, though it is all pointless as none serve an actual purpose. Even the hilarious ‘animations’ where animals walk around via cartwheels will get old fast.
To help alleviate the sense of mindless repetition, Everything will randomly generate some objects or animals to have some dialogue if you speak with them. It is impressive just how much variance they have and in my near five hours of playing, I’ve rarely seen one repeated. On the other side of that coin, they really have nothing to say. What they convey will typically fall under one of three categories. The first is pure gibberish and glitched out text, usually when exploring on the cellular level. Second are completely random things that don’t pertain to anything. And finally are a bunch of edgy thoughts that are trying to be seen as deep. So ultimately going out of your way to talk to things feels more like you stumbled into a random online chat room rather than a mechanic to enhance your experience or get a point across.
Getting the point across lies solely with the narration of Alan Watts. While you are off exploring in whatever form you are currently in, you will at times run into an object/animal with a bulls-eye looking symbol instead of the usual cloud icon for talking. Activate these and some rather lengthy talks will start playing out as you continue doing whatever it was you were up to. Alan Watts is a good narrator and the background noise is very welcome to break up the monotony of an otherwise bland soundscape. What he has to say is at times interesting and at times ridiculous. They are randomly spawned into the world and in a strict order, meaning that more likely than not it has nothing to do with your current activities and is equivalent to opening up one of his speeches from your desktop as you play.
It all feels thrown together in such a way as to not add to your immersion, but take you out of it. While it feels surreal at first as you randomly talk to things who speak but don’t truly say anything, and listening to Watt’s speeches, the lack of much of anything to do besides those two things will eventually to get to you. Luckily you can turn them all off so they will stop cluttering your screen and focus on simply exploring. While it is true that each object is of little interest to the player as you can do nothing other than move it around, finding new things to control is pretty addicting for a time. You start off as an animal and eventually, you’ll find yourself controlling galaxies, exploring planets, then their continents. Peeking into a continent will see you finding a bunch of man-made objects and animals to once more begin the entire cycle again.
You can float around as a spore, fly a rocket around space, and race a taco truck through a snow covered city to name a few things. There are no quests, no timers, or any way to destroy yourself even if you trying flying into a nearby sun. It is a sandbox in the truest sense and making your own fun is where you’ll get the most enjoyment from. Eventually, you’ll gain new abilities such as being able to increase the size of things to say, make a world with giant bunnies. Some others include spawning in more of whatever you currently are or shape-shifting into anything that you’ve already discovered. Nothing game-changing, though it makes little sense to keep them locked off from you until you ‘progress’ through the game, making it a bit late to curve the boredom by the time you get access to them.
The tutorial lasts for hours and only by completing the cycle of going from an atom to a galaxy several times will you get some form of quest. It involves you remembering what type of planet and continent it was that you first started on, then finding a mysterious object that will spawn if you are lucky. On by default is an option that the game will play itself after a few seconds without your input. I’ve read another review stating that Everything makes the perfect screensaver and I agree. It is captivating to stand back and simply watch, instead of trying to find some way to have fun. I’d imagine it would also make a pretty good teaching tool for students and children. Everything is no doubt art in motion and incredibly unique. It is however, also so shallow that some may open Pandora’s Box and claim that it isn’t even a video game. Whichever way you look at it, Everything is a fascinating Indie title that is unlike anything else and maybe that is enough to convince you to give it a try.
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