Infinite Ocean

November 19, 2010 1:00 PM

Infinite Ocean is "a sci-fi adventure about sentience, freedom, and the search for truth" (a point & click flash game) by Jonas Kyratzes.

Menu appears by mousing up to the top of the screen. Do read the instructions as there are some odd password gathering mechanics that may not otherwise be immediately obvious.

posted by juv3nal (18 comments total)

Also the way that music loops forever is really awesome/unsettling.
posted by juv3nal at 1:01 PM on November 19, 2010

having just sung the Janáček Glagolitic Mass, it was a little strange to hear the words "gospodi pomiluj" coming from a flash game.....
posted by Thomas Tallis is my Homeboy at 1:25 PM on November 19, 2010

Geeze, this game is dark.

I don't mean in terms of subject. I mean "my screen's cranked all the way up and it's still hard to see anything".
posted by egypturnash at 1:26 PM on November 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

Pac-Man is about striving against incredible odds, overcoming oppression, picking your battles, individualism and delicious, delicious dots.
posted by JHarris at 1:29 PM on November 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

I have reasonably good spatial navigation skills and I can still confused in a 2x2 room in this game. I could really go for 4 or 5 cups of nice, still warm coffee though.
posted by ecurtz at 1:34 PM on November 19, 2010

God how these games frustrate me. I end up in a spasm of CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK until I hit the magic correct button.

That said, I loved Myst and Riven, but only because I had a walkthrough to hand (and because Riven was so pretty!)
posted by BungaDunga at 1:44 PM on November 19, 2010

now the Wilfred Owen poem has Britten in my head.
posted by Thomas Tallis is my Homeboy at 1:46 PM on November 19, 2010

Can't see a damned thing. I mean...seriously. I can't see anything. I just keep moving my mouse around until it responds to something I need to click.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:40 PM on November 19, 2010

Yeah, I had to use the walkthrough video many times simply because I could not see many items. Would've preferred a slightly longer music loop (I realise I could turn it off, but, enh, artiste's original vision and all that) as well. Otherwise, mostly good, although the author's biases show through pretty hard in several places.
posted by curious nu at 3:10 PM on November 19, 2010

That password combination thing wasn't exactly intuitive. The music loop was at first annoying, but then it burrowed its way into my subconscious and just left a sort of mind-numbing stain of desperation. So, it worked.

But I was happy to see the shout-out to Asimov. What a mind-shaper.
posted by hpb2earnest at 3:41 PM on November 19, 2010

Hm. I wish the hints system were more than just a link to a video. It seems it's either live pure or be totally spoiled. Ah, well. This was a fun 30 minutes. And yeah, I'd like to see a topdown map of the whole thing. I spent the most time just trying to get back to a room I'd been to before.
posted by Night_owl at 4:57 PM on November 19, 2010

I beat it. It was fun, but the unrelenting pretension and wall-of-text pseudo-profundity really got to me.
posted by nasreddin at 6:36 PM on November 19, 2010

TL;DP
posted by clarknova at 9:56 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

It reminded me of the kinds of video games they don't make anymore, like "graphic adventures." Those were my favorite kind of game. I very much enjoyed this one.
posted by Jon_Evil at 8:40 AM on November 20, 2010

That game was awesome. Thankyou.

If you find you keep getting lost, like I did, you'll be wanting to make a map as you go along, to save your sanity. While I'm here, does anyone know of any map making software for games like this? Because it strikes me as strange that I keep getting out pen and paper to play computer games; I've tried using eg Inkscape but it's not what it's designed for. I've looked for map making software and it all seems to be aimed at D&D, which is not what I'm after.
posted by motty at 8:06 PM on November 20, 2010

I am a total sucker for weird A.I.'s and terminals thanks to growing up with Bungie games, so I couldn't help but enjoy it, but in the end I think I preferred Durandal's humorous pretension to just straight up pretension.
posted by tmthyrss at 8:10 PM on November 20, 2010

I did have to use the Hint button to realise that messages could be "scanned", but otherwise I though this was excellent.
posted by Nossidge at 10:02 PM on November 20, 2010

Thanks for posting this. I love escape-the-room games, so I'm having fun banging my head on this one (but I turned off the music, and play it at night with the lights turned off so I can see the details better - the graphics are really dark!).
posted by Quietgal at 9:16 AM on November 22, 2010