Cibele (2015)

Cibele is a flawed game with a well-told story and certainly worth a playthrough. It didn't have any lasting impact on me, as the basis premise is well-worn territory, but that doesn't detract from the fact that this is both well-written and performed. I don't hesitate to recommend the game on a narrative level, but have some issues regarding the gameplay and presentation. Tightening up the controls, or tweaking how the game is presented, wouldn't have gone amiss.

This is a game about that drive to connect, to see others and yourself clearly. It's an experiment in how a creator might put themselves into a work and make a game that speaks honestly about their real life to the people who play it. Through Freeman's relationship with Ichi, it also illustrates how the distance between people shapes the way they understand each other, and how collapsing that distance can be a profound risk. It's the same risk that permeates a project like Cibele, both in the creation and the playing. In sharing so much, with a friend or a lover or an audience, you give up just as much control. What if they don't like what they see?

An interesting attempt at recapturing the thrill of first love, Cibele is ultimately too clumsy for its own good.

The gameplay of Cibele, in the form of the levels of Voltameri we're forced to play through, is something of a letdown… I was left to wonder how on earth Nina could spend so much of her time playing such a dull and boring game

With the game giving such an importance on the audio of conversations and the inclusion of real-life video scenes, one wonders if Cibele would have been better off as a YouTube short, instead of forcing itself into an interactive medium. Nevertheless, the game still manages to be a somewhat enjoyable tale of first love, even if it feels like a 'you had to be there for it' story.