Cheap As Free #1: The Company of Myself
Cheap As Free is (going to be) a regular feature where I offer praise and adoration for some of the best games out there whose price tags read £0.00. The first inclusion is The Company of Myself by 2DArray, or Eli Piilonen as his mother presumably calls him.
Jack is a very lonely man and he isn’t quite sure why. For some reason he lost his love and now finds himself unable to have any human contact whatsoever. While he is not sure why he is now so alone, he insists that he can manage just fine by himself.
The Company of Myself is a puzzle-platformer in much the same vein as last year’s brilliant indie hit Braid. Like Braid, TCOM is a game where you’re required to bend the fabric of time to your advantage. You do this by playing the level several times over and by using the recorded “ghost” of your previous playthrough you can manoeuvre through obstacles that would be impossible otherwise.
What really sets TCOM apart from similar games like Chronotron is the stellar use of the gameplay as a metaphor for Jack’s loneliness and what led him to become a hermit. Jack is constantly talking about his past and what led to his isolated existence which synchronises perfectly to the situations in the game. What’s surprising is how well conceived and engaging this story is. For example, a few levels in, we enter a flashback and finally meet Jack’s lost love Kathryn. The next few levels manages to tell the genuinely moving story of how they first met and how he finally lost her. It goes from beautiful to tragic in just a few minutes but it is somehow so involving despite its brevity. There is one moment in particular, which I won’t spoil, in which you are forced to make a horrific and selfish choice. It’s just plain good storytelling.
When the game is over some 30 minutes later we get a final grand reveal that both makes and slightly spoils the game somewhat. While the twist certainly works, I can’t help but feel that had it been left on a more ambiguous note - similar to the aforementioned Braid - it would have been even more powerful. But that’s a small complaint for a game that manages so much in such a short time span.
It’s a experience that is over almost as quickly as it begins, but it is one that is so well-crafted through and through, that it’s hard to not carry it with you afterwards. Special mention needs to go to the brilliant music by David Carney and the splendidly crisp minimalist art by Luka Marcetic.
