Absence Makes…

This one is spoiler-y, but it’s a nice, five-minute game jam game by Pixel Ghost, who made the Life’s Too Short games and is all about happy endings. It’s free, so play it first if you want! Or read on…

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There’s a way that so many role-playing games from the Super Nintendo era would start: life is idyllic, you’re a young person (usually a boy) from a small village, something bad happens, and you have to go out into the real world to save it and/or the girl you grew up with. There was a rebound against this style of game introduction in later years, but every once in a while, a new RPG will come out that has the exact same setup. It transports you back to being younger, when things didn’t have to be so dark right off the bat, when you could just enjoy a quaint, peaceful village for an hour or so before heading out into the wilds to fight the big bad.

Absence makes… from the very first PlayJam inverts this trope. Everything seems bad immediately, real bad. You’re alone in your apartment, longing for something that isn’t there. Instead of wandering around, you control a small finger-pointer that floats from one setpiece to the next, and each interactable object is accompanied by a small poem and a sort of afterimage that lingers after you move on. You lift weights, but for what, you’re alone and no one can see your muscles. You wash dishes, but so what, you’re alone and no one will eat off your clean plates. You even feed the cat, so you know you’re not entirely alone, but it’s not enough. Something’s missing.

Is this game about how it feels after a breakup? Did your spouse die? Did… did you do it? There’s so many ways this could go in a post-true crime world, where so much media is “feel-bad” to make us… I don’t know, think about how things could be worse? Like yes, maybe the basement does leak, but at least I’m not trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

But this is Pixel Ghost. That’s not what he does.

In the next room, you turn on the TV for a bit to kill some time, still alone… and then the front door opens. Your lady is home! Everything is great again! The sense of relief is palpable. This is how it feels sometimes when your significant other leaves for a while, maybe even just to go to work while you have to work from home (working from home alone is actually the inspiration for this game). You’re still going and moving and working without them, but something is missing. It’s not until you’re reunited with the one that you love that you can really feel complete. Cynical types might call that codependent, but not me. I’m always at my best because of my wife. I wouldn’t do any of the cool things I do without her to support me. I hope that you, too, have something that brings out the best in you! And if something’s missing, I hope you can find that, too.

(Get it on Itch.)