"Everything" Review

Everything is kind of an anomaly in that somewhere deep down, I kind of hoped it would suck. I mean, can you imagine the possibilities for snarky review titles? Everything sucks? Everything hurts? Everything is a waste of time? The possibilities could have been endless, but no. Everything had to go and be decent. There's not a lot to talk about here, so let's just jump right in, shall we?

I'll start this off by saying that there's a 75% chance that Everything isn't for you. I wouldn't say it's exactly a 50/50 chance, but it's just the slightest bit more pretentious than other "art" games, so I'd guess it'll be a little off-putting to more people than usual.
Geez louise, how to even talk about Everything?
In Everything, you play as everything. That is, you can play as everything if you give it enough time. You start off playing as a certain kind of animal (or maybe a rock, but in my case I was a pronghorn antelope). The animal doesn't really walk. It just kind of...flips. There aren't really any animations at all for movement, and I'm inclined to believe that this was a conscious choice. You progress through the game by moving through the procedurally generated environment you find yourself in and picking up bits of tutorial. From there, you gain the ability to "ascend" into something larger than yourself (i.e. a giant rock) or "descend" into something smaller (i.e. a clump of sand). The gameplay from there on depends on you ascending and descending into increasingly larger and smaller things so that time and the progression of life speeds up. It becomes truly fascinating.

As you travel, you collect a few things: "things," thoughts, and audio. There are a metric crap-ton of "things," that is to say animals, plants, structures, landforms, etc, and one of the goals of the game is to eventually become all of these things. It's truly a daunting task, though, and it isn't required. Thoughts are essentially just the feelings of the trees and animals you come across. Audio is the best collectible in Everything. Essentially, certain things will give you clips from lectures by Philosopher Alan Watts. These audio logs allow you to experience this game while hearing lectures about concepts such as "If the world began with a big bang, you aren't a product of the big bang, you are a piece of the big bang." Most of it is kind of "focus your chi because we're all the universe" hippie-dippie gobbledygook, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't completely fascinating. In fact, as I've been writing this review, I've been listening to another lecture from Watts. Even if you find Everything frustrating, these little philosophical lectures are worth the time.

In two short paragraphs, I've summed up the experience of Everything. It's got a great, sparse soundtrack, lots of different ways to move around in the world, and it present some really interesting philosophy as the "story" continues. There are some negatives, however. For one thing, the framerate and textures don't always hold up well, and in a game that has as few technical demands as this one, that's kind of a big deal. Another thing that I actually will be taking off for is the fact that its asking price of $15 is way too high. Sure, you have plenty of things to transform into and lots of procedurally generated worlds to explore, but it's entirely aesthetic. There's very little functional difference between any two things in Everything. I can see this game being a great deal at around $5 maybe, but $15 is far too much for what essentially amounts to five procedurally-generated playgrounds.

I personally enjoyed my time with Everything quite a lot. It isn't for everyone, and it's perhaps the strangest game I've played since Only If, but if you're willing to wait for a sale, Everything is definitely worth your money for a good soundtrack and some fascinating philosophical questions. Now, the score is probably going to be a surprise, but there just isn't enough in this game for point subtractions to mean what they usually do. Like I said, I really enjoyed Everything, but just keep the fact that there just isn't that much to judge in the back of your head as you see the score.

Let us review:
Framerate troubles: -0.2
Poor value proposition: -0.4

So, the final score for Everything is...
9.6/10 - Absolutely Outstanding
(Like I said...)
Excellent work, David O'Reilly, excellent work.