“It’s sort-of like a dream, I feel immersed in it, like swimming through something intangible.”

This is a common thing people who like The Remainder have said about it. 

What does that even mean? 

I know exactly what they mean, the trouble is putting it into words. That’s the whole trouble with making a text-based game, actually, putting what you want to say into words.

But I’ll give it a try, you’re welcome to watch me fail spectacularly, and maybe, just maybe we’ll have a fine and dandy time playing with words and ideas in the interim.

Dreams have many qualities. The first to come to mind is the fact that one has to be asleep in order to dream. Profound, I know.

While most entertainment products thrive on trying to shock you(jump scares anyone?), excite you, stimulate your glands, and titilate your sense to keep you hopping along from bursts of adrenaline and dopamine.

Our game actually tries to lull the reader into a calm, almost sleepy state with the ambient music, the slow pace, the use of metaphors and imagery. It’s a sort of mental tranquillizer. This is probably a terrible idea commercially. Can you imagine a notable twitch-streamer playing The Remainder to an audience of hyped-up fans? 

Most entertainment products are made for “young people”. I put that in quotes to avoid giving you the impression I mean it literally. “Young” is not a measurement of biological age, but rather emotional maturity.

You could be 60 and still “young” and foolish, or 25 and quite “old” and wise. It really depends on what you’ve been doing with your mind in that time.

I am unabashedly, whole-heartedly making a story for “older” people, that is to say people who’ve decided, or at least began to suspect that faster, higher, bigger, and FASTER(I know I said it twice) is not going to get them to where they’d like to be. These are people who’re beginning to appreciate the quiet, subtle, and lasting satisfaction of being calm and not needing to bother much with all that other noise. 

The world, however, usually teaches us to go fast. I once had a chat with a lawyer who told me it didn’t matter what one did in life, they just had to do as much as they can all the time, because if there was a goal-post in life, then you had the highest chance of reaching it if you always ran forward.

I wondered out loud, “but what if the goal post was behind you? What if it was under your feet? Then the faster you ran the farther away you’d get from the goal, wouldn’t you?”

The advantage of slowing down is that you can actually look at where you are and what it is you’re doing. If you get past the habitual thirst for excitement, for action, for getting more and more stuff, you might start noticing that it’s nice to just be relaxed, and then you might notice things that can only be felt when you are relaxed. 

Wholesome emotions like empathy, gratitude, forgiveness, and compassion for example, these only come from a calm mind. When did you ever recall witnessing people being empathetic, gracious, forgiving or compassionate, what kind of a person do you see? Someone wired up? Twitching from excitement? Racing along a series of check-points? 

The story we write for The Remainder, the characters we develop, the emotions we feel, they’re all done through a calm state of mind, and can only be understood and appreciated by a like-wise state of mind, because communication is only possible between equals. 

Did you ever see two people trying to convince each other of some fact that they know? They’re each in possession of some information that is true to themselves, but when they’re talking in a state of agitation and opposition, when they’re more concerned with stating their own facts than listening, then they part having learned nothing new from the other person. Many words were exchanged, but no information was transferred. They couldn’t hear anything because their mind wasn’t really working, their glands were doing all the talking. It wasn’t two humans talking, it was anger, pride, and conceit. They were not equals, because in each’s mind they were right and the other was wrong.

The information is not the problem, the problem was communication, it was empathy, something I’ve previously asserted belongs firmly in the nation of calmness.

So, the first thing we do is to slow things down, make it a bit quieter, a bit less bright, and allow you to have the time to relax, and give the noise in your head space to fade. We want you in a similar state as we were when we made this story, making us more equal. Then and only then is there the slightest chance that our heads would align and the things we thought and felt and poured into the computer from one end might come out the other end and flow into your head. 

We want to establish communication, we come in peace. 

What it is we’re trying to say that can only be said in a quiet voice? See my last essay here: https://nimphradora.itch.io/the-remainder/devlog/302647/the-red-seas-scrolls-2-loss-and-gain

Until next time.