I call Ib 'art' because it is one of the first pieces of media that affected me on the emotional level rather than just on an entertainment level. I'm going to give a little bit of clarification to why I call it 'art'. I wholeheartedly recommend Ib to anyone who wants an engaging, fun, actually quite challenging and beautiful experience with a game. I believe that this is one of the times that you can legitimately call a game 'art'. I found it by chance through a convoluted string of pictures of Tumblr and I can say that I'm very glad that I did. Ib is such a beautiful little game (and I mean little). If that isn't good character personification I don't know what is. Now you may think it a bit weird or an over-reaction to think that much about a fictional character but I was genuinely sad for a couple of days and only really got out of it after playing the game again and making sure I got a better ending, one with Garry alive in it. MASSIVE SPOILER FOR END OF THE GAME When Garry died in my original playthrough I was legitimately upset to a degree I didn't realise at the time. (which I'll hide so you won't spoil the game for yourself) The real kicker for me was part of one of the endings. This game (for me at least) can really wrench at your heart strings based on your decisions and their outcomes (there are multiple endings which can be effected by loads of little things you don't even notice.) I have never used 'The feels are real' with such genuine truth before. It does it engagingly with (for example) an out of nowhere timed puzzle which can actually drastically affect the outcome of the game.Īnd the real draw of this game.
The game also throws one-off mechanics at you sometimes, but not in the way CoD does with its 'use this airstrike thingy, but never use it again ever'. It might take you a while to figure out a few of them. These are varied and interesting, quite difficult at times as well.
#IB THE GAME MARY ART SERIES#
The game primarily focuses around a series of puzzles. There are bits which can be genuinely unsettling and creepy, but there is never any cheap horror jump scares just to make you scream. While the game has horror, it is good horror. I first saw it put under the 'Horror' genre and thought 'I'm going to play this for 5 minutes before getting scared and running away'. When I first played Ib I was completely unprepared for what it was going to be. But for people who are just discovering it (like me) I ask that you stay around. Some people will have played Ib before and won't be interested in this.