Experience Points

Out of all the minutiae to appreciate about Cibele, my favorite is the clicks. This is a game that simulates what its like to look through a 19-year-old's computer desktop—the old blog entries, the old photos, the writing assignments, and the emails—and the best part is that when I click my mouse, the game clicks back. It's small, but important. The clicks mask the real sound of my mouse, connecting my finger taps with main character Nina's finger taps. For a game about a girl desperate for a connection via her computer—a story that could be my own—the clicks are essential. We're in this together.

Despite having access to the internet on her computer, or at least the suggestion of it, Cibele is a lonely game. You are the girl, Nina, sitting in front of her computer. You browse through her desktop looking for context, not unlike how you explore Her Story's video database to get an idea of what's going on. Here, instead of typing in keywords, you search for abbreviated file names that suggest their contents. You quickly discover that Nina likes a boy she met online and is afraid to tell him. She says as much in her emails, in her saving of his pictures, in the way she writes her poems. He means a lot to her and doesn't know it yet.

This adds anxiety to the parts of the game where you play a fictional, but so, so real, MMO game with him. Nina and Ichi, his character's name, are clearly interested in each other. They flirt and tease over voice chat. Listening to them speak is adorable, then frustrating, then adorable again. In these scenes, the only influence you have as the player is to direct Nina's character, Cibele, around a fantasy-themed map and slay monsters until a bigger one arrives. Their voices periodically breaking up the soundtrack of your clicks. Friends message you, probe you about him, ask why you don't pay attention to them as much anymore, wonder if you want to hang out sometime, and they all feel like distractions. There's a bar that fills as you get closer to the boss, but it's superficial. All that matters is that you're getting closer to him.

Outside of these moments, the game slows down, gets introspective. You start to reflect on the progression of Nina and Ichi's conversations. I found myself wondering if it was going well, if he liked me. These are strange questions for a game where you play as a specific character, especially when Nina's identity is all over the place—the interstitial live-action scenes of her, the pre-written text replies, the voice-acted dialogue, the anime wallpaper--yet, I still acted as if it were me looking at the monitor. This could be me, 14-year-old Tyler, shy at school and eager in-game, messaging random players, making online friends. Earlier this year, I went to a wedding for one of those friends. I was Nina seven years ago; I can't separate myself from her experience, nor do I want to.

So, once Nina and Ichi's relationship starts to pick up, I knew exactly where it was going. The MMO becomes an elaborate chat room. Their conversations leave the syntax of the game: they talk about family, the photos they send each other, potentially meeting up in-person. Their conversations disregard the fiction of the game. They start to talk on the phone. They start to say “I love you.”

The first half of the game celebrates the ease of communication over the internet, but the second half finds its limits. Suddenly, all of my anxiety turned into dread. Those questions I asked myself earlier in the game could have real, physical consequences for Nina. In the game, they were encouraged to work together, to fight the monsters as a team and defeat the boss. In real life, there's nothing to protect them. They have to do that all on their own, with all of the real risks associated. Like the first time I met one of my friends outside the game, I couldn't stop myself from wondering if I had been spending months with someone fake, someone who could hurt me.

Nina never displays that kind of pessimism, and it's where my experience starts to separate from hers. My relationships were never about love; we were just good friends that wanted to talk in-person. Nina wants more than that with Ichi. It's implied that they spend hours on the phone almost every day, except, to me, he's still a stranger, and I feared for her.

The final moments play out in live-action scenes. They show Nina at her most vulnerable and intimate.The end of Cibele completely separates you from her. You're left as a viewer, a third-party. The little bit of control you had for most of the game is completely gone. It's simultaneously unnerving and beautiful in the way it mirrors Nina's distance from the safety of her computer. She's on her own.

For me, the impact of Cibele's ending was twofold. The game is part nostalgia for all the time I used to play MMOs, and part reinterpretation of that nostalgia. It's not quite the same. It hit me in much the same way that Galak-Z hit critic Austin Walker. Walker, a fan of mechs and anime, fell in love with the game for its smart references and nods to his childhood. In his review of it, he struggles with whether or not the game is a form of empty nostalgia, references for references-sake. In the end, he argues that it's not. For him, Galak-Z is “More than just a checklist of familiar references, more than just the old stuff with a new coat of paint.” He says, “It is a game that captures the feeling I had on that vinyl couch, watching those old animated machines on the screen and wondering what it was like to be so fast, so powerful, so invincible.”

I didn't have a vinyl couch, I had a squeaky computer chair. I didn't watch animated machines, I watched an undead warlock cast spells and jump along with other heroes, players I talked to over voice chat. I played an MMO that became a medium for me to talk to people, a catalyst for me to develop those relationships outside of it, and the source for the good friends I have today. Cibele captures that lonely, scary process. Its authenticity is its strength. I used to read old blog entries, look at old photos, save writing assignments, and send emails like Nina. I used to live online, on my computer, in a virtual world. Though our experiences end up in different places, Nina's journey resembles my own. Cibele resonates not only because it's deeply personal for her, but because it's also deeply personal for me.

Tyler Colp is a writer who is curious about video games, music, cooking, and film.