PAX West 2018: Mikaela Is Already Addicted To ‘Damnview: Built From Nothing’
My second day of PAX began by heading to the Grand Hyatt to meet Juan De La Torre, Edu Verz, and Fernando Ortega of Brainwash Gang and Sindiecate Arts, the creators of Damnview: Built From Nothing, to demo and talk about the intriguing-sounding title. I found them hunkered down in the lobby on some couches, setting up to play on a computer with an Xbox controller. It was so totally casual, and not crowded or loud, which was a great departure from the rest of the PAX set up. I arrived a few minutes early, so I tucked myself away in a corner to quickly watch a gameplay trailer, as I hadn’t had much to go on to prepare for the interview (which you’ll be able to hear on Geekscape Games this coming week). Immediately, I was struck by two things: “oh god what have I signed myself up for, this doesn’t look like a game I would ever be drawn to,” and “wow this looks really interesting and I’m so glad I have signed up to find out more about it.”
Going into this meeting, I didn’t really know what to expect, I had just enough information to be hooked in, without enough to anticipate anything. The description I got of this game was: “I can’t share the name just yet as it’s unannounced, but the game is a simulation sandbox world examining occidental culture and its different social classes – conceptually it’s easy to relate it to Stardew Valley, where a set of systems put together the overall gameplay experience, except it reflects our western capitalistic society and its effect on our human spirit.”
I basically read this and thought: I LOVE Stardew Valley, plus capitalism IS awful… so YES! I am so in. In fact I’m pretty sure that was my exact emailed response.
Upon meeting up with the guys we immediately watched the trailer again, this time with sound on, and what a difference that makes! The music accompanying the trailer is hauntingly beautiful and spells out a wonderful story. I am still wondering if the story at the beginning of the trailer is a symbol of the possibilities and random chance of life/the game, or if it is actually a storyline that is present within the game. As they explained the game things got a little bit clearer and I got more and more invested… Oh my goodness I can not wait to play this game in full!
The style of characters in Damnview is pretty great. The landscape is drab and gritty, giving you the impression of a defunct society. It is done in an 8-bit style, but smoothed out a little to be more accessible to a wider audience. The characters are anthropomorphized animals, all different kinds, and from what I saw this seems like a great choice! Something about playing a game that can sometimes feel depressingly similar to real life is made much more enjoyable when you are a moose. Its funny that I, and obviously many other people, love to play games where you are basically living this characters life and going through the day to day tasks required to hold down a job, eat food, have a place to sleep. This game has all of those things and more, there are a wide variety of ways in which you can play the game, and goals you can choose to work towards. What you are doing really depends on what it is you are trying to accomplish and you get to choose what that is. It all just depends what kind of lifestyle you want your character to lead, what you want to put effort into, and what kinds of challenges you wants them to face.
Damnview: Built From Nothing takes life simulation to the next level. Every single thing you do has a legit consequence that impacts your game play. Accidentally crash your car, cool you have to pay for repairs now. Late for work because you crashed your car, cool you’re fired now. Lost your job, cool you can’t afford to pay rent, guess you better find a good street spot to sleep now. Can’t catch a break and wanna get off the street, maybe you sell a little bit of weed, make a little bit of money. That feels pretty good, don’t need to sleep on the street any more, maybe you sell more drugs and with that strategy manage to move up in the world. Just hope you don’t get caught cause then you’re going to jail. End up in jail, welp now you gotta figure out how to work that system. Are you gonna smuggle stuff in and get ahead in prison, or are you gonna play by the rules in hopes of getting out earlier?
On the other hand, you stay and work all the hours at work, cool you get a promotion, maybe you buy the laundromat, now you can move up in the world and maybe someday you can buy yourself a nice house and a nice car…. Literally the options are endless! Amazing.
I got to watch Edu, one of the creators, play the game throughout our interview, which was great! He made driving look really easy, he got through his daily tasks quickly and went about his day fairly nonchalantly. If you want to hear the interview that we did during this you will have to keep an eye out for our up coming Geekscape Games podcast in which we will be compiling all of our audio interviews with the developers we spoke to over PAX weekend.
After finishing our interview I asked for a chance to play. I prefaced this by letting them know that I’m not so good at the video games, but actually as soon as I started playing it felt pretty easy and natural to navigate. The character I was playing worked in a laundromat, so I got into picking the clothes, putting them in the washer, making sure to separate colours/blacks/whites (which made my heart so happy as this is a constant battle in my household), choosing the right heat setting, etc etc. So it actually became quite involved to do this laundry, and customers were piling up, and as soon as I stopped getting any direction I messed up all the loads of laundry, and likely lost the guy a bunch of customers.
Once I had thoroughly messed that up I was about ready to change gears, and headed out to the street to drive the car around. Driving was super intuitive, with straightforward controls that made sense, although may take some getting used to. One thing that really stood out for me is that you have to drive properly! I mean I failed miserably at this, but in the game there are consequences for your driving ability. So you need to make sure you are stopping at stop signs and using your turn signals! I joked that playing this game, people would learn to drive a little better in real life too… probably not though. You also have to think things through and put in some practice time to work toward a goal, for example if you are going to be robbing a bank, well you better be a good driver before you do that, otherwise you are never going to get away with it.
This game is definitely situated in a capitalist, consumer driven society, and although your character is not necessarily born into a particular class, you definitely find your place within the class structure and deal with the daily consequences of that. One acute and very realistic example of this is the stamina bar. As you do tasks and spend time being awake your stamina bar will deplete. If you are working a well paying job then you will be able to afford higher quality food and your stamina bar will go up quickly. However if you are working an entry level job, you will only be able to afford junk food, which won’t raise your stamina as much and you will have to do all of your work with less energy to get you through the day. Gah! The struggle is REAL!
Basically I am so stoked for this game, and if you have enjoyed playing Stardew Valley type games and have any amount of social consciousness, I think there is a very good chance you could enjoy it too!
So keep a look out for it next year on PS4 and PC. And if you want to hear me talk about Damnview even more, you can hear me talk about the game on this episode of the Geekscape Games Podcast.
