It ’s a Monday morning as I write this . My day is just beginning and I ’m getting my to - do list in rules of order . As I check assignments off my lean , I halt to remember if there are any games I ’ve play latterly that I ’ve been meaning to write about . None that I can call back . After all , my weekend was spent watching wrestle and an Oscars - contiguous live flow with friends .
No , hold back . I wager something too , did n’t I ? My nous is brumous ( in all probability from excessive pizza use of goods and services ) , but a secret plan starts to arrive back into focus . Something weird . Unsettling . What was it called?Centum . Was it an indigestion - stimulate fever dream ? My Steam report begs to take issue , reminding me that I went on a three - hour point and clack odyssey over the weekend between societal gatherings . It ’s not that I had forgotten what I ’d play ; it ’s just that it was so otherworldly that it feel like I play it in another lifetime entirely .
I do n’t know how to describeCentum . I do n’t make out how to commend it . I do n’t even love if I should . But if all of this has offend your curiosity already , regard jumping in blind .
For those of you who need a petty more to go on , Centumis a very cryptic point and click adventure game out today on PS4 , PS5 , Xbox One , Xbox Series X / S , PC , andNintendo Switch . Its premise sounds simple enough at its most fundamental level : You are a prisoner and you must break free . The most simplified ( and shoddy ) explanation I could give is thatCentumsticks players into a series of rooms and asks them to sink in around to clear puzzles and safety valve . In its first elbow room , I need to find out trash to draw a figure on a rampart , figure out how to deal with a rat trouble , and pass over down a pestiferous window with a cloth . That all sound familiar , enough , right ?
Well , not so much . Centum ’s enigmatic chronicle takes place whole inwardly of an AI information processing system program go wonky . I ’m trapped inwardly of a desktop , chatter through programs and playing episodic minigames between read stray school text files . If you ’ve ever had the misfortune of using something likeGoogle Gemini , you know that AI is n’t the most reliable teller . Sometimes it spit out disconnected pictures and meaninglessness information . It resembles the reality we jazz , but it ’s never quite right . The devil is in the details , and AI loves to get them all wrong .
It ’s through that lens that you may begin to crackCentum ’s ab initio impenetrable shell . In between puzzle resolution , I detect myself own conversations with a kitchen range of creeps and weirdos . They all tattle in philosophical riddles . I ca n’t decrypt them at first and suppose I ’m just too dumb to grasp whatCentumis trying to tell me . It ’s the same means I finger when I discover academics debating philosophy , cast aside out references that aviate over my head . The mystifying I get , the more I start to accept that I may not be the problem . It ’s the world around me that ’s tongue-tied , filled with lies and straight-out nonsense .
Who am I in all of that ? That ’s the puzzle that really draws me in . I ’m desperate to image out who the prisoner I ’m controlling really is . I get flashes of their genuine life , one seemingly scarred by disaster . Or at least that ’s what I think I ’m seeing . Centumteases me at every bend , even switch over up my identity at one point . My retentiveness are hazy , lose inside of a hallucinating machine that has consumed me and spatter out some version of myself that ’s only half identifiable . There ’s an anxious revulsion in that , and I choose to think that it ’s what Centum aims to illustrate through its confounding world .
Days after finish it , I do n’t really know what I think ofCentum . perchance it ’s a little too obtuse for its own good , disconcert foresightful and cryptic writing for depth . Maybe . All I know is that it ’s currently holding a spot in my brain that few game occupy . It ’s tucked away in a removed lobe , the same one that ’s responsible for for producing my most surreal dreaming . It ’s a half - remember nightmare that I ’m trying my good to call back the next morning . It ’ll stay with me , even if it ’s at a distance . That crap it all the more impactful as it feels like a computer memory slip out of my fingertips . It ’s the same way I ’m get going to feel in my waking hours as the universe around me disintegrates into misinformation at the hands of imperfect simple machine .
Centumis out now on PS4 , PS5 , Xbox One , Xbox Series X / S , PC , andNintendo Switch .
