Umurangi Generation - Through the Lens, Open Your Eyes
Umurangi Generation is a game of physical spaces. While simply tasked with capturing photographs of specific objects in each environment, each space tells a story of heightened stakes and complex emotion. These spaces interconnect to weave a narrative through line stark in its implications and message. It does all this without a single spoken word.
Games often require you to stop performing your main verb of interaction with it to take in its environmental storytelling. You have to stop shooting to pay attention to the skeleton on the toilet; the action must quiet to hear the words of an audio log. Through the lens of your mechanical eye, Umurangi Generation flips that friction, instead promoting an instinctive connection to the environment; teaching you to read it, see it for what it is. To pay attention.
The full screen title card upon pushing start is denoted Mauau View, so named for the extinct volcano marking the north-western horizon. An old couch sits in a shallow pool surrounded by wooden pallets, a boombox and a broken chain link fence. Scaffolding connected by loose planks and cinderblocks belay a construction site now abandoned, only a momentary safe haven for you and your friends.
To be the one documenting history unfolding is to tell the story of those living through history in real time.
By tasking you to search out seemingly innocuous objects to photograph, Umurangi Generation shifts your focus to reading the environment around you. Where an action heavy game naturally narrows your attention to immediate threats in the area, here you take the time to learn and understand what this space is, and why you are here at this particular moment in time. To “beat” a level of Umurangi Generation takes but a few minutes; to know a level can take upwards of an hour.
Curiosity is naturally piqued as you drink in the space. Everything around the objects you’re tasked with capturing becomes just as, if not more important than the objects themselves. Take a close up photo of the word “cops” - discover that the word is a part of the graffiti’d quote, “COPS ARE DIRTY.” Questions arise about the when, where, and why of each space, as the heavy punk aesthetic fleshes out a story of overbearing oppression by “protectors" in the face of an existential threat.
Without even registering, you’ll begin taking photos of parts of the world that you were not explicitly tasked to document. You’ll do this because you want to, not because you were asked. You’ll step through the rubicon, moving from a package runner checking off tasks, to a photographer using their tools in a radical expression of freedom.
Strewn about markers and spray cans, a small halfpipe and an upended skateboard lay claim here, a space of freedom and rebellion. The abundance of colour in graffiti stark against the concrete.
Many of the spaces in Umurangi Generation, even the more open ones, feel condensed. Crossing any one from it’s furthest points can be accomplished in a handful of seconds. The wrinkle is that every space is heavily three dimensional - There are always stairs to climb, roofs to leap across and out-of-the-way spaces hiding an abundance of depth.
These spaces illustrate their intentions through not just the set design, but through their physicality. Finding the right angle for the shots you want to take requires a knowledge of these spaces; an intimacy born of familiarity. Soaking in the tone of an area is critical to reflect the truth of these lived in experiences.
As that familiarity grows, so does your attachment to these spaces, and to these people. You are no longer a voyeur to this tragedy; you are a part of it, suffering from it, living beneath it.
Walls are plastered with posters and graffiti, candles and spray paint cans litter the ground. Separation between military personnel and civilian bystanders, a gulf a mile wide in metaphorical distance, movement and composure.
Colour is used to saturate the flavour of the space. Dull greys, browns and camouflage reflect the bleak nature of a military installation, while a flood of neon permeates a street party, a carved out space of freedom surveyed over by soldiers with rifles.
Open skies are met with foreboding shades of red, while intimate spaces lay beneath layers upon layers of cables strung across buildings you can’t see the top of. A single train cart fleeing from devastation provides no room for private reflection, the mood of everyone aboard sombre and despondent.
Messsage and meaning bursts forth, deep and complex. Your mode of interaction is only to observe and record, be the documenter of life in this very moment, for those stuck within the system that brought the world to this point.
A full 360 degree view of the surrounding area is visible. A gigantic wall marked “UN - EMERGENCY LOCKDOWN PROTECTIVE BARRICADE” stretches as far as the eye can see, encompassing the entire city. Houses line the streets below, abandoned. Next to the vibrancy of the graffiti, “I am just a kid in a mixed up world” is scrawled across the wall in black.
Every level in itself is a snapshot in time. There are next to no extended animation sequences, nor are there ever any world altering puzzles or once off content to consume. Barring particular finalities, the moment you are dropped in to a level, that space is constant, and will remain so through to the second you exit. The pictures you take are of a moment in time, of a moment in time.
Each stage could easily be just a colourful playground to take cool photos in, and Umurangi Generation would coast through on its Jet Set Radio vibes alone. But Umurangi Generation overflows with purpose.
Though completely static, every space tells a dynamic story. The unfolding of this story happens not as a series of events, but as your understanding of the space unfolds through engagement.
Umurangi Generation, by default, saves every photo you snap through your journey. How you choose to represent the momentary release of a street party or a claustrophobic train cart rests entirely on your interpretation. This creates a feedback loop between the game offering its narrative up to you, and you creating your own commentary against that narrative.
From passive observer to active participant, Umurangi weaves it’s tale with you rather than to you. These spaces have a message for you; through film, you build your knowledge and take in its teachings. Through curating a collage of memories, you become the speaker of incontrovertible truth.
