Press Play Gaming's Game Of The Year Is 1000xRESIST
That’s right, 1000xRESIST is our GOTY.
While the basic overview of this game is that it's a narrative game - close to a visual novel but with some 3D space interactions - that description completely undersells the pure masterpiece that this game is. The way 1000xRESIST weaves its many story themes and threads into a digestible, understandable narrative, while keeping you hooked from chapter to chapter with just the right balance between questions raised and revelations dropped, is nothing short of incredible. The connections it has to our real world, while simultaneously being a novel and fresh sci-fi story, is just astounding. If there's a single game that is a must play for 2024, this is the one.
What is 1000xRESIST about?
Covid. A deadly disease, wearing masks, isolation, rituals, home learning, lives upended.
Generational trauma. How the way we treat younger generations is molded by the generations before us.
Hong Kong. The protests against China's oppression of an independent populace. A place lively and beautiful and diverse and home to many, now under the thumb of authoritarianism.
Religion. How we make things up to comfort ourselves, how we deify flawed people, how we spend our lives trying to interpret and understand a past that was simply just people doing random things that they thought were the best choices at the time - people who could never predict the repercussions of those choices for decades, centuries, millennia to come.
The flaws in power systems. How structures inherently benefit some and crush others.
Oppression. Through religion, through the state, through the ruling class, through systems designed by the powerful and imposed on the rest of us against our will.
Systemic racism. How the way we live today is built from unfair systems decided by lopsided societies centuries and millennia ago, and how so many people in that system that benefit from it struggle to see how others are kept down by it.
Immigration. How people are treated when they move countries for legitimate reasons and work hard to fit in, yet still are treated with hostility. How integration into a new society isn’t as simple as just adapting to a new norm. A blend of old and new is needed to survive.
The interpersonal. The relationships between friends, our parents, our siblings, generational siblings, our children.
The global. How humanity collectively deals with crisis, what our responsibility is to our fellow human, what we should give to the world and what do we take.
The cosmic. How an unknowable force could upend the silly little lives we live in an instant, that anything is possible in the vastness of the universe and how tiny our stupid little problems mean in the grand scale of all things. They simultaneously don’t matter and all, but also are everything.
Humanity. The ugly and the beautiful, the history and the future, the self imposed limits and the limitless potential.
How it can weave all of this through an affecting narrative that isn’t difficult to understand, doles out mystery bit by bit, answering questions while presenting new ones. Masterpiece of storytelling, may be one of the greatest stories ever told.
I just had a dream that my father played through the game, and I helped him through an end credit sequences he couldn’t get through. I asked what he thought it was about. He had a surface level thought of “about the government” in a gruff manner - because he didn’t like the way they imposed rules around covid and other things - which then led to in depth discussion about the game’s themes. I could see the game had broken through the initial layers and got him thinking, with the discussion afterwards becoming just as important for enriching understanding.
I woke up at 3:30am one morning, months after playing this game, and had to write all of the above down.
No other game has stuck with me in the way 1000xRESIST has. Every now and then I will just find myself mulling a specific chapter, theme or scene over in my mind, unpacking the multiple meanings, connections and ideas each present and hold.
In the opening to this Game Of The Year project, I wrote:
I'm a strong believer that media matters. Our internal world is shaped by what we experience; if all we experience is a rabbit hole of hateful conspiracy theories, then that's what we become. Likewise, when an unassuming game pierces our perceptions with an empathetic, nuanced and thoughtful position, it has the power to change hearts and minds. More on that later.
1000xRESIST is the reason for these words. As corny as it is, the "power of games" is that they have the ability to put you in the minds and shoes of another more easily than any other medium. The ability for games to build empathy for others are one of their strongest, often one of their most underutilized, qualities. You may not be an immigrant, a daughter, a mother, a sister, a clone, a revolutionary or any number of other possible human traits, but for a time you can experience the world through someones eyes other than your own, and understand what it's like to live from that perspective.
The world as it stands feels like it is spiraling. Conflict is on the rise, and is only likely to be stoked further in the coming years. Authoritarianism is being welcomed by people unable or unwilling to understand the full scope of what that means. Every year feels like it becomes harder and harder to survive, with constant battles over things that shouldn't matter distracting from the ones that do.
1000xRESIST is a kind of blueprint for how we need to be thinking about the coming years. We need to understand the limits of our ability, influence and reach in what we can and can not affect, and act on what we can. We need to hold strong to conviction for what is right in the face of clear corruption and tyranny. We must resist every vector of encroaching authoritarianism, large and small, a thousand times over. It's right there in the name.
Humanity has seen cycles of unspeakable violence; iron grips by seemingly unstoppable kings; oppression of sections of humanity those with power deem unworthy. These things and more have always been overcome through love, empathy and compassion. It will again. But only if we resist against that which will destroy us, with everything that we are.
We must fight for the rights of our fellow sisters, every day, in every way we can. We need to understand the past, connect with everyone that built this present, then choose what we take into the future - and what gets left behind.
1000xRESIST is a shining light in a pool of darkness. It's a perfect example of what games can be, rather than a game that sits within perceived boundaries. It's a narrative everyone should experience.
For those reasons and many more, 1000xRESIST is Press Play Gaming's Game Of The Year for 2024.