Mountain

  "The time I spend with Mountain feels slightly more real to me than anything else inside my computer."
- Leigh Alexander, Gamasutra

  "Mountain breaks the mold of video games."
-Ian Bogost, The Atlantic

  "Welcome to an existential nightmare."
- Patrick Klepek, Giant Bomb

  Mountain is a game that opens up to you with the phrase, "welcome to Mountain, you are mountain, you are god," and immediately drops you into your personal, ambient little zen garden. Created by David O'Reilly, Mountain is a simulation 'role playing' video game released on July 1st, 2014.

  I originally downloaded the game on Steam after seeing NerdCubed upload a video on it, and I was immediately enamoured. There were many videos attempting to talk about whether Mountain is in fact a game at all, which then leads into asking what a video game even is, or is supposed to be. It all comes back to subjectivity in art as a whole, and we all know by now that I have a special place in my heart for that conversation.

  But anyway, back to the task at hand. Your mountain will slowly rotate, face the seasons, collect pieces of furniture and other every day items, and occasionally offer it's thoughts every now and then as time progresses. When you pull up the controls in the options menu, it lists as 'nothing'. The only controls are that you can zoom in and out, and rearrange your collection by holding down on the items.

  There are many... displeased... written reviews on the IOS app store complaining that Mountain is a complete waste of money, but David describes his creation simply as a mountain simulator, a 'relax 'em up', of sorts. I've never heard that terminology before but boy do I love it. The key to Mountain is patience. It's a simple concept. You leave it on in the background while you do other things, and slowly become obsessed with checking in on it. It's not complex, it's just... pretty.

  Playing games like The Stanley Parable, The Beginner's Guide and Getting Over it, (the latter I've only seen footage of because there's no way in hell I'm putting myself through the frustration of that game... damn you Bennett Foddy), remind me of this game. They all have something similar in common and it's that they give you the glaring desire to ask, is there something these games are trying to say? Are the artists trying to communicate a specific point? With Mountain, I'm not so sure of that. I think it's just a very charming little game that can aid you on a particularly stressful or lonely night.

  That's about all I have to say on Mountain. I'll leave Nerd's video down here so that you can go watch it if you fancy, but the game is only 99p so... why not go give it a try yourself?

EDIT: It's the 14th of January now, a day after this post went public, and I just wanted to say that yesterday I was trying to think of the game EVERYTHING on PS4 to add to the above list of games that Mountain reminds me of. The reason it's in an edit is because I couldn't fucking remember what it was called and I had to google dumb shit to find it.

Nerd³ Plays... Mountain

Signed,
Elijah.
Meta Sentience.
13/01/2018