ALL OR NOTHING
Exploring identity and memory in All Our Asias.
Our memories often bear little resemblance to the cold hard facts of the events in question. We overdramatize, we paint ourselves in a harsher light, while many of the finer details and much of the context slips away. You could imagine memories as small islands punctuating an endless, forgetful fog, and it’s those islands—those memory worlds—that you’re tasked with exploring in Sean Han Tani’s dreamlike, introspective game All Our Asias.
Set in the near future, at a time when machines allow people to enter one another’s minds, AOA’s premise might immediately remind you of To the Moon. Like that adventure game, you’re venturing into the mind of a dying patient, in this case your absentee father, who protagonist Yuito has complex feelings for. However, rather than attempting to fulfil his dying wish, you’re merely trying to understand him. As you progress through your father’s mental realm, witnessing abstracted memories from his existence, that world begins to crumble around you.
Part adventure, part 3D platformer, All Our Asias is a game where you’ll wander around large environments, chatting to NPCs and leaping over obstacles (fear not, the platforming is not at all egregious).
Given that they reside within someone’s mind, these locations are surreal or only vaguely fleshed-out— attributes that gel perfectly with the purposefully dated visual style. With its low-poly 3D models and its blown-up pixels, All Our Asias resembles an early PlayStation or Sega Saturn game. It’s a stylistic choice that’s like catnip to those of us of a certain age, evoking a feeling of nostalgia that nicely supports the retrospective narrative. Moreover, there’s something about early 3D that makes it a better fit, in my eyes, for games that trade in visual ambiguity. You’re given the basic building blocks of each themed environment, but many of the details aren’t fleshed out, giving the player’s imagination a licence to fill in the remaining gaps. Much of the joy of All Our Asias lies
It resembles an early PlayStation or Sega Saturn game
in exploring each strange location and trying to imagine what it represents to Yuito’s father, or to the other dreamers that are collectively conjuring this subconscious universe.
Passion project
Despite the fictional protagonist, the story is a personal one for Sean Han Tani, as made clear in the artist’s statement at the start of the game. It’s a game about someone exploring their heritage, at a time when it’s too late for them to learn anything concrete: Yuito sees only fleeting glimpses of a father he’ll never know. It’s not an especially affecting tale, but there are some interesting topics pondered here, before the game draws suddenly to its conclusion.
If you enjoyed poking around in someone’s mind in To the Moon, or trudging through the bizarre dreamscapes of Yume Nikki, you’ll find a game that sits somewhere between them in the thoughtful, quietly unusual All Our Asias.