SYMPOSIUM OF GRIEF
■ I’ve often thought that 1920s jazz sounds sad to the contemporary, Western ear, even though it probably shouldn’t. Wailing clarinets, muddy brass, “vibrato you could drive a truck through,” as my old music teacher would say. It almost comes across as overly emotional, but in a way that we that might not connect with modern feels. It’s the perfect soundtrack to a broken heart, being distant and melodramatic. Designer, T-Dog eXtreme, told me that sourcing copyright-free music from a bygone era influenced Symposium of Grief significantly.
This adventure-of-sorts looks much like a very old, very exhausted, film. Almost vaudevillian, animated, cartoon characters sell condoms, hotdogs and donuts to the undead. The sweet shop is next to the dentist. The game is silent (in that you read text) and almost black and white. The only colours you’ll see are to depict various types of hearts; broken, whole, “growing in wrong” and so on. Everyone has a visible heart, and it may feature in conversation, but it’s not who a person is. It’s just pinned onto their chest, for reference.
The protagonist is a ghost. Their “heart” (who actually IS a character as well as the broken mess pinned to their front) has left, yet (mysteriously) they’ve never collected their things and (somehow) a plasma TV has been (mistakenly) ordered to Ghost’s house. Thus begins a series of feverishly connected fetch quests which are less about solving anything in particular and more about the raw pain that this situation has caused. You need a friend, or food, or pleasure, or religion, or to destroy things, or a cat.
Unlike an old film, there’s a lot of swearing. In fact, when characters exchange multiple profanities, it’s as if the elaborate pantomime falls away and you’re briefly, truly at one with your new, inescapable reality. One of the shops even has two swear words on its sign because why not? When I was teaching in a High School, we used to say, “You can express yourself without swearing,” but this game certainly communicates agony effectively this way. I wanted to give my whole computer a hug. I envy anyone who can’t relate to this story.
Mechanically, there are some clever moments. I won’t spoil my favourite puzzle, but I understood what the game was asking me to do immediately, even though I can’t recall coming across this idea in an adventure game before. The “boss fight” at the end (which is comprised of neither a boss, nor fighting) is basically how your grandmother would help you if you told her you were in pain over a breakup. It took me more than an hour to complete and that was the only hour that I didn’t feel any strong emotions. That’s not an accident.
If it sounds like Symposium of Grief is a harrowing experience, it’s not. It’s actually very funny. Why won’t the sphinx give you their vacuum cleaner? Leverage; they know you need it and can get you to fetch an item for them. Some of my favourite moments were talking with the therapist or priest, where the best of their advice became unintelligible. Ghost wasn’t listening. I wasn’t listening. Who wants advice when your heart won’t even take their boxes of [insert swears here] with them? Get a donut and this game. You won’t regret it.