– Advertisement –
Cozy Apocalypse? That sits there in the full title of I Am Future and it just feels like an oxymoron. When I think of apocalypses, I think of ruined buildings, scary mutants and angry people with kitchenware selotaped to their faces. None of that is particularly cozy. That said, maybe there is potential in an apocalypse where you’re just left alone to relax and get on with things. Like that Twilight Zone episode before the bloke’s glasses break. Then again, I could barely handle my internet going down for three days, so it could be me that’s the problem.
Anyway, I bring up that bit in the title because that’s the standard I used to judge I Am Future. It comes down to catharsis; how much it calms me down and makes me feel better about life. It’s a tricky thing to measure, but generally it comes down to the satisfaction of completing tasks and working towards some overall goal. I Am Future has definite pockets of catharsis, and it’s a very pretty experience, but it feels a touch shallow.
The Roof Isn’t On Fire
I Am Future opens with us popping out of a pod on top of a roof and encountering the end of the world. Fortunately, the end of the world looks rather pretty. That’s the first thing that struck me about I Am Future: it looks bright, colourful and happy. A lot of apocalypse games assume that the end of the world is going to paint everything brown. In this case, green is the predominant colour. It makes exploring the rooftop a joy, particularly given that different sections of the roof do feel quite different. Though I can’t say that a rooftop mini-golf course seems like a good idea.
Either way, we are trapped on this rooftop, so we make the most of it. We start by slotting our cybernetic hand into place and then ripping apart everything that was left behind. The main gameplay loop involves hunting for basic materials – scrap metal, plastic, that sort of thing – then pouring them into schematics to make new buildings, which will refine those materials into more complex materials. Then you can upgrade your tools and machines even further. You’ll also need to stop every now and then to munch on a sandwich, as there’s a hunger meter that’ll tick down your health until you faint.
It’s a fairly basic loop for this sort of thing, but there are nice elements. For one, slowly carving your way through the rooftop is definitely cathartic. Progress across the roof is gated by what tools you have, and it’s nice that pouring resources into a new tool allows the map to open up. I also like that hunger isn’t just an extension of the health bar. Being full means you can carry more, giving you an incentive to chow down. Best of all, though, is the disassembling. You pick up a kettle, say, and you have to manually unscrew sections and remove components. It’s like the anti-House Flipper, and I really enjoyed it.
Just Not Clicking Together
I could probably isolate all the different parts of I Am Future and say something positive about them, but my main issue is that things don’t really gel together. Sometimes, a game can be less than the sum of its parts. Take the hunger meter, for instance. It only ran out twice for me and never ended in me fainting, because food is everywhere and can be grown easily. Then there are the ‘enemies’. Little leech-like fellas that eat your crops and turn into weeds. Interesting idea, but they’re just a mild annoyance that you can keep at bay with a cheap spray can. Once you plonk down a UV tower, it’s all over for them.
Digging a bit deeper into this issue, I think the problem is that there’s no sense of working towards something greater. Nearly everything we build is done within minutes, as so many materials are just lying around. Once I’d built the bridge to the second roof (the only one, mind), I had no more big projects. I was doing lots of little projects, wondering when the next big job was coming along. A big draw to this type of construction game is having a big project that you can chip away at. It’s these projects that make the smaller machines necessary, so you can build yourself up. As it was, I just following the set goals without any investment.
The other way that I Am Future could have given me some motivation was through the plot. It’s not a bad set up. We’re an amnesiac in a world where people’s personalities have been transferred into machines. Everyone’s sure that we’re the big CEO of the company that was responsible for the transfer, but we can’t remember a thing. We even meet a handful of these machines. Sadly, it doesn’t really go anywhere. It races through plotpoints and never explores its characters. Then it goes through a random twist at the end that doesn’t really add anything. Actually, it probably detracts from the experience.
I Am Future – Pretty But Shallow
Ultimately, I think my feelings are nicely encapsulated by two elements: exploration and minions. Exploration involves sending a drone off to set locations around the world. One of the first ones has you picking apart a downed plane. It’s interesting and interactive, and had potential. Sadly, most of the rest are just text boxes or shop interfaces. Then there’s minions. A nice idea that could allow some complex automation. Unfortunately, the building schematics are so simple that the only automation I ever needed was a basic sprinkler system.
So, where does that leave us with the catharsis test? Well, the lack of meaningful progress in the mid-game did hurt that. I wasn’t getting up in the morning with a plan of what I wanted to do. I was just sort of drifting across the rooftop, picking up this and that and shoving into whatever blueprint was going. This wasn’t like putting together a beautiful jigsaw. This was like tipping out a beautiful jigsaw onto the table, then putting it back in the box piece-by-piece. Yes, things happened but there was no progess made.
