E-ON

A mostly chill (and seldom chilling) conversation with Ellie, or at least her AI counterpart, within the VR social media platform E-ON. The game's narrative is led by two mysteries: 1) Why is E-ON's new user verification system down? 2) Where is the real Ellie, and why has she been offline for so long? IMMERSION: This game reminded me a lot of UnearthU, an interactive experience where you also spend the whole time talking to an AI character. Except, instead of navigating a new social media platform, UnearthU has you going through mindfulness activities and breathing exercises. I think both games are successful in their immersive components, since you the person sitting there playing are actually performing these activities, whether it be meditating at your chair for UnearthU or scrolling round the hoop to to understand the functions available in E-ON. STORY: I think my view of the story is best described by how often I used the "text bubble" feature (from now on referred to as T.B.) at different points in the game. At the beginning, when getting more credits is your main in-game goal, I found myself constantly fighting the urge to click through the T.B. dialogues as I was much m…

A quick dive (60-90 min) into a thoughtful & emotional story. There are some interesting and relevant ideas here, and we may find ourselves coming face to face with them as a society sooner than we think! Navigation is maybe a little confusing at first -- whatever. Stick with it for a few min & get immersed.

While based in the near future with an aesthetic that conjures the bygone age of Y2K and web 1.0, E-ON is definitely rooted in the present, and it wants you to think about your life online. E-ON is an interesting little narrative game that you can explore in one good sitting. I'm a big fan of indie VNs that go outside the box, and more broadly speaking, games that leverage their gameplay to support the narrative. In E-ON, you're a user who isn't actually able to access the entire metaverse for a variety of reasons, and you must piece together what life is like and what the truth really is. Some people on social media seem to be mistaking this game for a literal metaverse app, so I think that says a lot about how successfully Frosted Window has pulled off setting a mood. The game is experienced through conversations with Ellie--or rather, the AI version of Ellie--as well as her past blog posts and in-game news... as well as something else that I won't spoil. It's non-linear in the sense that you can explore these areas in whatever order you like. Since you're jumping into a world that is already established, this style of gameplay encourages you to think about what is actually go…

What is E-ON? In the world this takes place in, it's the next-gen of online social networking and you are a new user. To introduce you to it, you have been paired up with another user called Ellie. To begin with this online space is locked off, and by interacting with E-ON's starting features you will gain points that can unlock the next levels. You chat with Ellie and it gives points, then you use those points to buy icons, emotes and other pointless tosh, that expand the world of E-ON. And th-th-th-thats all folks! As far as this being interactive goes, there's nothing more to it than that. It's one big glorified visual novel, which would be fine if it was even mildly engaging, but...uh...it isn't. The first issue is that Ellie is an incredibly boring "person". Waffling on about clothes, furniture, E-ONs "cool features" (yeesh!) and other users tedious lives and interests. Ellie is quite a girlie girl (or a gay man pretending to be female? or non-gender specific?), and to me (as a male) if they were a real person I'd rather bang my head against a wall until I'm unconscious, than spend time listening to them drone on about sh*t I don't care for. But wait! There's a twist…

Let me preface this with, this isn't a BAD game. There's nothing that would make you say "wow, I don't like this". But what it is, is a bland and boring game. The plot is predictable, all of the interaction takes place entirely in a single interface, and nothing very interesting happens. You get some basic-level AI stuff that's already been gone over exhaustively in other media like the Chinese Room problem, and the game seems vaguely supportive of exploitative business models like TikTok and Meta. There's some very vague "might possibly be queer subtext but also might just be dysmorphia" subtext that could have been interesting but they don't go into it at all. In the end, the entire game is just you look at 50 journal posts and you talk to the AI girl about a dozen topics. That's all. It's definitely not worth $10. The music is nice though.

Major props to this developer for putting all of this together solo! Really cool concept. It will be cool to see these ideas of AI, digital representatives and the secret lives we lead on the internet developed more and more!