When I first sat down to play Centum at PAX West, I assumed I would be stepping into the shoes of a casual game developer. That was the impression I got from watching little bits of it over someone else’s shoulder while I waited my turn anyway.
The game dev simulator opens by checking emails and testing assorted programs each day when you log into work, reading through curiously cryptic messages from strangers and playing the occasional PC game (which usually installs itself without your permission as soon as you read an email about it), but offline,every single thing about your one-room space feels offin a way I struggled to put my finger on at first.
Then the poster on my wall changed. And again, when I interacted with other objects. The room got darker every time I woke up. Programs installed themselves onto my aged computer without my permission or knowledge. My character refused to sleep for the most part, citing horrifying dreams that I would soon be brought into myself. The nightmares are simplistically drawn, black and white poetic narratives weaved between puzzle-solving segments. The only thing creepier than the dreams themselves was how suddenly I woke up from them, chucked back into my creepy reality without warning to see how reality had shifted while I was asleep.
Looking around the apartment, I found myself staring at the destroyed, decaying city on the horizon. I chose to attempt to be optimistic, expressing hope that maybe things would work out for me, but it didn’t seem to make much of a difference – when I stepped back from the window, my poster had changed yet again, and the room seemed darker than it was before.
Checking my emails on the computer before work both days, I had a message from my brother talking about his son playing the game I was working on and something about an AI aspect of the project, how he and our mom were doing, and his feelings on me staying where I was near the rotting city. I played through two full days of Centum in the PAX demo, and each day, I had the option to simply tell him, “Everything is fine,” despite my protagonist pretty rapidly and clearly losing their mind back offline. There were other prompts that allowed me to talk down to him, disregard his concerns, or even be rude, but no matter what was happening that day, I had the option to tell him I was okay when I very, very clearly was not.
The constant changes in atmosphere Centum presents can’t be understated, with how much they supplement the innate creepiness of the gameplay itself. Playing with headphones on in a darker section of the show floor lent itself to the eerie vibe. And on the few occasions that I did get to leave my character’s singular room where they work, relax, and sleep on a dingy old couch when the urge strikes, it didn’t feel very welcoming outside either.
I wound up talking to an incredibly cursed iteration of my own cat each time I left. In my room, it appeared like a regular black cat that likes to lay on the couch and the keyboard – always staring right at the screen – but outside, it distorted and morphed in horrifying and unexpected ways. I got to see it with its mouth inverted, enlarged, and cracked open to show rows of spiky teeth, while the Steam page for the game shows a photo of the cat as a rotary phone with a face. The warnings not to trust the cat had seemed far-fetched until I saw it in its first horrifying iteration, and then,I wasn’t sure if I trusted anything anymore.
The whole time, you’re warned not to trust the cat, and if it manages to morph some more like it did in my demo, I can imagine why. In notes that seemed like the ramblings of a lunatic on my PC, I was told not to eat or drink anything in my room, not to talk to anyone, and it was emphasized time and time again that I should never, ever believe anything the cat says.
In between solving Centum’s challenging puzzles, playing minigames on your computer, locating clues for a bigger mystery, and reading a series of increasingly creepy emails, you may’t help but try desperately towork out what’s real and what’s not.Somethingisn’t right, but I can’t tell what at this stage. The only thing I know for sure is that this game is going to play with both my heart and mind. If Centum is not what it seems, then I cannot wait to find out what exactly itis.
PAX West
PAX West began life as the Penny Arcade Expo, a celebration of gaming culture hosted by the creators of the titular webcomic. Held in Seattle, it draws over 100,000 visitors.
