Not Atari: Aery - Broken Memories

I played Aery on the sleek new Atari VCS 800, but Aery is not an Atari game. The Aery series is available pretty much anywhere you can play a game. Even the VCS.

I have a lot to say about Atari's flashy "modern" video computer system, and will save that for a larger article. Right now I'm here to talk about the "adventures of a cute little bird," or whatever.

Here's what I like about Aery: Broken Memories. It's pretty. It's peaceful. It falls into the category of "zen gaming," which is something that intrigues me. I love the idea of a video game that inspires a sense of stillness and calm. Of course, this means the "game" aspect of the game contains little more than item collection and exploration.

Unfortunately, the rewards are too few. While it's fun and relaxing to fly your parrot over the landscapes, there is little incentive in exploring; once you've seen the stage, you've seen it, no matter how far you've flown (with the exception of flying through a planet's rings). There is no actual landscape or objects to interact with, and few surprises. I did enjoy how the giant dog statues loomed in the fog. There was a reward in flying closer, if only to see the dog's face up close. But the lack of elements to interact with creates an empty landscape, and therefore uninteresting gameplay, no matter how pretty.

I need some colorful clouds that change the color of my avatar bird, and in doing so, reveal a new area to explore. I need rainbows, damn it, and how about some rain? Give me giant balloons that pop upon contact, shattering into a thousand glimmering butterflies, which then flutter to item locations for extra help. I need hoops to fly through that build up energy for speed boosts. And I maybe need some breaks, too. I do not think these extra elements would detract from the meditative aspect, but would only add more engagement, and more opportunity for beautiful effects. If this game wants to ride on being pretty, it needs to push it all the way. Give me awe. Woo me, wow me. Give me the same sense of wonder found in the landscapes of so many RPGs and adventure titles.

I suppose a reason for Aery's simplicity is the chill aspect. But the game can still be chill and be engaging at the same time. Simply flying around waiting to see a shimmering feather is not rewarding enough on its own, unless the landscapes are mind-blowing. They're not. They're dead. Don't expect much movement beyond yourself; you represent the freedom in a mostly frozen, still, lifeless demo world.

All of the levels feel like game development demos, a portfolio to earn a bigger gig. Look, we created a wild west town! Don't you like our floating islands? And hey, we can do space, too! Hire us to make your game!

This is further enforced by the fact that the "plot" has pretty much nothing to do with the landscapes. Apparently, we are flying in the head of a child in a coma, collecting feathers that reveal the child's thoughts and memories. Ideally, this creates a resonant, emotional story with an interesting narrator. It is, however, yet another lost opportunity. The child mostly complains about his mother for the first few levels, mainly her demands that the child get a practical job when they grow up instead of, say, a pirate (pirate ship level) or an astronaut (space level). And no, a dog is definitely not practical (dog level). At one point, the child waxes poetic about how amazing it would be to be a package that gets delivered, all while I'm sailing the bird over a dockyard of barges loaded with shipping containers. Deep. Forced, really.

The writing is cliche and dull and reveals nothing about how the child ended up in a coma, though apparently we're here to get them out. I guess. There is no actual ending or conclusion, so I guess not. The dialogue comes in snippets, often in vague and redundant statements, along the lines of "some people might not believe it" . . . fly to the next feather, "and some people do believe it" . . . fly to next feather, "even though I'm not sure if I believe it," . . . fly to next feather, "because some people don't believe it." I made up the previous lines, but trust me, the dialogue is equally inane and unrewarding. I was hoping to feel connected to the child, to earn some degree of emotional resonance, but instead I saw a programmer trying very hard to fit a non-existent narrative into a set of arbitrary landscapes with no cohesive vision of the child's character. The voice and the information from the dialogue fail to establish any real connection beyond confusion and eye-rolling.

And why am I a parrot? Give me some options, at least. I think a parrot, a pterodactyl, a dove, and a hummingbird fit all the needed extremes of personality. I would pick the dove for the peace aspect.

How about bugs and glitches? How about struggling to collect a feather in a tight place, and having to start over again and again, because I flew into the rock behind the feather, and finding this zen game quite frustrating? How about the times the game glitched when I flew into an obstruction? The parrot became lodged in a rock or wall, instead of resetting the parrot at the starting line. I had to reset the game multiple times because my freaking bird was stuck in a wall.

The music isn't bad. But here I go . . . the music isn't going to inspire anyone to turn up the speakers, either. It's nonoffensive synthwave groove junk, with lots of beats that aren't that cool. I liked a couple tracks well enough, but hey, it turns out the music is the same handful of tunes repeated over and over, with no relation to level or anything. I want some awesome chill music, some fuzzy amibient, ecstatic melodic bass, even some generic chillstep will do.

I know I've been harsh on Aery. This is because I can see so much potential in a zen game, and feel like Aery is a series of production tests with a cheap mask of "meditative gaming" slapped over it. The Aery folks have churned out many of these games, so someone must be enjoying these.

That said, I want to be clear that I actually did enjoy playing Aery. But my critical mind thinks I could have enjoyed it much more. I've heard good things about the more recent "Calm Mind" Aery games, so I may check those out.