When I read Kazuo Ishiguro’s dystopian novel “Klara and the Sun” earlier this year, I walked away with a sense of unease. Ishiguro painted a futuristic landscape that I could only describe as what beauty would look like under an invisible force of oppression, and the last place I was expecting to see similar themes from was developer doBell and publisher indienova’s latest narrative adventure game ‘Hymer 2000’. Heck, forget similar themes—outright referenced. But don’t take that as a slight against the game as doBell’s narrative stands firmly on its own. What seemed to be nothing more than a clean-up job for our main protagonist ends up becoming a trip down memory lane for the residents of “Hope Residence”; a home whose name is mired in irony and an oppression that’ll churn your stomach.
(doBell/indienova)
Hymer 2000 takes place in the confines of a computer. Here, we’ve got all the tools we need to dismantle Hymer 2000, AKA the supercomputer AI that ran Hope Residence for the last however many years this facility has been up for. Supposedly, Hymer wasn’t quite fit for their task anymore and, thus, the remaining residents were transferred out to other facilities of a similar nature to that of Hope’s. And for Hymer, their last task is to lead you to their subsystems and ultimately, their beating heart so that they can be shuttered and repurposed. Those tools come in the form of applications such as the “Search” and “Action” functions, with more being added as you walk what remains of the campus.
It doesn’t take long for the player to realise that something feels… off about the living situation for the people at Hope Residence. Avid readers of dystopian novels (and really, understanding any variation of a social classification system) will be quick to pick up on the strange habits of this establishment. How the people who live within are only able to mingle with one another, with no real connection to the outside world beyond the AI that supervises them. Hobbies are limited in numbers, meals served with specific diets in mind, specific language used when identifying particular cast members, time out rooms when a resident commits a “violation”. The artworks that players encounter may also look as if they’re returning the stare right back at them, which certainly doesn’t help my case—eye contact isn’t my forte.
I’m sure you can surmise the circumstances that Hymer 2000 manages and that I don’t really need to go further into detail. The setting weighs heavily on the game’s cast members, but doBell’s adventure game focuses more on the characters suffering from their circumstances rather than the world that revolves around them. As Frank moves around in the Action function, picking up random sorts of clothes or items, players will be treated to short skits of events that transpired pertaining to the objects that were interacted with. Some memories are happy, many are sad, but nearly all of them hold airs of resignation that are difficult to shed. More memories are also hidden within the “Search” function, which has players type in specific keywords they may have encountered in their travels to uncover more details about what transpired.
The Search function is tied to the Action mode, as players will run into corrupted data segments that prevent them from advancing further and the only way to repair these is by finding long-lost messages within the Search program. There are eighty messages to be uncovered in total and though they add to the narrative and are definitely worth pursuing, it can be difficult to uncover many of the messages due to the way the keywords themselves work. As the Search program only shows four messages per search, certain shorter messages end up becoming a pain to find and you’ll need to use very specific words to uncover them. Considering this is the only other aspect to the “gameplay”, getting a full clear might take a lot longer than you’d like it to.
But besides that nonsense, none of it took away from the struggles of the characters within Hymer 2000. Incidents between cast members would become defining points in each other’s lives while the unfortunate would inevitably befall all of them. And you’re here, cleaning up the “mess” that’s been left behind—an AI that has found itself going beyond its original construct. By the end of the game’s narrative, I found myself shedding tears. If I were to draw parallels, it would be that our cast are no better off than the farm animals they eat on a tight schedule and you feel that same sense of dread that inevitably befalls all the characters when they begin to make their own realisations about their world.
Hymer 2000’s story is not one that ends in any sort of comfort. It explores loss through physical interpretations, bringing about a sense of discomfort when you realise just how small worlds can be—how small worlds can prevent personalities from shining and creatives from expressing. Sometimes, things can truly seem hopeless. ∎
Hymer 2000
Played on
Windows 11 PC
PROS
- Well-written story that builds an uncomfortable atmosphere as revelations are made.
- Narrative is reflected well through the game's art.
CONS
- Searching for messages was a pain in the neck.
