Selfie: Sisters of the Amniotic Lens is a strange little game — or so one might think. Superficially, it appears to be weird and experimental, but if one looks a little closer, it turns out that it is not primarily a game. Selfie: Sisters of the Amniotic Lens is a social experiment and a reflection of online culture. It was developed by Rail Slave Games and published by KISS Ltd.
Selfie: Sisters of the Amniotic Lens opens with not one but two full-motion video sequences that lay out the plot. Central are the titular Sisters of the Amniotic Lens, members of a cult that believed it could access other dimensions via wounds on their bodies. The mutilated bodies of six of the cult members were recently found, but the seventh member is missing.
After this introduction, Selfie: Sisters of the Amniotic Lens asks you to log into the game and type your deepest, darkest thoughts into a text field. This is not done for self-reflection; whatever you type has an impact on how others experience this game.
Next you find yourself in a room next to a computer monitor and a mutilated corpse. Mostly immobile, all you can do is turn around a bit and target the many flies in the room. Once a sufficient number of flies has been zapped, you can access the computer.
At this stage, Selfie: Sisters of the Amniotic Lens finally presents you with some gameplay. You find yourself lost in space, shooting at stars in the distance. However, the stars are not actually stars, they are bottles. Each bottle contains a message from another player — the very message they filled the textbox at the beginning of the game with.
As unlikely as it sounds, Selfie: Sisters of the Amniotic has an actual ending. However, reaching the end of the game is not your primary goal. Selfie: Sisters of the Amniotic spins around all those bottles. Hit one and you have the option to “condemn” or “free” whatever player left it behind, increasing or reducing their score.
This being the Internet, the character and quality of the messages is all over the place. The messages are like an unmoderated message board. Some messages are complete nonsense or consist of random characters. Some are cute. Some are written in a language that you may or may not understand. Some contain — in a shocking twist of events — insults and profanities.
Selfie: Sisters of the Amniotic may appear to be an MMO mixed with a silly minigame, but it is ultimately a social experiment. Is it interesting? Maybe. The idea of leaving messages behind for other player is not entirely new and the freakish coat of paint that Selfie: Sisters of the Amniotic Lens wears can be a turnoff. At the end of the day, your experience is largely determined by others — thus is the nature of the Internet.
Selfie: Sisters of the Amniotic Lens is available now on Windows PC.
Comments are closed.