Explore a place outside of logic, space and time in Small Talk, a game where you can converse with a person who has a fried egg and two rashers of bacon as a head.
From lofty towers filled with djinni and onion-headed people to Graeco-Roman architecture featuring talking grapes, Pale Room’s Small Talk fills strange places with strange beings and lets you chatter to them through their stories.
Many things stuck out about the game while I played through its demo at EGX 2018, perhaps even more so than the amazing character designs and floaty-airy-seeming writing. The artwork of the game all feels and looks as though it is mostly hand-drawn — red outlines (rather than black) stark against the otherwise extremely white levels. It almost feels as though you are exploring a bizarre technical drawing.
Normally within a party — even one filled with such strange individuals as this one — it can be quite a strain to find good conversational partners. However, Small Talk takes place during the dawn of a predicted apocalypse. This has made everybody somewhat more chatty, albeit also deeply introspective, as I imagine most people would be with believed imminent death looming.
Where Small Talk really comes into its own, however, is when you go into the minds of some of those you are conversing with, wandering through dreams, memories and interpretations of the world. It is here that you wander through forests and woodlands; through Greek pillars to speak to gods; or through observatories and star-viewing rooms. It is nearly impossible to mentally plot out, but especially poignant, and I’m desperately looking forward to spending more time in the end times when Small Talk does eventually release.
Small Talk is being developed for PC, Mac and Linux. You can follow development through its mailing list or on the game’s itch.io page.
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