Reviews from

in the past


Do you ever stare out the window of a moving vehicle when something odd catches your eye? Like a strange looking building or statue or even a person who suddenly appears within the frame of your window and just as quickly, disappears never to be seen again?

Sometimes you might be tempted to find out what it was, look up "giant pizza statue in [local city]" or whatever, hell, gmaps even shows these in larger cities nowadays. But personally I think the not knowing is more enjoyable most of the time. Same is true of taking pictures of scenery from a train or a bus, there is no guarantee of a good shot.

4ever Transit Authority is a game about staring out the window of a bus on a procedurally generated city. Im not a big roguelike fan usually, but I think the use of proc gen in this project is appropriate. It achieves that thing of creating a plausibly mundane environment with less common eccentricities sprinkled throughout, thus making these stand out in contrast. Of course this runs the risk of ruining the mystique if you played it long enough to start seeing the method to the madness, but this is a free "concept game" more than anything and playing it for hours and hours seems kind of absurd. Paradoxically for a game called Forever, its shelf life is quite brief, though I think its poignant in a way which might be unintentional, like the brevity of any one of its sights.

The city is quite american in its structure, very square-like and road centric but there is some charm to it. There are no passengers with you but I suppose there don't really need to be any. The colour scheme changing with each line is a neat touch and helps relieve some of the monotony inherent to the game although some colour schemes are a lot more visually appealing than others. The visuals in general I enjoy, I think the style is called art deco? Reminds me of certain famous propaganda posters for building projects, but Im no art expert.

I think I found it quite captivating because I don't have much of a commute anymore, and when I do Im usually on my bicycle or car, which kind of precludes staring out the window for minutes on end without being killed. Maybe because of my ADHD I used to stare pretty intently on the bus/carpool to school or when going on a daytrip to the beach; alternating between intense daydreaming and looking at scenery. Even the fact that your view is blocked by the frame of the bus ingame only makes it more compelling to me, the limitation enhancing the simple pleasure and "challenge" of getting a good look at something which piques your interest.

I am slowly making my way semi backwards through Turnfollow's output, and I think so far the 1 throughline of their work is a strong grasp on mundaneity and everyday life. Hopefully the rest of their output continues this trend.

Edit : Funny how much of a difference music makes to a game, I wrote this review after playing this game muted during a boring class, and now having played with sound, other than the various cute SFX, the actual music seems to go for a sort of foreboding thing? I think I liked it better without the music lol.