‘If it be true that good wine needs no bush, ‘tis true that a good play needs no Epilogue. And [yet] good plays prove the better by the help of good Epilogues.’
     – Rosalind, in William Shakespaere, As You Like It, Epilogue, 4-7.

Played during the Backloggd’s Game of the Week (11th Apr. – 17th Apr., 2023).

Already accustomed to paraludic experimentation with PiMania (1982), a video game that doubled as a real-world treasure hunt and foreshadowed contemporary alternate-reality games, Croucher became convinced that the ZX81 was above all a creative platform for art with unlimited potential. In 1981, Welsh women protested against the storage of nuclear missiles at Greenham Common airbase, leading to a long escalation of the movement in the months and years that followed. The establishment of the Greenham Common camp was a key event in the English protest register of the 1980s. Mel Croucher, who was close to these circles and married to one of the protesters [1], imbued his artistic project Deus Ex Machina with the typical themes of the time: the game tells the story of a man's life under a dystopian and totalitarian regime through a sensory and artistic experience.

The title must be played together with a tape containing the title's soundtrack. From the start, the player must follow the audio instructions and synchronise the two components before immersing themselves in a psychedelic universe. The music takes full inspiration from Pink Floyd and Frank Zappa, mixing sung passages with theatrical narration, while the script takes Shakespearean passages and alters them to fit a dystopian aesthetic. Deus Ex Machina, for example, quotes Jaques' 'Seven Ages of Man' monologue in As You Like It (c. 1599). Misinterpretations have seen the famous monologue as a moralising critique of Orlando's behaviour in foolishly falling in love, rather than demonstrating the moral excellence of the Duke Senior. This overlooks the fact that As You Like It is a comedy, and that the passionate winds of love blow through the play: Orlando is not a character merely in love with romance, but a complex figure driven by authentic emotions. Most of the characters in the play are also imbued with genuine personalities.

On the contrary, Jaques is the only 'character', as he resembles the malcontents of Elizabeth I's reign, whose dissenting thoughts and potentially subversive actions are feared by the royal power. A great traveller, he is convinced that there are no universal values and that belief in anything – including love – is a sign of immaturity and folly. He shows little inclination to denigrate the foreigner, something Rosalind criticises him for – since xenophobia was a characteristic feature of English identity under the Tudors. Jaques is a counterbalance to the romanticism of the other characters in As You Like It. He is never sentimental or idealistic, preferring to wallow in cynical dilettantism. Yet Jaques, the eternal witness, is nowhere near as unpleasant as Shakespeare's other villains, far from the vile and contemptible Thersites (Troilus and Cressida, c. 1602) and Iago (Othello, c. 1603). One explanation could be that Shakespeare put himself into Jaques. Perhaps the playwright was bitter about his inability to conjure poetic magic outside the stage; Elizabethan society looked down on artists, and Jaques's tirades and his belief that the world is a stage should be seen as a self-effacing expression of artistic regret. [2]

Mel Croucher seems to have had the same creative drive, seeing potential in all forms of expression and believing that the world is indeed a playground for artistic experimentation. It is not surprising, then, that he also uses Prospero's speech in Act IV of The Tempest (c. 1610) before he decides to renounce magic. Just as the disappearance of magic in The Tempest allows Prospero to see the world more clearly, the end of the sensory experience in Deus Ex Machina invites the player to consider it in a broader context. This is not a simple video game, but a lively, vibrant and boundless artistic production, as the recommencement at the end of the title demonstrates. In Shakespeare's time, the baroque meraviglia took precedence over the supernatural miracle. In The Tempest, the idea of wonder is ever present, but it shifts from Prospero's magic to the possibility of social harmony and gentle human relationships. [3] Similarly, Croucher moves from the wonder the player can experience in Deus Ex Machina to a wonder for art in general, which is consubstantial to existence.

waverly_khitryy insisted on the transient nature of Deus Ex Machina, an analysis that I fully share. Croucher embraces the poetic and artistically curious voices of Jaques, Prospero and Shakespeare, blending them with his own experience and the cultural imagination of a protesting 1980s Britain. Orwellian accents sit alongside a veritable panorama of visual and auditive ideas: Croucher creates contrasts and uses mock interactivity to capture the player's attention. This ode to the ephemeral is above all an artistic statement whose contours are inevitably political. Because it makes no concessions, Deus Ex Machina is a unique avant-garde experience whose roughness is matched by an unusual creative exuberance.

__________
[1] Mel Croucher, Deus Ex Machina: The Best Game You Never Played in Your Life, Acorn Books, London, 2014, p. 45.
[2] William Shakespeare, Comédies, vol. II, ed. Jean-Michel Déprats, Gisèle Venet, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2016, pp. 1534-1535.
[3] William Shakespeare, Comédies, vol. III, ed. Jean-Michel Déprats, Gisèle Venet, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2016, pp. 1682-1683.

Reviewed on Apr 13, 2023


4 Comments


11 months ago

Amazing review as always, your reviews are on another level; super well written, researched and interesting analysis!

These oddities always fascinate me, as someone who hasn't even touched any of the first personal computer or its games, seeing that as early as in 1984 these unique and interesting experiences already existed fascinates me. After I play everything I have pending, I should get around those older titles like this and try them for myself.

11 months ago

@DemonAndGames: Thank you for your kind words!

I agree with those games being extremely interesting. It's a corpus of games that are easily overlooked and it's always a pleasure to dive into those. I believe that it is one reason among many others why @PasokonDeacon's work is central, as he always opens new windows to explore.

11 months ago

Always good to read your review after playing a GOTW game and seeing what someone who has actual insight has to say lol

11 months ago

I doubt I'll have much more to say here other than "Thatcher bad, outsider art good", just with tons of paragraphs and supporting material. But hey, that's a relevant message for this game to proffer.