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

There is a joke I have heard here in Spain, essentially so called Art Films are usually called "Cine de Arte y Ensayo" , essentially experimental art cinema. This is then twisted into the similar sounding "Cine de Fraude y Engaño" essentially 'fraud and deception cinema'. Of course the joke does come from a place of anti-intellectualism, it can also be seen as saying that the emperor has no clothes when something is given undue praise.

I'm not going to say that Deus Ex Machina is fraud, I guess for what it was it was an interesting experiment in audiovisual art (very confused by steam calling it the first interactive movie?! If anything its the first interactive concept album) but in a revelation which I'm sure will lose me whatever respect I have accrued on this site, I hated every second I played this game.

I didnt really get this game in all honesty. I got the basic outline of being a retelling of the 7 stages of life with varying degrees of sort of minigames, of the life of some sort of "Brave New World" government planned artificial baby, presumably our control of them from birth mirroring the control of an all seeing dystopian force?

I was very confused and frustrated, despite being very artsy the actual game parts seem pretty token to me and I did very poorly at them. I don't think there is a failure state but I was nevertheless annoyed at these sections frequently and just hoping they would end. The game lasted 45 minutes and to me felt twice as long. I'm not going to give it a score, I guess I appreciate it for the experimental nature and for the era in which it was made (nowadays this shit would be made in bitsy and posted on Itch.io to receive like 10 downloads tbh) but I honestly would have enjoyed it more just listening to the music.