file://maniac is a short but effective step into the “broken fourth wall” genre of games, which I in general think is pretty interesting to examine. The most prominent entry into this genre from recent memory is undoubtedly Team Salvato’s Doki Doki Literature Club from 2017 with its file shenanigans – in particular, the way its most notable character would delete others before ultimately being deleted by the player herself. file://maniac also reminded me of One Shot and Baba Is You. In the former, while the player may control Niko, the main character, they are a distinctly separate entity acknowledged in the story itself, and the game leverages that extrinsic nature to have the player guide Niko through puzzles and challenges that would otherwise be impossible. Conversely, Baba Is You doesn’t really have a story but its gameplay revolves around altering the fundamental rules of the world as puzzles to get whatever represents “you” to whatever represents “win”. For example, if “Door is Shut” and is trapping Baba, it can be opened by replacing the “Shut” block with an “Open” one in the rule, or you can change from controlling Baba to a key on the other side by replacing “Baba” with “Key” in the “Baba is You” rule, or you can even add to the rule that “Baba is You and Open” in order to make Baba himself capable of opening the door, among a plethora of other creative solutions based in the rules and blocks available.
Whether this counts as “fair play” is questionable, though. In games like these, the clues are often wholly accessible to the reader but not the actual character, then requiring supernatural (or similar digital) means of explaining how the character progressed, if the excuse of coincidence isn’t used. As mentioned in class, even if the supernatural rules of the world are clear, reasonable, and well-explained for the reader, it could be considered unfair for the detective if they don’t already know they live in a world where the supernatural exists, since it’s a fairly large leap in logic to make from an otherwise grounded reality. Since Baba Is You isn’t a story-driven game, there isn’t much need for explanation, but “You” is a canonically distinct existence from Baba given that the player can separate themself from Baba and move or win without him. In One Shot, the player is positioned as a god Niko is meant to look to for guidance, which is reasonable given the context of Niko being pulled from another world to fulfill a prophecy of delivering a light bulb to replace the world’s dying sun. Meanwhile, Doki Doki Literature Club’s Monika is a strangely advanced artificial intelligence for a supposed dating simulator that not only has control over the game itself but is aware that you, the player behind the perspective character, are the only “real” thing in the world.
file://maniac lacks any explicit explanation for its mechanics, but in its defense, it is only a game jam prototype for a planned longer series. As such, there seems to be a story, but very few details are given and many questions are left yet unanswered. The protagonist is a silent and otherwise unidentified “agent” that enters and then descends a building, facilitated by the player’s interactions with each level’s files in the file manager. Text appears on screen to direct the player on where to go and what to do, but it leaves you to wonder exactly who is talking and why. If it’s the protagonist, does he know you’re there? If so, how and how is he aware of the intricacies of the file system for his game? If not, who is he talking to then? If it’s not the protagonist, who is it and why are they helping you? It could simply be narration, but it never describes the actions of the man or the environment and instead instructs us along with directly congratulating us at times, which makes it seem like a person. Similarly, I wonder how to regard the notes occasionally dropped into the file system, especially given that they relate to in-game material but are only conveyed outside of the actual game client.
The ending is also quite curious, given that it shows the protagonist in a loop of traversing a building labeled “home” that can only be ended by the player deleting the home directory, implying that even the setting may not be “real”. My first thought was that we were simply dropped in media res for this prologue chapter and more detail would be given as the story progressed, but then I began to wonder if the protagonist was the murderer. If we were viewing or interfacing with the killer’s mind or dreams in some way, that would explain why the notes seem to be someone’s (the protagonist’s?) relevant thoughts and simply pop into “our” awareness via the file system, along with how “we” are able to manipulate the world. Story-wise, the killer could be having some sort of break with reality and is stuck wandering and re-wandering the mental halls of their “home” until they straighten out their thoughts, remember what they did, and finally come to terms with it instead of turning away and choosing to forget again, which would also explain needing to sort the victim’s names and the line “the home was his mind” at the end. But the “Congratulations agent” also at the end implies that the protagonist (or maybe just us, the player) is some kind of detective investigating the deaths, maybe by exploring the real killer’s mind somehow? I’m not exactly sure where the story is going, but I’m interested in seeing if it ever continues and how they’ll integrate the player into the story as it goes on.
– Corian