Self

SELF is a minimalist, experimental indie game that blends text adventure and rhythm minigames to tell a surreal, psychological story about a boy searching for his missing father. The narrative unfolds through dreamlike, nonlinear scenes full of strange encounters and metaphor, often resembling a journey through the character’s subconscious more than a physical world. Simple mechanics, branching paths, and multiple endings encourage replaying the short experience. Despite translation quirks and abstract storytelling, SELF stands out as an introspective, artistic work best appreciated as interactive fiction rather than a traditional game.

Although a lot of the Kafkaesque story beats, like the father-son relationship and the surreal, absurdist scenarios the boy found himself in, were unique and initially interesting; SELF just didn’t have the metamorphosis it needed to turn into something greater.

A delightfully presented text adventure that relies too heavily on replaying old dialogue — even if the actual story is good, it may not be interesting enough to make you persevere.

SELF is an unusual experience. While at first it may seem like a visual novel, the game turns out to be something else...what that is, though, is not very clear. Its main asset is undoubtedly the soundtrack and a pair of headphones will certainly make wonders but its plot turns out to be passable, dull and easy to ignore, which goes against the nature of a candidate to be a visual novel. Overall, this is a game that doesn't stand out in neither a positive nor a negative way, and one which will be easily forgotten after finished.

SELF rejects the power-building, level-gaining escapism that typifies the majority of pop games.

It's always interesting to see games used as a medium for storytelling and in the case of Self rather than working through a pre-destined story to reach a static conclusion you'll find that it has many branching paths to encourage replay to discover its different outcomes...

SELF is a joyously unsettling experience, entertaining and mind-bending in equal measure and one that will stay with you long after you’re done.

I felt for this child and wanted to do everything I could to help them. The game had me hooked in that way, but unfortunately, it squandered that enthusiasm away through some questionable storytelling devices and lackluster mini game sections. As purely a story experience, this is one I can recommend, if you can get through the broken-up design choice, but for those looking for anything else outside of a sorrowful and sinister puzzler, this is probably one you can leave behind.