Sludge Life

Your stomping ground in Sludge Life could best be described as 'capitalism's armpit' As Ghost, you spawn into this used-up world on a dirty mattress in a makeshift bedroom formed from one half of an old shipping container. Outside its thin metal walls lie toxic swamps and a sunbleached, crumbling landscape whose distant reaches are largely hidden by gritty clouds of smog, all of it seen from the kind of glitching, fish-eye viewpoint you would otherwise expect from a convenience-store security camera. Try looking up and about the only monuments that await are sunfaded advertising hoardings and statues of dictators and, really, is there much of a distinction between the two? It's no surprise to learn that corporations love it here: there are chemical companies and refineries and all manner of industrial pipework, often reaching across the landscape on an inhuman scale. When it comes to entertainment and relaxation for the exhausted workforce, there are greasy burger chains and hotdog joints, tatty basketball courts and even a swimming pool drained of water, its hollow interior littered with trash. Everything, ultimately, rests upon that endless swamp.
There is, at least, some wildlife to be found. At the farthest expanses of the world, stooping, long-legged birds are gummed up, caught while pecking for scraps in pools of tar. Closer to home, fat banana slugs can be found clinging to walls and windows and ceilings even in the vents if you go looking for them while flies form buzzing clouds in the many out-of-order toilets you'll come across. Only the cats seem truly content, pretzelled into various shapes inside apartment bedrooms and dirty kitchens and draughty warehouses, lean bodies twisted back on themselves so they can lick their various extremities.
But what of the people who live here, in rotting tenements or in those shipping containers that form improbable skyscrapers? The armpit's inhabitants are all frozen in place, literally and figuratively. Everyone you meet is frustrated, stuck in miserable jobs and tired of the exploitation. But they're fighting back, in a manner of speaking. Look again, and they're not indolent. Their] communal stasis is something much sharper and brighter: it's resistance. Most of these people are on strike.
And how. NPCs are slumped outside their workplaces, running down the clock, refusing to fix things, quietly heroic in their unwillingness to get moving. In apartments, several of them are laid out on sweaty bedding. Approach one of these characters for a chat and, but for the occasional head bob, only their lips will move, like one of those old Syncro-Vox animations. The rest of their body is fixed in place, as stationary as the architecture. In one of the fast-food places a lone figure stands behind the flat top, just watching, motionless, as two hamburger patties steadily turn to cinder in front of him; on an unfolded cardboard box, a breakdancer doing headspins is locked forever into that single looping animation.
All of which raises the question: why would anyone stay here, in this wretched landscape, if they didn't have to? The locals might not have much choice in the matter, perhaps but what about you, the player? With so many other games competing for our time, how does any of this add up to an experience anyone will want to stick with? Well, in part because Sludge Life's world is also perversely delightful. Ghost doesn't merely live in this vile swamp of a place, but thrives in exploring it, sounding out its weird depths, uncovering all its strange stories. It helps that the game, with its short runtime, moves at a hectic, thrilling pace, its firstperson parkour brisk and unfussy. The islands of trash and crating are surprisingly easy to navigate, while climbable objects are clearly marked in bright yellow, and from each vantage point another beckons. What at first looks like a muddle of buildings that should not and cannot connect slowly comes into focus as a set of smooth racing lines, carrying you from here to all manner of far-flung theres, an underlying beauty revealed in the same way that snowfall might reveal the sinuous curve riding through a knotty old tree.
It's a joy to move around, then, but there's more to the game than speed and the pleasures of movement. Sludge Life is compact but wildly generous. Every corner of its world has evidently been handcrafted, with something unique to find, whether it's a one-off sticker someone has slapped onto a wall or a psychedelic drug that will shrink you to the size of a mouse. And, speaking of mice, almost all buildings have secret areas that you need to puzzle your way towards uncovering. Elsewhere, meanwhile, the game's bubbling creativity extends to deep lore both corporate and musical - and a wealth of vignettes.
-Some of these vignettes are simple pranks. Who clogged the toilet? Why did that idiot get themself stuck in the roll-top door? Some are pure satire, though, such as a news website's offices whose desks turn out to be filled with pigeons pecking mindlessly at computer keyboards. And some are surreal and thought-provoking.
Why is one apartment filled with the giant form of a single sleeping baby? Why does another have padded walls and a prisoner sitting glumly inside? This kind of generosity plays into the developers' final, most audacious move, as they exploit the very open-world tricks that their game simultaneously pokes fun at.
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1739974811/articles/rDfNpcr0y1740046018343/0106748808.jpg]
How many games like this are bulked out with empty scatterings of doodads to gather, viewpoints to find, numbers to tick off? Sludge Life poses this question - and then sends you off in search of distant areas to reach, quest items to gather and cigarettes to bum.
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1739974811/articles/rDfNpcr0y1740046018343/1406674106....