A modern text adventure, [I] doesn’t exist, is part of a trend where games deceive you with the guise of simplicity, only to unveil an emotionally devastating experience. As a text-based adventure, [I] doesn’t exist tells a story of self-actualization and mental illness, with a central theme of control. Playing expertly on your expectations of text adventure games, [I] doesn’t exist puts you in the middle, not necessarily in control, of a complete mental breakdown and delivers an emotionally heavy experience.
[I] doesn’t exist opens with a simple 1-bit graphic scene and a text interface. Here, an overly friendly mushroom explains the basics of the game to you. Immediately, I tried ignoring everything they tried to tell me to do, and I enjoyed it until I had no choice but to do exactly as they said. Doing so leads you through a door and eventually into a much brighter, beautiful, pixelated scene. This is where I thought the real game started.
From here, you’re tasked with a simple, run-of-the-mill multi-stage puzzle to remove a key from a safe and open a door. I won’t spoil the steps to this puzzle, but needless to say, you’ll have to walk around the beautiful little autumn forest and interact with most of the objects set out before you. It took me quite a while to figure out how to proceed, but thankfully, the mushroom from before was there to give me riddles when I was stuck.
Here, I continued to test the limits of the text processor and the interactions available to me. While there is some wiggle room, you’ll find that it certainly isn’t an utterly open-ended experience, and you’ll probably be met with plenty of dead ends on some of your more creative ideas. I certainly was, and I will say that while programming an infinite amount of responses to player text, I was slightly disappointed with how limited the responses to my actions were, at least later in the game, when I was faced with more conversations than puzzles to solve. I’ll get more into that in a minute.
Eventually, I was able to get the key from the safe and open the door. This, to my total surprise, is where the real game started.
As the character I thought I was controlling began to have a panic attack and the screen completely changed color, I realized that I was in for something special with [I] doesn’t exist. What was once a verdant and beautiful forest became a hellscape of nightmarish twists on the scenery that was there before. Control of the little character was lost, and soon, I found myself bearing witness to two new voices that weren’t my own: the avatar, now apparently sentient, and the mushroom, taking on a much more sinister tone than before.
Without spoiling anything, the rest of the game presents an esoteric and emotional journey. You witness the struggles of a panicked ego fighting for free will and the chance to live outside the hellish world it’s been corralled in. Meanwhile, a controlling force prefers quiet repression to self-reflective expression. You’ll be put through a journey that switches up game genres unexpectedly while exploring deep themes and somehow manages to make you feel guilty for an abusive relationship you weren’t actually a part of.
I did my best to talk to the little guy, whom I named Freddy at their own request, and I was able to get a decently large pool of dialogue from them. The game clearly has multiple endings, and I’ll say the one I got certainly wasn’t the good one, so there has to have been something I could have said or done better. However, I found myself hitting a lot of brick walls, where the character responded to my messages in a way completely wrong given what I said or repeated the same response over and over again to totally different messages. Again, programming an infinite number of reactions is hard, but I was slightly disappointed by how many things triggered the same response.
Not only that, but I found myself continuously soft-locked while playing [I] doesn’t exist, where certain text prompts would utterly break the ability to type in chat and force me to reload my save. This happened often when I gave the text prompt ‘I’m sorry,’ which is ominous, to say the least. You normally type quit to exit the game, which I wouldn’t be able to do with the text entry blocked, but thankfully, the game also has a menu when you press escape that allowed me to return to the title screen and continue from the last autosave.
Despite the soft locks and some brick walling in text responses, I really enjoyed my time with [I] doesn’t exist. That is to say; the game left me feeling hollow inside and utterly guilty for the fate of an imaginary pixel man. To call the game thought-provoking would be an understatement. This emotional art piece will utterly devastate you and leave you asking questions about yourself you certainly weren’t expecting to ask when you started.
The Final Word
[I] doesn’t exist – a modern text adventure cleverly plays on your expectations of the game’s genre to surprise you and make you feel. It tells a short but impactful story that can be played through in about an hour or so. You’ll want to come back and replay one such story multiple times in hopes of getting a better (or much worse) ending. It is certainly a game worth experiencing for yourself.
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Try Hard Guides was provided with a PC review copy of this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in the Game Reviews section of our website! [I] doesn’t exist – a modern text adventure is available on Steam.