Are you able to picture things in your head? Try it, right now, we’ll go for the classic thing to picture, an apple. If you can’t see diddly squat, you’ve potentially got aphantasia, a condition which is essentially the inability to visualise an image within your head. It’s interesting to me because I feel I’m on the opposite end of it, I can picture that apple pretty darn clearly. With that in mind, it makes me all the more curious about Afantasia, spelled with an f not a ph, a “surreal exploration game about a boy searching for identity in his hometown.”
Afantasia, even with its stylistic misspelling, is a great name, I think, because it is a game I quite deeply enjoy looking at. There’s a lo-fi quality to it, a pixel art point & click game pushed into the third dimension. It’s moody, a little grimy and grungy, with an appropriate amount of mystique around it. The game’s Steam page gives very little away, but offers just enough to entice me.
As mentioned, it’s point & click, but there’s also exploration in what looks like possibly second person, and what definitely is first person perspectives. One of the few bits of descriptive text explains that you can delve into memories and talk to local townsfolk. The untrustworthy nature of memory and recalled image is a topic I also love seeing explored in games, so I’m quite curious to see what Afantasia does with the theme.
At the time of writing, there’s no release date in sight, however, a sliver of good news: there is a demo you can check out to give apparently 30 minutes of your time to, if Afantasia’s atmosphere is pulling you in as it is me. And if you don’t have time, you can always pop it on the ever-growing wishlist.
