Developer: Studio Voyager, Iguanabee
Publisher: Untold Tales
Genre: Adventure, Platform, Puzzle game
Reviewed On:
Also Available for: PlayStation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox one Nintendo Switch, Windows
We’re going to be seeing a lot of stuff about the Multiverse in the coming years’ thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and perhaps rightfully so. The String Theory is a fascinating one that gives limitless possibilities to philosophy, theoretical physics, and “what ifs” of all shapes and sizes. Naturally, this gives an in for video game developers to create new ideas, and Studio Voyager, along with Iguanabee and Untold Tales, has used this as a foil for their new puzzle platformer, What Lies in the Multiverse.
Playing an unnamed (until much later) kid, you love and worship the idea of parallel worlds, so much so that you manage to create a computer program that allows you to slip into other worlds, even if you can’t control it. After discovering this, you meet with Everett, a multiverse problem solver who decides to take you on as his apprentice for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. After all, he can move between dimensions without a problem, why the hell does he need you? Anyways, you both set off on multiple quests to fix glitches in the different dimensions, and, along the way, learn a lot of strange, humorous, and truly dark truths about the way things turn out for our world, the other worlds, and every world ever since.
Now, What Lies in the Multiverse is an ambitious title for what is ultimately a very simplistic game. Multiverse implies an infinite number of possibilities, but, in reality, What Lies in the Multiverse has only two: good and bad. With a touch of a button, you ask Everett to send you to another world, which is either the light or dark version of the planet you’re currently inhabiting. The tone of the landscape changes from bright and cheerful to dark and dismal, the weather is often morphed from sunny to rainy, and everything wonderful turns horrid. For one example, you find a father and daughter camping in the “good” world, having a great time in the great outdoors. When you switch to the “bad” world, you find both of them dead and a journal entry implying that they ran out of food and the father ate the daughter, further confirmed by the fact that the dad is a corpse but the daughter is a skeleton. It’s viciously morbid, and it’s just one example of many instances of completely macabre storytelling. If this disinterests you, I recommend you disconnect from the game immediately: it only gets darker, and not always with a point.
As for actual gameplay, I admire the way that What Lies in the Multiverse approaches movement between lands and worlds. The two landscapes often have different topography, resulting in ledges being longer in one place, mountains existing in one reality where others have plains, and ropes and doors being only accessible in one dimension and not another. The result is what I would call split-second platforming, where you’ll often have to move and quickly swap between existences while in mid-movement in order to achieve success. If you fail, there’s a chance of death (falling, being squashed, literally reappearing inside solid matter), but the game knows this and gives you infinite chances, presumably because Everett can just move to a slightly different reality where you didn’t die. The very first puzzles give you a taste of what’s to come, and it doesn’t let up.
To be honest, I think that the difficulty curve is one of the best I’ve seen in a puzzle platformer in quite a while. What Lies in the Multiverse starts tough and only gets tougher without ever crossing into “wildly unfair” territory. You’re given so many chances to figure out the simple basics and then apply them to the game world, as what you do in the first ten minutes (jump, push blocks, change lanes) is the bread and butter for the remainder of the game. Sure, there’ll be times where you need to quickly toggle between worlds multiple times, sometimes up to four times in mid-flight, but that’s just an extension of what you picked up earlier. Even as the game changes and brings you into mysterious labs and worlds that seem to have no gravity, you just have to remember to toggle, move, jump and make good decisions. Everything works out best if you can keep calm and just keep the world-hopping.
The aesthetics of What Lies in the Multiverse are definite keepers, giving players a great view of solid pixel art and a dynamic soundtrack that has a fully orchestrated feel between the two worlds. There was a lot of care given into delivering a gorgeous level of detail while maintaining a pixel approach: certainly not to the level of Owlboy, but one that has its own identity and fit within the gaming community. I’d say that the playtime is drastically extended as a result of me wanting to sit and hear all the elements of the two soundscapes back to back, noting the way they complimented each other and deliberately took notes and cues to deliver different atmospheres. I feel they even used the same music, just done in different keys, to help give that real sense of “same yet different.”
The biggest complaint I had for What Lies in the Multiverse is the short runtime. In spite of potential endless gameplay, the whole thing has just a few hours to go from start to finish, and there’s not anything that really compels you to keep going once it’s done. It’s a fun and interesting experience, but, aside from seeing if you can speedrun the game, you won’t find any alternate takes to get the story from beginning to end. It’s fun, but it is short, so keep that in mind before you sit down to see what’s in the Multiverse. Spoiler: it’s some good storytelling, plenty of dark humor, and not as many choices as you’d expect.
What Lies in the Multiverse
A fun but brief romp through a game that promises more than it can deliver.
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