# artificial tree lined memory dystopia in this is forever walking sim tldr; thank carmac for sprint keys > romantic representations of nature reflect not so much actual places and encounters as virtual landscapes and experiences that mirror ir writers' projected desires and culturally mediated values > ~ gary harrison romanticism nature ecology a slightly unpleasantly-pleasant walking simulator from the horror garme developer hkfiftyone "forever" displays a naturalistic sentimentality that somehow (almost) deliberately undermines its own unstated ideological premise - that it has something / anything perfectly natural(tm) to say about eg. memory in relation to ('eternal') love this is how yokashi garmes explicitly frames and codes ir garme this is forever is an atmospheric symbolic garme in which you explore a relaxing world while uncovering clues by finding missing memories in the form of personal objects. music guides the experience evolving and changing as you progress. each shift in music helps to interpret the meaning of each stage. it is my hope that this can speak to individuals facing difficult times loss and facilitate positive growth and thought strange how players are supposed to keep on (correctly) reading such blatantly artificial 'nature' romps as just that - as somehow ordinary typical reasonable spontaneous innocent and uncontrived. a social contract takes place in which both developer and player know / agree that "sure it's all just a bunch of pixels" - and yet players are supposed to (instinctively) relate to this very artificiality as innate elemental 'raw' a repeating guitar based track intruding in the background is so amazingly annoying after just 2 minutes that what could simply have been no less or more a nice walk in the forested mountainous plains quickly expands into a polite existential nightmare an unwelcome chore an unconscious statement about memory in which remembering is not some uselessly romantic stroll down a cyborg's leafy memory lane but an outright burden - the interior sounds of some vacuous nostalgic idyll you're generally thankful is soon over bad enough as it is if it weren't for the sprint key you'd be forced to endure such disturbingly mawkish musak for hours - that wouldn't sound out of place in a corporate team 'motivational' video facilitating positive growth or an advert which isn't just selling you some lump of sweatshop made rectangular whatever (say a polite memento of your trip to the disturbing underground nature park) but the very heaven inspired means of your eternal soul-salvation after collecting the necessary number of arbitrary memories to unlock digital heaven - a guitar a key a fishing rod etc. which light up like beacons in a racing garme - you're met with a rapidly disappearing table of those memories atop a staircase of light by the sea fading with no more meaning than old coffee stains - and an equally bizarre message from nowhere which explicitly informs the player "not gone forever / this is forever / love is forever" (note the non-irony of the final message about love itself rapidly disappearing into the bleached digital void along with the entire garme) is this memory andor love - forever without end? then for the love of artificial digital trees get us out of this perfectly imperfectly-formed empty faintly tragic rusty nowhere // images here // republic of bob