The Deepening (Flash)
The Deepening is a mini ‘choose your own adventure’ game from the Duncan Brothers. Its protagonists are the classic odd-couple: a tight-laced by-the-book-rookie matched up with a psycho and following a growing trend your choices largely revolve around choosing the different paths proposed by either character. OK — enough with the usual review intro BS; let’s get to it…
The Deepening begs some interesting questions: what if the interactive movie genre hadn’t died out in the 90s; what if flash games were often performed in live action on a shoe-string budget; what if games regularly alluded to 70s American crime dramas? Well, in answer to the first question, LA-noir probably does better at the box-office. In answer to the rest, we would see more of games like this. And from The Deepening, this is not really a good thing.
It seems appropriate that a game satirizing a long-past style of cinema should also attempt to resurrect the now-dead interactive movie genre (arguably last prominent in the late ’90s — if you could call it prominence). The game’s artwork, title pages and the actual moment of interaction are rendered in stylized pixel-art. I think they were trying to emphasize — in a rather confused way — the ‘old-school’ feel of the game in general.
Experiences like The Deepening live or die on the appeal of their stories. Being so short (it takes about 10 minutes to ‘play’), it essentially lacks said story and fills in the gaps with hammy, barely passable comedy (incredibly subjective at the best of times). The Duncan Brothers deliver an intentionally cheesy piece which may or may not be your cup of tea. That being said, it left this reviewer cold.
In short, it isn’t going to start an interactive movie renaissance, but there are worse ways to spend ten minutes. And maybe you will get a kick out of the frat boy appeal of The Deepening. After all, it’s free but not really SFW.
Play it here.
Chris Fox is an English Computer Games Design student at Staffordshire Uni, dabbling in games commentary and talking too much on the internet. You can find more of his incoherent ramblings at keysakimbo.blogspot.com.
Rad review, guys! But I kind of enjoyed the game. Does that make me a bad person?
Good review, but we can’t expect every game to be thoughtful and deep and beautifully made. For what this game is — a 10 minute distraction — I think it works really, really well.
If you liked the game then good, I’m truly happy for you (not being sarcastic, but it’s hard to get that across in text).
@89_jessi – “… we can’t expect every game to be thoughtful and deep and beautifully made.” Perhaps not, but I do keep hoping.
I think the game was enjoyable, but I did find its cliché fallbacks a tad depressing. I mean, haven’t we move past the stereotypes in these games; and in a “progressive” art form like the video game, shouldn’t we be looking forward a little more intently?