The Silent Age

In the following paragraphs I will be giving a review about the free version of the game The Silent Age. Is important to say that the version I played is the episode one for iOS; and it is also available for Android, Windows Phone and Kindle. First of all I will give a little bit of the background narrative and history of the game. After it I will provide my personal experience about playing it for about 4 days. Not only that but also I will compare it with the reading Game design as narrative architecture by Henry Jenkins.

The Silent Age is a point-and-click puzzle video game developed by Danish indie game studio House on Fire. It was released on December 2012 and till now it has more than 7 million mobile downloads. The game has two episodes and it is a single-player game.

The story of the game is set back in 1972 but as a player you can travel trough time. The Silent Age do have what Jenkins calls “narrative aspirations”; because the game it requires the player to understand the narrative of the game to know what actions are next to keep playing. The story of this game is to help the character Joe to discover the truth behind humankind’s extinction. Not only that but also The Silent Age uses what Jenkins calls “Environmental storytelling” because is an immersive narrative experience, that is completed by the space of the game and the clues for new narratives within the game. Also we can classify the game as part of what Jenkins calls “embedded narratives” because it requires the player to act according to what is already pre-written in the game.

In order to understand the narrative of the game, it is important to notice that the main character: Joe is a janitor, and he has the challenge to save humankind. Joe works for a National Security agency and during the game he is constantly reminded that he is “just a janitor”; here we can compare it to our society and how in the capitalist system we are defined by our jobs and how wealthy we are. As part of the digital culture it is important to recognize the game industry and how as Jenkins says “game designers don't simply tell stories; they design worlds and sculpt spaces”. Relating it to The Silent Age, I personally agree that this game is not just about the story of Joe saving humankind but also about the design of Joe’s world. One of the important elements of The Silent Age is the design of it and how it is very simple and easy to use.

In my personal experience, The Silent Age: episode one is a game that is not complicated to understand and that makes you feel like you’re actually there. I also can say that I enjoyed solving puzzles traveling throw time and that it challenged me to think beyond and to explore different options to solve the game. The Silent Age is not as easy at it may seems, in fact is really challenging. I highly recommend it for people who enjoy being challenged!