“Mountain is not meant to be ironic, it's not meant to be anything other than what it is.”
Thus said Damien Di Fede, creater of Mountain. Watching him demo the game live was quite jarring after having been exposed to the work of Mountain's animator and co-creator David OReilly, whose absolutely batshit insane show The External World had been screened right before.
(If you’ve never seen The External World, here you go. Think of every messed-up, inappropriate joke you’ve ever bounced around your mind and vomit it into violent, irreverent animation. It’s wonderful.)
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To start up the demo, he enlisted some help from the crowd. The first picture was something representing forgiveness, and the artist supplied a dead bum clown. Next up was a picture of Loss, causing Lost in the Woods developer Charles Elwonger to sieze the moment and draw a picture of a duck whose wings had fallen off, causing the entire crowd to groan. Last was Meaning, and the artist created the eye in a pyramid, clearly a member of the illuminati himself.
After the pictures were done Di Fede started the game up, and the mountain was created. A mountain, floating in space, appeared on the screen.
“WELCOME TO MOUNTAIN,” the game printed on screen.
“YOU ARE MOUNTAIN”
“YOU ARE GOD”
“PLEASE ENJOY YOUR TIME HERE”
And… that was it? You can look at your mountain and zoom in on it and explore it and… it’s a mountain. If a lot of gamers who have purchased the game for a buck on Steam and iOS seem confused, the developer doesn’t. “It doesn’t really do much,” confirmed Di Fede of his game.
Even the purpose of the pictures you draw before your mountain is created is a mystery. What do the pictures mean? Does it change anything? Is the mountain judging you? Who knows!
The response to the game has been curious to Di Fede, and he’s been happy to see a lot of thoughtful articles on it, deciding on if “the game was this game a critique on games and what a game can be, is it trying to make you see things differently, or piss you off.” They seem to have gotten all of those responses, as you can see in the negative Steam reviews.
Di Fede did blow the cover on one previously unknown easter egg. Your mountain can make music, and he demonstrated by playing synth sounds. It turns out that some songs that you play will make certain things happen- like snow globe mode. Here he played a specific tune and the mountain started getting slowly covered with slow.
The mountain knows real songs, not just melodies they came up with, so perhaps it’s time to start experimenting.
Mountain is being presented at the Fantastic Arcade in its very own arcade cabinet. The mountains generally live around 50 hours, so we were asked that if we saw the arcade cabinet of the game die, we record it.
We will keep you updated on the Mountain’s status.
What do you think about this game? Is it fair to even call it a game? Let us know in the comments below!