When I first started making this game, I really didn’t think about it that much. The original reason was that when I was sorting out my moving belongings, I found that the power bank sent from the previous apartment was bulging, which was quite serious, and even the plastic shell was pushed open. I haven’t dealt with this kind of thing, at least not in the UK! So I asked my friends in one of my discord groups, and they gave all kinds of strange answers, such as “buried”, “eat it”, “thrown into your enemy’s window as a grenade”, etc. Anyway, most of them are some parody answers, but it also inspired me.
The original idea is very simple, even a bit like a spoof: let the player keep making choices towards a certain outcome, and it doesn’t really matter what that outcome really is. I didn’t have a clear goal system or a “what you have to accomplish” design. For me, it’s more of a toy, or rather, pure entertainment, like the McPixel.

But the problem soon shown.
During development, I gradually realized that there was a rift between myself and the original idea. The earliest designs were closer to a toy-style, low-goal experience, and I didn’t want to force meaning on it. However, when the project is placed in the context of a “final assignment for a game design major,” this deliberate simplicity begins to seem more and more empty.

If this were a completely free amateur project, I would most likely stick to the original direction. But in the current context, I find myself having to respond to the question of “meaning”. This is not because I suddenly think that meaninglessness is wrong, but because I am beginning to realize that when the system rejects meaning, it is experienced as a kind of absence in an institutionalized environment and forces creators and players to constantly compensate for this gap.

It also reminds me of creations that deliberately remove meaning, such as Un Chien Andalou, a film discussed in another course. In creating this work, Buñuel and Dalí deliberately rejected any imagery that could be interpreted, trying to destroy the audience’s expectations of narrative and meaning. The viewer will realize how they are trained to “find meaning” when they watch it, even if the meaning does not exist.
This made me realize that the lack of meaning itself does not make the work empty, but rather exposes the viewer’s own obsession with order and interpretation. In my game, I also try to confront this instinctive need for meaning by not providing a clear goal.

So things started to get complicated. I didn’t want to give up my initial relaxed, almost toy state, but I was constantly pushed into a position where I had to “explain what I was doing”. It is also from this stage that creation becomes less joyful.

It wasn’t because I didn’t know how to continue, but because I realized that I was beginning to be asked to give meaning to an experience that didn’t need to be explained. This feeling is not new to me, and I have experienced many similar moments in my past studies and life: when I made certain choices, showed a certain state, or simply existed in a certain situation, I was repeatedly asked to explain “why”.

It is these “moments that must be explained” that make me realize that meaning does not always arise naturally, sometimes it is a pressure exerted externally. Because of this, the game gradually transforms into what it is: it is no longer just a system about choice, but an attempt to simulate a situation – what happens when you are forced to constantly give meaning to experiences that don’t need to be explained.

This idea laid the foundation for this project, and it’s something I really care about: what do players do when the system doesn’t give a clear goal, when meaning is deliberately suspended? Will they continue to search? Will you give up? Or will it create distrust in the system itself?

I hope my game doesn’t try to answer these questions, it just puts players in a structure where these reactions happen naturally.