Experimental works of art are particularly rare in video games, in part because video games are such complex beasts, and complexity inevitably equals expensive, in one way or another, whether it be time or money. I can’t imagine how long it must have taken for Michael Rfdshir to construct the plasticine figures featured in his game Isolomus.

Isolomus is a fifteen minute game about the exploration of routine in the modern era, and perhaps the commodification of violence, or at least how easy it is to access. And thus, Isolomus is a story about how we are crushed by that commodification of everything. Yet that’s not all there is to it. The game’s haunting, bizarre imagery is reminiscent of perhaps Hylics on the lighter end, or the haunting digital nightmarescape of Okay, Normal. It is worth playing to experience the presentation alone, but Isolomus is also worth supporting because it advocates properly for a new kind of game.

Its very existence demonstrates that there is still creativity – revelatory, bizarre creativity – going on in game development, and being released on Steam, as well as the Nintendo Switch, apparently. To support it, or at least games like it, is to recognize the power of play to render new stories for us to tell. We are so caught up in ideas of representation in video games (though this is never a bad angle to take) that we often miss the point of playing the damn thing. Isolomus isn’t complex in the slightest, but it gains its power through the cruelty it allows you to enact. Watching a plasticine character crushed under a toothbrush might not sound particularly brutal when I describe it here, but it is hard not to empathize for the little guy, and feel like a terrible person yourself, when you watch them turned into paste.

We are capable of telling stories about literally anything, anthropomorphizing literally anything. Isolomus is yet one more example to add to that list. We as human beings are literally story engines – shouldn’t we celebrate that, at any opportunity? Whether it be our ability to narrativize Tetris or our ability to shape plasticine to model anxiety, we are always enraptured by story, even in a world that wants to commodify that same story, just as it commodifies violence. Isolomus, sadly, must still charge a fee for entry – yet it is a fee you pay knowing it does not go to UbiSoft or some similar corporate bloc. Instead, it will (mostly) go towards an artist creating what they love. There is hardly any better use for one’s money than that, I think.

You can buy Isolomus from Steam and the Nintendo Store.