Mountain Review

Recent years have seen parts of the gaming community divided over the definition of ‘game’. Is Proteus a game? Is Gone Home? These so called ‘walking simulators’ seek to simply make us feel something, rather than wow us with exciting gameplay. Mountain is another game that falls into a similar category. In the game, you watch a mountain slowly revolve through space. You’ve probably already skipped to the score at the bottom, but don’t let that dissuade you. I like Mountain, but I’m bound by an objective score system. If you want a good ‘game’ in the traditional sense, it won’t be for you.

For everyone else though, Mountain is utterly fascinating. When you load the game up, you have to draw three pictures based on words it gives you. My three were ‘Mother’, ‘Illness’ and ‘God’. You draw them in a little box with shoddier pencil controls than MS paint, and it never tells you why you’re doing it, or what they’ll be used for. Maybe the game doesn’t use them at all. The developer, artist David O’Reilly, has purposefully remained quiet about what Mountain is, and what message it contains, if any.

After drawing the pictures, it generates a mountain for you. It slowly revolves through space, and you watch it. You can control the camera angle any way you please. You can spin it around and even see underneath it where its rocky roots crumble away to nothingness. You can zoom in and out, and soon you realize that your mountain is contained within an orb which is hanging in space. The stars and nebulae in the background are beautiful to look at, and the few asteroids which surround your mountain are menacing.

The mountain itself is gorgeous too. There’s a day/ night cycle, as well as a weather system, and the mountain goes through seasons as it revolves. Trees have their leaves turn red and brown, and eventually the snow comes and they’re left bare. Then in springtime the greens return and the cycle begins again. At night they shimmer with tiny lights. Clouds form above the mountain, obscuring some of it, especially in the darkness. And then dawn comes and everything is right again.

Then things get weird. Stuff crashes into your mountain, and if that doesn’t sound very descriptive I apologize, but that’s what it is. Just stuff. The first thing that appeared was a giant anvil which crashed near the top at an odd angle. Next came a sailboat which settled right next to it. Then an arrow, protruding about halfway down between the two of them. A massive horse with part of its legs buried in the ground with its feet sticking out the bottom of the mountain just topped things off.

Sometimes the mountain speaks to you as well. It says hello when you first load up the game, and checks on you if you haven’t looked at it for a while. It also says deeper stuff like “If I ever see another thing like me, will it like me?”. Everything that happens is accompanied by an audio cue. Dawn features majestic orchestral music. When the mountain says something it’s a quick chime. When something becomes embedded in the mountain there’s a deep thud. It’s a game to be left running in the background while you’re doing something else. Then, when you hear something, you quickly tab to it and watch the sunrise, or see what new addition has been made to the landscape.

Why does any of this happen? I have no idea. That’s probably the point. By hitting keys on the bottom two rows of your keyboard you play a virtual piano. This doesn’t seem to have any effect other than speeding up the rotation for a brief moment. Nothing makes any sense, and yet it’s utterly enthralling. My mountain is slowly spinning on my other monitor while I write this review. I’m listening to the wind blowing, and every now and then I glance over and something new has happened. The mountain said something. A park bench has appeared near the horse.

Of course, it’s not a very good game. However I’ve barely turned it off since I downloaded it. The question is, would I recommend buying it? And just like with just about everything else with Mountain, it’s something I can’t really answer. It’s not for everyone, but then nothing is. It’s really cheap, but there’s nothing much to it. You don’t really ‘play’ it, so is it even a game? Could it be a toy? A piece of art? Perhaps something will happen when I reach 10 hours played time, or maybe twenty? Until then, my mountain is going to keep revolving, and it’ll keep me coming back.