Birthdays The Beginning presents the player with the most existential concept of life in its first few minutes: “Where do we come from?” Soon there is a view of the stars and a blank cube in front of the player, and a small polyhedron floating to the left. The player is then greeted by the figure, named Navi, who explains how life was created on Earth. Navi says that everything on this planet started from the water; all of life evolving from the oceans and onto the land, which is referred to as the primordial soup.
The cube that was once gray now has a small square ocean in it. Navi then says everything is in place, and to sit back and watch the action. The camera zooms out and the cube spins for thousands of years a second until a notification that pops up on the top right, “Stromatolite created”. Stromatolites are the first bacteria that appeared on our planet 3.7 billion years ago, and from these stromatolites is all of human life and all of the life Birthdays has to offer.
The way ideas are presented in Birthdays is simple and effective, contradictory to how actually complex and existential they are. The game is cartoony and the bacteria, plants, animals and eventually humans all look very beautiful and simple. The constant back and forth your mind plays between what happens in real life versus what’s happening on the screen is a very unique experience. In the cube you have an Avatar that you use to manipulate land and interact with the creatures within your little life vessel. As an Avatar you are tasked with the daring assignment of creating life, from Stromatolite all the way to Homo Sapien. This is done by manipulating the land and making sure that the organisms all have the right living conditions. From water to land, from slithering on a stomach to standing on four feet to standing on two feet to standing straight up, it is all there. The work that went into the creation of life seems so simple but when you get down to it, it is a complex and winding road of mistakes, death and famine.
As the world flashes by at thousands of years per second there is a tracker in the top right that shows what organisms are living and dying off. It’s like watching the stock market and seeing which animal and organism is the hottest or worth the most at the current moment in time. Sometimes the organisms will even die out and not show up again while millions of years quickly flash by. These organisms that you worked so painstakingly to make are now gone. You lowered the oceans and brought the mountains up to make sure the temperature was JUST right for these little guys and what do they do? They die. But that’s the circle of life, things come and go. Your best friends that just so happen to be Stromatolites aren’t needed in the current cycle of human life and they have to go to make room for some cool new bacteria.
Birthdays The Beginning puts you in the seat of being God and gently tugs you along as you are introduced to your godly duties. But then the game just leaves you to your golden throne, having to turn through the pages of life and finding what evolves into what, which leads to that which leads to this which ultimately results in dinosaurs and chickens. Reading the idea of Birthdays is admittedly a confusing one, but isn’t life as well? Shouldn’t all games exist within their own small environment that only you can understand if you have played it? I think so. Created by Yasuhiro Wada, the visionary behind games such as Harvest Moon, Rune Factory and Little Kings Story, and his new studio Toybox Inc, Birthdays The Beginning exists in its own niche. The amount of creativity behind all of his games are astounding and literally every single one of them either exists in a niche it created or revolutionized the niche it is within.
A game with such a simple and cute look presents its complex ideas in such an easy to digest way that you can’t help but appreciate the artistry and life that has not only gone into the game itself but also into the life that you are living now. Birthdays The Beginning is not just a game but it’s a question of life and what you find important in it. It’s about how we should all be appreciative of what came before us and the complex science the Earth had to work out over millions of years to get to where we are now. And, it’s about how I am able to write to you about a game that is about the creation of life which lead us to this moment right now.
This review is based on a code for Steam sent by the publisher to SideQuesting.
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