FORT WORTH, Texas — An independently produced video game’s premiere trailer recently left viewers wondering aloud whether the game looked absolutely captivating or like a total bore.
“We had no idea our preview would become this polarizing,” said Denny Roach, who recently previewed his debut creation A Place For Sticks, a game where you run around and pick up sticks. “It started as a little demo I made because I was teaching myself Unreal, and a few of my friends said it was actually pretty fun, and so I said ‘Hey, why not?’ and decided to finish my stick game. Now I’m getting thousands of messages a day, some begging me to finish the game, some pleading with me not to.”
The trailer, showcasing a few of the levels and features of the work in progress, has been viewed over three million times on YouTube and features almost identical numbers of upvotes and downvotes.
“This is game of the year shit,” said one highly rated comment, from StarDudeVallee. “I like how the real time mechanics line up with the accurate day/night cycle and the RNG attached to anything happening or not looks to skew on the chill side. The gathering mechanics are pretty original. This shit is pure vibes, and I cannot wait to see the finished version. Ignore the comments that say this is a big empty game where all you do is walk around and pick up sticks. Every great piece of art is misunderstood in its own time. Oh, and the sticks look great!”
Still, while many lauded the game’s scope and innovation, others questioned the appeal of a game that simply tasked you to collect twigs with no variations in the main gameplay loop.
“I’m still not sure we need to turn every job and activity we can think of into a game,” said Grant Marnswarth, a games journalist. “We’ve drifted away from the escapism that video games were meant to provide us in the first place. We’re spending our hard earned money and free time pretending to mow lawns and flip burgers and meanwhile there are entire days of World War II that haven’t been adapted yet. This is a bleak trend for the future of video games.”
As of press time, a special edition of A Place For Sticks was announced that includes a real stick.
