GAMER GATEWAY

And finally, at #1 we have Gamer Gateway's top game of the year: SmartHome. Some might be surprised that, in a year filled with breathtaking graphics and dazzling gameplay mechanics, top honors are being awarded to an indie text-adventure built with HTML. But SmartHome is the quintessential example of why you don't need a AAA gaming studio with a multi-million dollar budget to build a deep and nuanced world that stays with you long after you stop playing.

SmartHome, the debut release of artist and indie game developer Steve Pikelny, starts off deceptively simple. You wake up. You're in bed. Much like real life, you are presented with three options: get out of bed, look at your alarm clock, or check your phone. You decide to wander around for a bit. You find all the material comforts you'd expect from a modern dwelling: a bathroom, TV, modern kitchen appliances. But there's an undercurrent of anxiety -- not just because it lingers from your dreams, but because nothing works.

This is a Smart Home, of course, and you slowly realize that everything you can interact with is an internet-connected device sans internet connection. Making matters worse, when you try logging into your phone you learn that your account has been suspended for violating a nebulous terms of service agreement. Uh oh.

You quickly find yourself in a labyrinthian, kafkaesque nightmare filled with missing passwords, circuitous customer support lines, broken interfaces, and spam text messages. Escaping to the outside world feels tantalizingly within reach, but the rabbit hole goes deeper than you'd expect from a standard escape room game. Every number you call, every app you install, and every bill you pay seems to send you farther and farther down a pit of despair.

And yet, there are no acute stressors here. You could go back to sleep, water your plants, or play games with your automated vacuum at your leisure. But make no mistake about it: You are in hell. This fucking sucks. You're continuously reminded of the internet-deprived prison you currently inhabit, devoid of any human interaction or meaningful stimulation. All you have are a few little idle activities to pass the time until you die. The alternative is submitting to an opaque and disconnected bureaucracy.

Similarly, there's no villain, per se. You don't get the sense that this is a 1984-style dystopia where a malicious authority exerts power over you. Instead, the lore of this world paints more of a Brazil-style dystopia where your pain is senseless and inadvertent. It's the result of a haphazard, rube goldberg-esque system that was created without regard for your wellbeing whatsoever. You're trapped in a system that simply exists and exerts suffering on you for no reason in particular. We're reminded of the famous Werner Herzog quote: "The universe is monstrously indifferent to the presence of man."

SmartHome is fairly unique in the puzzle game genre in that the gameplay largely does not rely on abstract pattern recognition. In a certain sense, everything is quite straightforward. You call customer support, which tells you to download an app, which tells you to download another app, which tells you to purchase an item, and so forth. There is clearly a logic to how everything is connected, and the humor of the game comes from the fact that each roadblock feels like something you would plausibly encounter in real life. Rather, the difficulty arises in the complex web of dependencies being forced on you. The challenge isn't so much solving a series of logic puzzles as it is managing a large swath of information and figuring out how the system works. In other words, the real challenge is not getting lost in the sauce.

But where many games suffer from disconnected and meandering story lines, SmartHome thrives. In between infuriating struggles, you're presented with a delightfully frustrating playground of mini games and side quests. This sandbox element gives you a chance to take a much needed break to explore the strange world you inhabit, and maybe have an existential breakdown in the process.

Ultimately, what really elevates SmartHome from good to great is its ability to explore deeper philosophical themes through its gameplay. Even though things might appear inadvertent frustrating at first glance, it serves as a powerful illustration of how technology mediates our lives. Sitting with your in-game ear against the door, listening to a mysterious hum, you wonder why the digital state of some private company's server dictates your ability to physically go outside. Reading about the history of money in a financial literacy tutorial, you think about the arbitrary power dynamics of modern society. Fidgeting with your social media-connected smart toaster, you ask: do I really need this? Is this really making my life easier, or is it just adding to a clutter of needless complexity? Is it bringing me closer to other people, or is it just isolating me further?

To be sure, this is not an easy game. The overwhelming amount of information thrown at you makes it far too easy to have a cognitive lapse and miss an obvious clue. But part of the fun is that this process evokes real, tangible emotions in you as you play. Unsurprisingly, many players viscerally hate the experience. The frustration is too much to bear, triggering ptsd flashbacks of the last time they had to call their ISP or submit an insurance claim. But for those willing to accept the game's central conceit, it's an addictively fun adventure.