Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
0 
Report this post
ASAMU is a huge work of art, and it's like the classics of cinema, that you never get tired of seeing them again and again. And it has such a deep an touching story, that gives for talks and talks like you can see.
I think ASAMU is the game that I have given away the most: to my older son, to my wife, and to 4 friends.
I'm in the point of believing that giving away ASAMU is like giving a true piece of magic and fantasy that makes you travel so far away from your problems, that is like a medicine for the soul.
I think you all at Gone North Games have created a masterpiece that will last in the minds of a lot of people forever. I almost fall into the temptation to want a second part, even though deep down I know that there is no need.
Anyway, I'm always wishing that your next work would be so wonderful like this one. You have left the bar very high being this your first game.
Here you'll have a real follower and a pre-buyer if your next "story" title seems to be as promising as this. Please, tell us that you all are working in another beautiful story-driven game !!
About the ASAMU story itself, I only have a little curiosity about the huge ice whale that appears at the end of the game.
Do you know if it has any meaning? Or is just decorative?
A huge hug for you and all at Gone North Games!
Also, I second the question about the whale.
Thank you very much!
The whale is mostly decorative, we meant to have it swimming the clouds of Star Haven but unfortunately didn't have time to animate it, so we froze it in the Ice Caves instead. It's meant to add a sense of scale and majesty and some visual detail, but I don't think there's much more to it than that!
I'm kind of surprised that the anti depressants weren't actually intentional, since they fit with the theme so much. I never really made the connection of the characters in the fantasy world with people in the Nephew's life, but that makes a lot of sense! I'm going to have to replay the game again and take a look at some of the other characters through that lens.
Again, thank you so much. I really enjoyed the product of all you and the rest of the team's hard work!
The op.
What purpose would there have been for the floating blocks (graves so far as I can tell) to have epitaphs written on them? This was a bedtime story for his daughter, so I doubt he would have mentioned that there was a full on suicidal frog to her. That indicates, to me at least, that these are actual things that existed. I can't see any reason for the Narrator to have come up with several extra names, as well as very personal details about the living frogs' relationships with dead loved ones. Details that are neither explained to the daughter, nor would serve any purpose in a child's coping fantasy.
In addition, there's an interesting line that Fred gives the Narrator when they finally meet up. He mentions that the Narrator is wearing the suit made for him, but expresses surprise at his presence in this other world. Almost as though Fred intended for his nephew to find the suit, to have access to this technology, but not to follow him. Fred is using a rough version of the same suit, more like a prototype than anything else. Again, very specific details for the nephew to have just imagined up.
There's also the brief exchange about the journal he finds in the first village. The narrator states that when he was looking through the journal, the number of days didn't add up to how long Fred had been gone. He elaborates AFTER this that he believed Fred had been gone for about six months at this time, yet an entire culture (two cultures, really) had a chance to grow, have several generations, establish pecking orders/religions/scientific studies, create entire towns of unique architecture and technology, all while essentially deifying Fred as the one who created them. This deviation in time and Fred's research into quantum physics might be related. Fred manages to find a way to zap his garbage away in an incredibly over-done manner via quantum entanglement (sounds like something a bored/sporadic genius would do), and happens across a world, possibly even another dimension, where time moves differently. I remember a specific photo, one that was both in the opening scene and the epilogue, near the chalkboard that has an image of what appears to be the markings that the grappling hook leaves, and Fred has pointed out that it "showed up again", meaning that this is a phenomenon he's actively researching. Maybe one that started happening after he first activated the pad and sent the eggs over accidentally, where in this other world their cultures rapidly developed while Fred was just sending garbage through the metaphorical chute. It isn't until he starts looking into these strange things that he designs the suits (perhaps the grappling hook works off of some spooky quantum theory) and takes off to find out what's going on only to instead find an entire race he had inadvertently created and thus feels responsible for. He initially finds only the first village, but it's clear that he had gone between Star Haven and the first village more than once (Fred mentions that he should have brought Maddie to Star Haven a long time ago, and both Maddie and Samuel seem used to the idea of Fred leaving the village.) and the people of Star Haven mention having taught Fred how to properly use the crystals, something they would have had plenty of time to figure out in the who knows how long there was between the eggs arriving and Fred coming afterwards.
The idea that time works differently in this world could even be linked to the crystals. They can power the suit, which if my theory holds any water would use quantum energy of some type to power itself, because they are somehow the source of the strange variations in time. The presence of the crystals could have been enough to foster rapid growth and evolution by either stretching out the time on that world relative to our own, or by speeding up the development of the creatures on it. This might also explain why the ice mountain is described by the Narrator as seeming to have snap frozen; the heavy presence of crystals in the mountain causes strange fluctuations in time, causing the area to move about dangerously through environmental stages. It might have been a lush area one moment and suddenly have become an icy hell in the next and stayed that way up until at least after Fred sends his nephew back home. That, or perhaps the presence of such a high concentration of these quantum crystals caused everything around them to lock into place, effectively creating an absolute zero situation where the mountain and cave system within it froze instantly.
Granted, that sounds like something out of Doctor Who with how loose the "science" behind this idea is, but there are too many inconsistencies in what we see and hear for me to accept that this was all just a fantasy.
I can't deny the theme of death present in the story; there were several times throughout the narration between the nephew and his daughter that stuck out to me as the daughter questioning the validity of the story and the father quickly trying to come up with more reasons. Fred being depressed is also a possibility I can't deny (someone earlier in this thread mentioned that Fred didn't seem to fit the persona of someone suffering from depression, but there is a statistical correlation between high levels of intelligence and depression). However, there are just a few too many things that don't add up for me to accept that this was just a child coming to terms with the death of a loved one.
Plus, there's the question of if the narrator's mother had cleaned the house as he said she did, why would there have still been snow falling into the open observatory? Why would Fred have such security (two heavy metal doors) protecting the pad and computer? We see several books on both quantum physics and electricity around Fred's house in the opening, but in spite of this Fred states that he no longer cares about accolades for his work; he just wants to spend time with all of these creatures who have come to rely on him.
Assuming the epilogue takes place after he tells his daughter the story, it could very well be that the narrator simply didn't understand what in the world, or both worlds, Fred could have possibly meant by a larger adventure than what was already going on until he had his own child as well. Fred is clearly very close to Maddie and sees her as a daughter ("My Maddie"), so what once started as a scientific experiment became something much more personal, and much more important, to Fred. But what was important to Fred shouldn't, possibly couldn't, be important to the narrator. Fred wanted his nephew to find his own adventure instead of chasing someone else's. There was no reason for the nephew to remain there, but Fred felt a sense of duty. Not something to chain a child down with.
Honestly, I feel that the idea of fatherhood is explored much more deeply in this than death. A story from father to daughter about a father figure, and a narrator who's come to grips long before with not having had a father of his own. I'm currently in my mid twenties, no kids, no SO or anything leading up to that. But having grown up with an absentee father myself, these are the things that struck me the hardest in the story. Not from any sense of sadness on my part, but rather a sense of hope. Right now I can barely keep up with myself and my cat, and I'm in no rush for a family of my own. But coming from a mixed family, where my sister has a different father and my brother has both a different mother and father (my current/only dad so far as I'm concerned) I've come to learn that there isn't much difference between a family and an adopted family. Either way, it's going to be an adventure you can't forget.
But the frogs were Fred's adventure. Something with a personal meaning to him that his Nephew couldn't possibly understand until he was much older and experienced fatherhood himself. It would have been wrong for Fred to allow his nephew to remain there, in a world that he had no part in when he had a whole life back home still ahead of him.
Fred had to go to an entire different world to find what mattered most to him, so he sent his nephew back to learn the lesson that Fred had skipped out on for too long in the proper place for him to learn it.
thats the opening right
no hidden meaning nothing plain story bout a uncle
even the tite says it
but he thats just a theory
A GAME THEORY
THANKS FOR
that joeks old il leave
i laughed.