For the past few days, I have been obsessed with a game called "Disillusion ST". It's a cross between a first-person dungeon crawler and a point-and-click, and is styled after 90s PC games and CGI. That alone would have been enough to keep me interested, but it is way more than just that. The game is weeeeeeeiiiird, like super trippy and surreal, and it's great. The first person sections look like a cross between LSD Dream Emulator and the Windows 95 3D Maze screensaver. A lot of the textures are incomprehensible, with you only barely being able to tell what it's supposed to be, and then make you question why that's the texture for the wall. All of the graphics are compressed to hell, with everything being low-res and dithered, only adding to this confusion. Since you can't see a totally clear image, it forces your mind to connect the dots and make up what it's supposed to be, which gives it a very off-putting vibe.
The music is also very off-putting at times, most of the tracks are droning ambient pieces, with the occasional short melody. The soundtrack compliments the maps very well. My favorite part is definitely the characters. A lot of them have differing styles, yet none of them look very out of place next to each other. They range from cute, to creepy, to confusing, and anime. There are a seemingly endless number of characters and NPCs in this game, and they all stand out from each other (unless they're supposed to be connected). Most of their dialogue is vague or nonsensical, but they all have a quirk/defining trait. Quite a few of them remind me of VLIF's characters (RIP). When they're not being creepy, the characters are very charming. My favorite is Celare, this girl who is seemingly running forever, and helps you fast travel to different places.
Something I wasn't expecting was how philosophical and spiritual (?) the game is. The game makes numerous references to various cultures' mythologies and theologies; one of the main characters is Melpomene, one of the 9 muses from Greek mythology. However, most prominently, the game is heavily inspired by Buddhist beliefs and teachings. The various locations you traverse are parts of the Naraka, which is the Buddhist equivalent of hell. More specifically, it's where you go after you die and before you reincarnate, waiting for your Karma to resolve. A lot of the NPCs are people stuck in Samsara, endlessly waiting to be reincarnated, only to die and be reincarnated again. One of the biggest themes of this game is desire and happiness derived from material possessions. In Buddhism, desire and reliance on material possessions tether you to the material world and trap you in Samsara, preventing you from achieving Nirvana. A lot of the trapped souls talk about their desires and other superficial things, while the more self-aware characters that seemingly are above Samsara tell you to abandon the temptations of material desire. I admittedly don't know a lot about Buddhism and its beliefs, I'm sure that some of what I said is wrong, so this is really as deep as I can analyze (I also don't want to bore you).
TLDR: Disillusion ST is a weird trip of a game that I highly recommend to people looking for a truly unique experience, and don't mind aimless wandering or the surreal and nonsensical. I love this game, and I'll be playing this for a long time to come.
