Everything

“Everything” is an experience where you get to control... everything. Although this is an interesting concept; it seems unfinished - or at least seems a prototype of something that could have potential.

You start off controlling a goat (maybe this is random, but I was a goat), and instantly, you spot the main reason why I say it feels unfinished. As you move the goat, he rolls head-over-feet instead of walking using his legs. So you roll around and explore the environment.

There’s some markers above random objects, and you can basically talk to these objects, be it another animal, or plant etc. Every-so often, you trigger a philosophical speech which adds to the pretentiousness of the game. Some tutorial markers introduce new elements but there doesn’t seem much substance to them.

So you can press a button near another goat to get it to follow you, another button “sings” (makes a goat noise), another button causes your group to “dance”. Eventually, you are introduced to the main game mechanic, but I think many people could have lost interest at this point.

So what is the main mechanic? Well, you can switch control to another object. At first it allows you to take control of smaller objects, so you switch into a plant and can do the same things as an animal; move about and get like-plants to follow you. Yes, it is stupid but it allows you to search out other objects to switch into.

So from there, you may switch to an ant, then pollen, then a bateria, then an atom. When you get the ability to switch into larger objects, you make your way back up to the goat, then maybe a large tree, continent, small planet, sun etc.

So it’s basically a collect-them-all type game and you are trying to populate your list of thousands of objects. You need to spend several seconds in control of an object before it registers to your collection; then you can switch to another one. When you have finished all “tutorial” quests, then this time is reduced to zero.

I’m not sure what triggered it, but when I went back to the planet surface, it was icey and had different animals to discover. Maybe I switched to the ice continent rather than the rocky continent without noticing.

It was quite exciting to discover new areas, so sometimes you think you have seen everything then realise you haven’t been in the water, so then you get there, you switch to different fish and aquatic plants.

The thing is, it can keep you entertained as long as you are happy just to keep checking items off the massive list of objects. Each object isn’t interesting as they pretty much move the same way. Most things waddle, but the larger, four legged animals roll. There are inanimate human-made objects like coins, shovels, buildings which also waddle about, and the cars drive in a clumsy way.

I think it would be way more interesting if each object had some interesting animation or ability. So maybe you can jump with the frog, sway your branches as a tree, open your windows and doors as a building. Discovering these would add so much charm. You could also go down the Goat Simulator type route where you can add some destruction. Maybe the narration could reel off some interesting facts about your controlled object. Obviously these ideas add much more scope and would take a lot of work to implement them with thousands of objects. Like I stated, this feels like a prototype of something with good potential.

One thing I found frustrating was the limited view with all the blurring. I wasn’t sure if this was for performance, or if it was to emulate the object’s vision. It just looks like what I see when I take my glasses off. Actually I think it’s worse than that.

“Everything” is an interesting experience, but it just feels half-baked. It’s like they had a brilliant idea but didn’t have the resources to pull it off. So there’s loads of objects, but the graphics are basic, and the animations are severely lacking. Even though I heavily criticise it, it did keep me entertained for a few hours, and I do see the potential in it, so it’s not a complete disaster.