“11:45 A Vivid Life” by Deconstructeam (Jordi de Paco, Marina González & Fingerspit).
“A short weird tale about a girl who discovered her skeleton [is not] hers, stole an [X-ray] machine and fled to the country to investigate her own body.”
The marvelous “11:45 A Vivid Life” is a short point and click exploration game with a body horror narrative. Assume for a second that you suddenly get the feeling that a huge part of your own body, namely your skeleton, is not yours at all. How would you feel? Would you just accept that thought and think “Oh well, what can you do?” – I suppose not. You would be weirded out, getting anxious about your formerly trushworthy companion that you call your own torso. Your whole self-perception and self-image would be shattered into tiny pieces.
“11:45 A Vivid Life” is a game about that morbid, for those unaffected absurd angst, as the main character Laynie suffers from it. She goes to the lengths to steal an X-ray apparatus, so that she can do the scan on her own without any possible interference. With your help she will find things inside her body that actually might feel like they do not belong in there; but there is still a possibility that they do. It will be your task not only to locate those things, but also to figure out their background.
Is the microchip an oppressive tracking device, a dystopian substitute for a birth certificate or even extraterrestrial technology? Do the badly healed fractures come from an accident in her childhood or was it an attack by her violent ex-lover? Your answers will change her reality and thereby lead you to one of seven different endings. How you interpret all those plotlines is completely up to you, as our view on the world depends on our storytelling skills as well, as the magnificent experience “11:45 A Vivid Life” knows to demonstrate. [PLAY]
