Everything… am I playing this game right?

I played some Everything over the weekend, and even though I put a good 5 hours into it, I am still not quite sure what I am doing. While it is a sandbox game, I am not sure I am actually playing… I spent time as a bear, some grass, a rock and a few other animals flopping and creeping along. Yes, flopping. The land animal animations are silly flips and flop rather than running, it is strange at first but you get over it and some of the big animals in herds flooping around made me laugh. On the stranger still, side are the eyes of the animals in Everything. They are big, with dilated pupils out of some horror movie as well and are more than a little bit creepy at times.

When it comes to the technicals(flooping animals and creepy eyes aside), the graphics in Everything are fairly nice, and there are some pretty areas you can explore including the ocean and space. From the world of the super tiny, to big oceans to the vastness of space, everything looks like what it should be and some bits are fairly nice. It is not going to push any medium to high-end system particularly, but it more than gets the job done. The music is soothing and in the background but not lost with the overall chill pace of the game, and the sound effects do their job.

As for the gameplay, that is where it gets strange. You wander around, being different things that once you become, you can “collect” in an encyclopedia for the game so you can use that creature or thing latter, from little bugs to vast planetary items, you can be it. You can also change objects size, from a bear the size of the planet to a whale the size of a bug. So what else is there to do besides play with things in Everything? You can read the thoughts of animals and objects, have strange thoughts of your own(in the game), and some things give snippets of philosophy and a view of the world that everything is connected. If that is not enough, you can also sing, dance, create groups and herds to explore and collect more things and just play around.

In the end, Everything is a strange, sometimes wonderful toybox of things to explore and mess with. Sometimes surreal, sometimes very real, but almost always interesting. If you need a game with a set goal, this is probably not the game for you unless you like trying to collect the entire listing of things in the game. For the sandbox style player, this game offers a lot of silly and fun moments.There is no right way to play the game from collecting, to sillyness, to wonder, to just letting the game play itself(yea it can do that) Everything is for the most part, whatever you make of it.

Image Credits: Everything-game.com