Text by — Federico Scarfo’

Translation by — Julia Perry and Federica Vecchio

You know how in a dream your brain has the power to mix pieces of places, houses, streets, statues, visited in the past and create a new and unique image as well as the ability to evoke familiar sentiments which for some reason, you have never actually experienced before? This is a major theme that unites two incredibly different things: the metaphysical painting of DeChirico and, in my opinion, an unfortunate series of “aim and click” flash games. I define it unfortunate because, being more than sure that an introduction to the Greek artist is not needed at all, the same cannot be said for Submachine: belonging to the unlucky class of flash games, that is to say games which you can play for free on the original site and which usually last for a limited period of time, the series has not gained the popularity I think it so long deserves. Although Submachine has never been an “innovator” of these games, initiated by legendary games like “The Secret of Monkey Island” and “Clock Tower”, I think it is more than suitable for flash games, especially because it has a minimalistic yet very interesting story, inspired by the Matrix, that incentivizes the player to pay great attention to the few clues given. The plot is trivial, the main character is trapped in the submachine, a specific machine that replicates an infinite number of closed environments, among which it is possible to travel through portals. Nevertheless, the most relevant points of strength of the game are its setting, graphics and sound effects: elements that are, as we say, abstract. In fact they are deeply linked to De Chirico’s thematic guidelines, those that were selected for the art show “De Chirico and the mysterious object”. The show, held at Villa Reale, that is the principal reason behind this article. As the title itself suggests, referring mostly to the paintings where the mysterious object is represented, the art exposure concentrates almost entirely on De Chirico’s relationship with objects, inanimate figures, opposed to living beings.

As I have already stated, the first point of similarity is the looming scenario on its single components, generating an oppressive, scary and dreamlike environment. In the painting “Mercurio’s meditation”, the feeling of claustrophobia is alimented by the prospective and narrow space, at the end of which lies a classic bust, the closest thing to a person that ever appears both in the metaphysic way of painting as well as in certain sections of Submachine. Similarly, painting by De Chirico set in an outdoor environment are just as disturbing, as they form a dreamlike composition whose limits are incumbent upon the flat sky and largely geometric shadows and solid walls.

Submachine is set in a series of places, mainly closed, artificial and mostly ruined. For example, in the same episode, taking advantage of the portals in the game play, the character visits a ship, a canteen, a ruined coffin, the ruins of a temple, and various other places, in which it is easy to see Skutnik’s peculiar style. Each of these locations is abandoned, ruined, no longer functioning, and the themes of deterioration and dissipation melt with the feeling of claustrophobia, of falling out of place, of being undesired guests.

The second common feature derives from a second sense, that of loneliness. In most metaphysical painting, and in each section of Submachine, no human presence can be found. In Submachine, however, even recent traces can be found, which is surprising given the decrepitude of its surrounding environments. Most of the story is told through notes left behind by people less fortunate either long dead or who were forced to flee. The only human contact of the series takes place via computer and not coincidentally, happens to be one-sided since our hero does not have a keyboard to use. Isolation is the greatest power of Submachine, the “enemy” machine, due to its immensity and ability to forever grow and expand, pulverizing humans and objects in its way. The feeling of loneliness in De Chirico, however, come from a surreal feeling of familiarity. De Chirico represented environments as seen from a train window, wanting to reproduce the feeling you get when passing a nearby city and feeling a bigger sense of homeliness than its people. This maps an intimate representation of a place in each of us. The feeling of familiarity that Submachine’s location communicates is instead one linked to despair of the hunted, the ones who lost in the woods, recognize the real horror of aimlessly traveling in circles.

Lastly, the last common feature is the prominent role given to the objects. Like in “silent lives” or in the series of the “mysterious object” by De Chirico, in which objects are placed on a stage and in spite of the human figures portrayed faceless in the background., Submachine makes the objects the fundamental element. In fact, what else makes us realize how importance objects are if not a game in which taking advantage of the environment at its fullest? Everything that is useful exists in Submachine, an object, a note or a pattern, there are virtually no secondary characters, and if there are, they remain invisible throughout the entire series and bring interaction only through notes. In contrast, the statues, representations of steam-punk style potted machines are ubiquitous, mimicking what you would expect, the “real” world beyond the Submachine (although throughout history, the “true” world is not an external reality to Submachine). For their use and even for a sense of “company” that can be drawn from it – after all, they’re the only allies of a player playing against fate – objects are humanized in Submachine and from this it is humanization that becomes a sort of invincible enemy of the Submachine itself, that is far from being a simple virtual help, it becomes an opponent capable of smarts and immense resources, that reigns over an infinite space in which the relationship between object and humans is broken, and the only audible sound is one of squeaking machinery, moving, non-human symphonies that accompany the metaphysical framework that is the game.

Teso di – Federico Scarfo’

Avete presente quando in un sogno, mischiando pezzi di vari posti visitati in passato, case, strade, statue, il vostro cervello riesce a ricreare un’immagine unica, inquietante per la sua capacità di evocare sentimenti familiari ma allo stesso tempo di mantenersi estranea ed aliena? Ecco, questo è uno dei temi principali che accomuna due cose disperatamente diverse: la pittura metafisica di De Chirico e la a mio parere sfortunata serie di flash games punta e clicca del graphic artist polacco Mateusz Skutnik, Submachine. Dico sfortunata perchè, essendo più che sicuro di non aver bisogno di fare una presentazione del pittore greco, lo stesso non vale per Submachine: appartenente alla razza sfigata dei flash games, ovvero giochi a cui si può tranquillamente giocare gratis sul sito d’origine e che tendono a essere piuttosto brevi, il riconoscimento di cui gode la serie  è stato sempre meno che risonante. Nonostante Submachine non sia mai stato un “innovatore” del genere punta e clicca, inaugurato da giochi leggendari come “The Secret of  Monkey Island“e “Clock Tower“, a mio avviso possiede una giocabilità eccellente per un flash game, unita a una storia minimale e interessante, alla  Matrix, che spinge il giocatore a fare tesoro dei pochi indizi che trasudano dal velo opaco del gameplay. Della trama si capisce che il protagonista è intrappolato nella Submachine, una macchina che replica virtualmente un numero infinito di aree chiuse, tra le quali si può viaggiare tramite portali.  Tuttavia, il vero punto di forza della serie sono l’ambientazione, la grafica e il sonoro, elementi, per l’appunto, metafisici. Infatti si collegano con numerosi rimandi alle linee tematiche di De Chirico selezionate per la mostra “De Chirico e l’oggetto misterioso“, a Villa Reale, che è stata per l’appunto il motus primus di questo articolo. Come suggerisce il titolo stesso, ammiccante soprattutto alla serie di quadri ritraenti “l’oggetto misterioso”, la mostra si è concentrata principalmente sul rapporto di De Chirico con gli oggetti, le figure inanimate, opposte e surrogate del vivente.

Come ho già introdotto, il primo punto di similitudine   è l’incombere dello scenario sulle sue singole componenti, generando un ambiente oppressivo, pauroso, onirico. Nel quadro “La Meditazione di Mercurio“, la sensazione di claustrofobia è alimentata dallo spazio prospettico, angusto, in fondo al quale giace un busto classico, la cosa più simile a una persona che appare sia nella pittura metafisica, sia in certe sezioni di Submachine. Allo stesso modo, i quadri di De Chirico ambientati in un ambiente esterno non risultano meno inquietanti, poiché formano una composizione onirica i cui limiti incombenti sono il cielo piatto e le ombre larghe e geometriche, non meno solide dei muri. Submachine è ambientata in una serie di luoghi, per la maggior parte chiusi, artificiali e perlopiù in rovina. Per esempio, in uno stesso episodio, sfruttando l’elemento di gameplay dei portali, il personaggio visita una nave, una cantina, la sezione di una tomba in rovina, resti di un tempio, e vari altri posti, nei quali è facile distinguere il tocco dello stile singolare di Skutnik. Ognuna di queste location è abbandonata a se stessa, in rovina, malfunzionante, e la tematica della bruttura e della decadenza si mescola con la sensazione di claustrofobia, di essere fuori posto, e di essere ospiti non desiderati.

La seconda caratteristica comune deriva da una seconda sensazione, quella della solitudine. Nella maggior parte della pittura metafisica, e in ogni sezione di Submachine, non si trova alcuna presenza umana. In Submachine, tuttavia, restano tracce anche recenti, il che è paradossale rispetto alla decrepitezza degli ambienti. La maggior parte della storia viene narrata tramite note, lasciate indietro da personaggi più sfortunati e morti da tempo, o costretti a fuggire. L’unico contatto umano della serie avviene tramite computer, ed è unilaterale, dal momento che il nostro eroe non possiede una tastiera. L’isolamento è il potere più grande della Submachine, la macchina “nemica”, dovuto alla sua immensità e alla sua abilità nel crescere ed espandersi, separando e polverizzando per sempre allo stesso modo i pochi umani e gli oggetti. La sensazione di solitudine in De Chirico, invece, deriva da una sensazione surreale di familiarità. De Chirico rappresentava gli ambienti come visti dal finestrino di un treno, spiegando di voler riprodurre quella sensazione che si prova quando, passando vicino a una città, la si sente più familiare delle persone che ci vivono. Questo mappa dentro ognuno una rappresentazione intima del luogo, da cui sono esclusi i non-familiari, ovvero tutti gli altri. La sensazione di familiarità che le location di Submachine comunicano è invece legata alla disperazione del braccato, di quello che, perso nel bosco, riconosce con orrore di aver girato in tondo per ore e ore.

Infine, l’ultima caratteristica comune è il ruolo di primo piano dato agli oggetti. Come nelle “vite silenti” o nella serie dell’”oggetto misterioso” di De Chirico, nelle quali gli oggetti vengono messi su un palco a dispetto delle figure umane che vengono relegate senza volto sullo sfondo, in Submachine gli oggetti sono fondamentali. Infatti, quale installazione può dare maggior rilievo a oggetti comuni più di un gioco per vincere il quale bisogna sfruttare ciò che si trova e usarlo per interagire con l’ambiente circostante? Tutto ciò che di utile esiste in Submachine è un oggetto, una nota o uno schema, praticamente non esistono personaggi secondari, o se ci sono, ci si interagisce solo tramite note ed essi rimangono invisibili per tutta la serie. Al contrario le statue, le rappresentazioni e i macchinari in vago stile steampunksono onnipresenti, facendo una mimica di ciò che ci si aspetterebbe, ovvero il mondo “vero” al di là della Submachine (è tuttavia suggerito nel corso della storia che il mondo “vero” non sia una realtà esterna alla Submachine). Per la loro utilità e addirittura il senso di “compagnia” che se ne può trarre, – in fondo, sono gli unici alleati del giocatore contro un triste destino – gli oggetti sono umanizzati in Submachine, e questo deriva direttamente dall’umanizzazione in una sorta di nemico invincibile della Submachine stessa, che, lungi dall’essere semplicemente un’unità virtuale, come si suppone che sia, è un avversario, astuto e dalle immense risorse, che regna su un infinito spazio in cui il rapporto tra oggetti e umani è rovesciato, e l’unico suono che si sente, è il rumore di cigolii, muoversi di macchine, sinfonie non umane che corredano il quadro metafisico che è questo gioco. De Chirico ha rappresentato “gli archeologi”, un tema ricorrente della sua pittura, come uomini “ripieni” o composti da oggetti, elementi architettonici principalmente. Gli “archeologi” sono più che mai il punto di incontro tra il pittore e Submachine, rappresentando il tema della familiarità interiore, il “possedere” in modo univoco un particolare luogo o città, una ricorrente umanizzazione dell’inanimato, e, al contrario, una perdita di definizione e un oggettivizzazione, nel senso più letterale, della figura animata, che, così come il protagonista di Submachine, viene ridotta a un inventario di oggetti.

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This is the game about memories, how they fade away, trick us or straight up lie to us.

Do you remember this game? Are you sure?

Try this version – you might not recognize it. Did you really hear this music? Is it changed? Or maybe it was there all along… I don’t remember anymore. One thing I know for sure – those pictures… I recognize them, they’re… from my past, my ancestors. I’ve seen them so many times, but were they here before? Is it possible that somebody changed them? Did I change them?

There’s a machine I haven’t seen before.  There’s a room I haven’t been to, but I could swear I did. My memory about this game is murky. That’s how I see this game now. That’s the one I did so many years ago. Or is it?…

Well, this is it. The last Submachine game to be turned into HD version. This whole process rounded up nicely to a year-long project, where there was an HD game every month. Now the library is complete, I can move on to creating Submachine 10 and prepare a bundle of all of them for next year’s anniversary.

The stage for Submachine 10: the Exit is set.

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Welcome to the Subnet

I was struggling with the topic of this essay in its relation to René Descartes’ philosophies. I had a few ideas that I entertained but all of them came up short in terms of substance. Then, while thinking about what I was going to do at home, I was reminded of a tab I had saved on my internet browser for an update to a flash game that I have been playing since its initial release; Submachine! I was so excited when I thought about this game because I realized that it had a good parallel with Descartes’ philosophy of the Self, God, and the World. Submachine is a Flash game series created by Mateusz Skuntnik who, so far, has nine games released to play on the internet. They involve point-and-click and exploration mechanics that take you to a vast variety of different worlds. To “finish” the games the player must collect items and use them in specific places and find clues to help solve puzzles that can open up more locations to explore. Though Submachine relates to all three of Descartes’ factors, it relates to them in different ways.

The Self in Descartes’ philosophy and the player in the Submachine series is the only similar factor that stays consistent with both sides. To Descartes, the Self was the cogito and knowing that we exist. In Submachine, the player is represented as the cogito and is even described as a sort of messenger of the game’s God. In the game Subnet Exploration the player can find and read a letter that a scientist had left stating that M, we will talk about him later, has a new subject that he has been working with. This subject can be speculated as the player and later letters state that M has purposely led the subject astray to get lost in the world. This is the last similarity that is seen in both sides of the philosophy. The God and the World of Descartes are very different from Submachine, but it is easy to see how they can still relate in a “they exist” terms.

The God of the Submachine series is named Murtaugh, Mur, or just M. Since the game series is not fully completed, I cannot confirm my ideas about who M really is, but I can personally say that he is a two-faced, double-crosser, who is way too powerful for his own good. When the player first sees the name Murtaugh, it is just in a journal entry that he wrote. It describes how he mentally reached a new plane of thought and that he can see things made out of, what he calls, karma. The next interaction she has with M is an actual interaction. The player is on a computer with no keyboard and yet communication can still be made with M. he states that he is here to help us and that he knows of some coordinates, these will be discussed in the next paragraph, that may help us in our journey. By this time we are in the fourth game, Submachine: The Lab, but the truth finally comes out in the sixth game, Submachine: The Edge. This is why I do not like or trust Murtaugh anymore. The player finds out that Mur has been sending people into the Submachine, the actual machine in the game, and just leaving them there for his overall experiment. She also finds out that he purposefully sent her to the loop, a trap in the Submachine and the entire concept of the third game Submachine: The Loop, and did not think that she would survive. The very fact that M tried to kill us for an experiment and then acted as if he was our friend just rubs me the wrong way. Again, we may find out that M was actually a really good guy and others were just saying he was malicious to steer the player in the wrong direction. However, if Murtaugh is tricking the player and sending her to her doom, it shows that the Submachine’s God is not a perfect Being. I will say that in the case of the world of the Subnet, this type of being could still be considered God. In terms of Descartes, God exists because there is no sense experience of infinite or absolute or necessary Beings and by the causal principle the cause has to exceed the effect, so the idea of God can only be created by something as powerful as God himself. In Submachine, Murtaugh created the Submachine and the Subnet so we can say in parallel to this infinite type of world that it is indeed possible that an imperfect Being could naturally exist.

Speaking of the world of the Submachine games (finally), one of the greatest things about them is how crazy the world is. The science behind the Submachine itself appears to be infinite. The world of Submachine is called the Subnet and it consists of over 1,000 different possible locations in a single dimension. It has been stated in the game that there are multiple dimensions and some locations may appear identical to each other but they exist in a different space! The way the player can get to these combinations is with one of the more important features of the game. Submachine’s transporter device, the official name escapes me, is a very unique machine that has three slots for inputting the numbers 0 to 9 on it and those 1,000 groupings can teleport the player to anywhere in the Subnet. The Subnet, in itself, can also be described as infinite. As described above, each location is placed in a certain space in a certain dimension and multiple copies of said location can exist at the same time but may be in a different space. If anything, the Subnet is the most confusing part of the games. Also I need to mention that the Subnet is the world of the Submachine which is the overall mechanism that created the Subnet to exist. In theory, the Subnet would not exist without the Submachine which was invented by Murtaugh. Considering Descartes’ philosophy that the world we experience exists because we see it as it is and it is clear and distinct, one can tell that the Subnet is not exactly what Descartes might call as undoubtable. The world created from the Submachine can lie; there are even rooms that fall apart and some rooms that have teleportation portals that appear out of thin air. In general it can be safe to assume that the Subnet’s only truth is that there is more to discover than meets the eye. So the world of the Submachine games and the World of Descartes are complete opposites. One world must be clear to be real and one world is fuzzy and confusing but is still comprehended as true, in terms of the game play.

Author: Hollistyn

The Subnet just got updated for the last time this year. I achieved this year’s goal of reaching 100 locations (don’t know how many rooms that is, don’t make me count them please). So now it actually is kind of massive, at least compared to other, normal Submachine games. If you want to escape to Submachine – now you can do it for even longer. As the 100-location canvas is set, I’ll start filling it with real gameplay next year, so it will actually become a massive game on it’s own. And it’s 99% HD-ready now, so you’ll be able to buy and own it one day.

As usual – good times ahead, hang on.

Few pictures to get you hooked: