courtesy of www.theverge.com
At the very beginning of Kids, you help a small group of faceless bodies fall into a dark hole. You don’t have much say in the matter, either: a crowd forms around the rim of the inky pit, and as you touch the screen, they all topple over. In the next scene, those same bodies helplessly float downward into seeming nothingness. You can’t stop them, but if you hold a finger on a body, it will temporarily slow down before falling again. I’ve played through this opening multiple times, and I’m still not sure what it means. That’s kind of the point. “Depending on who is playing it, there are quite different reactions,” explains Michael Frei, a Swiss filmmaker and artist who co-created Kids. “Some see it as something dark, some find it hilarious.”
Kidsis available today on PC,iPhone, and Android, and it lasts maybe 30 minutes altogether. The entire game is in black and white, and it consists of a series of strange, curiously hypnotic interactive vignettes. Kid sis an experience about crowds of people and how they coexist. One scene might have the faceless humans arguing about which direction to go, while another has you helping the figures navigate pulsating tubes. You’re never told what to do, and, in many ways,Kid sis more like a thought-provoking toy, rather than a traditional game.