Perfect World

Perfect World is a 3D first person "art platformer" and environmentalist parable that eschews traditional narrative. The player platforms through multiple large levels, slamming "extractors" in order to activate them and exploit the environment in exchange for money. The player can then use this money to purchase further abilities like a jetpack and a grappling hook, which in turn makes activation of more extractors easier. With each activated extractor, however, the state of the world worsens. If the player plays the game, they destroy the world. In Perfect World, "the mechanic is the message."

The game critiques our environmentally catastrophic capitalist system and the game economies and progression systems that mirror it. It achieves this critique by subverting player incentivization: the more the player participates in the mechanics of the game, the more the world is destroyed. Consumption leads to destruction. The player can only escape destruction by declaring "I have enough" and ending the game early. From this critique arises a strong environmentalist, anticapitalist message. As we watch our world literally burn, melt, and be otherwise destroyed, largely due to the effects of capitalism, this message feels urgent.