Off-Peak

Off-Peak is what you should be playing right now if you’re into modern art, or art in general. It’s that kind if first-person exploration game that takes you into a place that feels completely detached from the reality you know and perceive. It’s a game that’s so free to interpretation that you can play it several times and come up with new ways to see it.

After you download and launch the game, if your brain stops even for a brief moment to ponder at the fact that ‘the graphics are kind of bad’, just stop. Off-Peak is a game you play for its content, context and subtext. It’s not a AAA title that’s created in collaboration with Michael Bay.

In Off-Peak you can either tread lightly or run around without caring about disrupting some kind of balance that’s keeping that strange place together. All you need to do is find all the pieces of a ticket train so you can leave the city but along the way, you will get distracted by a lot of artwork, interesting characters and great music.

The game feels more like it was created to be an exhibition for a certain concept, or several at the same time. If you’re the kind who overthinks things, you might get caught up in a lot of details.

The size of the train station dwarfs you and there are several, not secret, but well hidden locations throughout the game. Each one you find seems to reset what you think the game is until that point. From meeting a large female station employee who offers free cookies you enter a bar that hosts board games. And the bartender is a pretty enlightened dude.

It makes no difference whether you start to explore from the left to the right or vice versa, the key thing is to take your time, play at your own pace, and see everything that there is to see.

Off-Peak’s idea is something you can’t really put your finger on. It does offer good insight on what being a musician means. It heavily relies on music to communicate with you there is not a single square foot of game space in which music can’t be heard, even slightly.

Hands down, it’s one of the most relaxing and interesting games I’ve had the pleasure of meeting.