Passage
By Chad Sapieha,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Free brief game is amazingly profound metaphor for life.
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What’s It About?
PASSAGE, a free downloadable game for Windows and Macintosh computers designed by independent game maker Jason Rohrer, takes place within a 100-pixel-by-16-pixel box. Its visual style, which includes highly pixilated objects and characters and a healthy helping of primary colors, is akin to that of a quarter century-old adventure game. Each game lasts only five minutes, but in those brief moments our protagonist, a blue-eyed human, lives an entire life. He starts as a young man, then quickly ages as he explores the game's expansive, maze-like environment, until, at the end, hunchbacked and sluggish, he dies. During this short passage, he encounters various physical obstacles (dead ends in a maze) and rewards (scattered treasure chests) along the way.
Is It Any Good?
To call Passage a game would do it a disservice. It's more of a metaphor for life; a meditation on the human condition. The maze-like environment represents the paths that stretch before us. Some lead to dead ends, other to riches, and still more tease us with treasures that forever remain out of reach. We may or may not find a wife in the maze, and if we do take a partner then many of the game's narrower paths will become inaccessible. As the game progresses we accumulate points, but, as all games end in death, it becomes clear that these points are meaningless. What does it matter how much wealth one has when one dies? It is both enlightening and depressing. Most of all, though, it is proof that interactive media is capable of delivering a profound and poetic message.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the potential of games as a medium to do more than just entertain. Passage isn’t meant to be fun, but rather insightful and somewhat poetic. It’s not to be judged based on its graphics, mechanics, or controls, but instead its meaning. Can you think of other games that fit this description?
Game Details
- Platforms: Mac, Windows
- Pricing structure: Free
- Available online?: Not available online
- Publisher: Jason Rohrer
- Release date: December 12, 2007
- Genre: Adventure
- ESRB rating: NR
- Last updated: April 5, 2019
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