Mountain Review

As those who are already vaguely aware of this indie oddity may already know, Mountain is a difficult title to review. Some would say it stretches the definition of a video game to its limit, while other say it’s gone too far and has no right calling itself a game. You can understand why my job of a reviewer feels harder for this tiny curiosity than your average shooter. Do I think Mountain is a good game? Not really. And nor is it a compelling example of videogames as art. But as a piece of artwork on its own, without being labelled as a video game? Mountain is a phenomenal triumph, and well worth the tiny price of admission.

For those that haven’t heard of Mountain before, it’s an indie ‘game’ made by David O’ Reilly and published by Psychonauts and Brutal Legend developer Double Fine Productions. It’s available on Steam and on the Humble Bundle store, though I recommend the latter for a DRM free experience and more reasonable currency conversion if you live outside the US. After being asked three simple questions and being prompted to doodle your answer with a mouse, you’re taken to a small window containing your very own mountain, alone in the universe as a planet all on its own. Your control of the mountain is limited to controlling the camera up, down, left and right, and zooming in and out of your little planetoid.

Outside of that, you have no control over how the game plays out. You can’t interact with it in any meaningful way, and the developer even encourages people to minimise Mountain and let it do its own thing in the background. I’m even running it while writing this review. It’s like a big 3D Tamagotchi, only without the maintenance, minigames, or anything that made them interactive. Left to run though, your Mountain will slowly change, gathering heaps of snow or getting struck by a giant pair of fluffy dice from the depths of space. It’ll even give you a witty and melodramatic snippet of text from the thoughts of your flying hill, giving it’s thoughts on current events when you alt-tab back to it after playing something else.

Where does that leave this review then? What Mountain does it does well, giving a very interesting and addictive experience that’s unlike any other on Steam. But that’s it, it’s an experience, and not a game. And though it’s definitely nothing we’ve seen before, some folks will argue to the gaming population that ‘interactive’ art pieces like this have been around for the past ten to fifteen years in galleries. Though I thank Double Fine Productions and the very talented David O’ Reilly for bringing this to the gaming audience, I can’t say it’s going to get a good score. But that shouldn’t stop you from giving a go yourself.