Metal Garden

There is a moment in Metal Garden that petrified me. It comes minutes before I, a tired nomad in search of the truth, barge into a dam at the end of the world. I have cleared countless of these Goliath-sized edifices in pursuit of a “hole” rumoured to be the only escape from this pervasive megastructure that swallows me in every direction. I am almost there. Just one more. On the path, I pass by the now-silent tents of the enemies I have just eliminated, and something catches my eye. It’s not the dim glow of yet another digital interface, but rather a parchment, handwritten in ink, that beckons me to pore over its history. It reads, “No heavenly fields awaited us beyond the structure, and no God to fill our empty stomachs.” I stop. I can’t move another muscle down the path. I am petrified. 

The beauty of the writing in Metal Garden is how it achieves so much substance in a small shape. There are barely a handful of world-building text logs to read and even less spoken dialogue between this world’s inhabitants, but what it lacks in verbiage, it makes up for in meditation. I had no shortage of ideas to wrestle with as I played through this short, 2.5-hour campaign. The story is pared back to a concise expression, but every drip of lore was to me a flood of postulations. I couldn’t help but savour every second of the astrological, theological, and anthropological pondering that this game instigated.

The narrative was not the only element of Metal Garden to receive a minimalist treatment. Despite it feeling like an FPS cut from the same cloth as Half-Life, the gunplay was very simple, with only 3 weapons to choose from throughout the entire runtime. You have a shotgun for close encounters, a handgun for mid-range, and a sniper rifle for ranged skirmishes. You also have a floaty jump and a sprint to help you dodge incoming fire (no hitscan here), but it all feels a bit slim. Similarly, you will only encounter three enemy types in this game, corresponding to the range of your weapons, as the opponents engage you from various distances. There are copiously grey-clad soldiers who use two different types of projectiles, and there are jaguar-like foot soldiers who will engage you with melee weapons. 

But before you write the gameplay off for being too shallow, I will say that the action is streamlined intentionally to keep the game quick and deliberate. There are some pretty clever combat encounter designs, even with a limited palette, and I found that these encounters laid good bones for the world design. Surprisingly, there is a pretty sophisticated injury system in Metal Garden, whereby certain mechanical functions are stripped from the player if they suffer too much damage. For instance, if you take enough punishment in a firefight, you may lose your ability to sprint or aim down the sights of your gun. These handicaps can be reversed, but only at limited auto-surgeon devices placed strategically throughout the game. The injury mechanic certainly added some more tension on top of the simple FPS format, but I couldn’t help but feel like it was a vestigial organ to what might have been a more robust combat system at some point in the game’s development. 

On the other hand, the environment design in this game is anything but inconsequential. Every object, every texture, is washed over with a grey-green saturation filter that devitalises the atmosphere. This stylistic choice is justified by the narrative and, even more, puts you in the headspace of a person who has never seen the “outside” in their entire life. Given this is a game about living within a sterile megastructure, the architecture of the interior space is highly reminiscent of the brutalist style. Large, featureless slabs of concrete and metal are shaped around the player to make them feel small and insignificant. The sound design is sparse and all too quiet, perpetuating the sense of loneliness in this nearly derelict facility. I loved having moments of solitude become my modus operandi, only to be broken by the call of a horn or the roar of a leopard when the enemy spotted me. The ensuing battle was a mix of vagrant winds and gunfire, and when it was over, I found my solitary stride once more. 

Indeed, the stillness of the world is something I grew to appreciate in Metal Garden. With patience and bated breath, the world seemed to wait for me to explore its every corner. After all, it was in these areas that the developer hid the best parts of the megastructure lore. In the platforming sections, I found the aforementioned text logs, as well as a number of engineering projects from prior civilisations that gave me insight into the megastructures of the world built over layers of stratified societies. Of course, you can find more combat supplies in all of these areas too, but they are merely a trifle compared to the knowledge gained when studying an ancient tower spiralling upwards from underground. These archaic expressions of culture, contrasted against the technocratic power that opposes the player, are the perfect blend of artistic and scientific theory.