Things I Played: Cibele – A Game About a Girl With Pink Hair, MMOs, and Macross.

In years to come I wonder if Cibele will be remembered as the game with the promo shots where a girl with bright pink hair lies on her bed half naked. No ,don’t go imagining any of those weird Japanese games just yet. It’s not like that. It’s quite tasteful really given that it expresses the sexual desire of the game's main character.

Another, perhaps better, way of summing up Cibele is that it's an autobiographical game. It was designed by Nina Freeman (now of Fullbright) who plays herself in a digitalised memoir of a period in her life when she fell deeply, madly, truly in love with a boy she met on the net. The game is essentially the cathartic result of those months. It’s about her and Blake: a duo of nerdy teenagers who find solace in one each other through a fictitious MMORPG.

I won't spoil the story but it leaves a bittersweet message about indecision, angst and growing up. This means that Cibele is very much like watching somebody else's personal experience. As such we're expected to observe it rather than interact with it. It's a tad twee but it does well at representing the fragility of the teenage ego.

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