To plan ahead, or just jump in? Umurangi Generation is a game about taking pictures, and at the beginning of each level you can begin, if you wish, by having a look at the list of specific objects you are asked to snap. These are the bounties for you to deliver. Two disposable cameras. Skateboards. Two cats, but taken with a telephoto lens. A mortar and a shotgun and – hey wait, what?
Umurangi Generation reviewPublisher: Origame DigitalDeveloper: Origame DigitalPlatform: Played on SwitchAvailability: Out now on Switch and PC
So you can go in all methodical. You can yoke yourself to the ten-minute time limit always ticking down, which gives you a bonus if you get your work done within its bounds. You can head out into the world thinking, “Skateboards. Two cats. Two cats. Cats!” It’s pretty entertaining. Where are those dang cats anyway? Where’s my telephoto lens?
Or you can just jump in. I often jump in. I take a few pictures, I try a few lenses. I get acquainted with the fluttery, mechanical, intricate thing that is the camera I’m holding, its riot of moving pieces and tight grasshopper windings somehow making themselves known through the Switch I’m holding. Through the magic of haptics, perhaps, or the sheer suggestibility of the brain. I snap a few things and maybe I get lucky – oh, was on the list, was it? (Each item ticked off the list is accompanied by a sort of musical wind chime effect that is always a thrill to hear.) And then I am confronted by something or other. In the middle of a level, I will see the wall. The huge wall. The wall that is stenciled as property of the UN, with a fine for any damage caused to it. Hey wait, what?
Umurangi Generation is a Game all About Taking Photos During a Crisis Watch on YouTube
Umurangi Generation is a game about an awful lot of things beyond taking photographs – I am going to have to be selective here. One of the things it’s about is the point at which two worlds intersect. The place you’re dropped into in order to get your photos is Tauranga, Aotearoa, in the grip of a great crisis. The crisis is the stuff of sci-fi, and I won’t spoil it because a lot of the game revolves around teasing it out. But I will say that like so much sci-fi it’s in there to channel stuff that is very real and very topical. Tauranga itself is seen from the perspective of young punks and skaters – a friendly, artsy domestic scrabble of marker pens and spray cans, ramps and tape decks and intricate graffiti designs.