Isolomus

Isolomus is a short, point-and-click adventure game set in a surreal, fantasy world rendered entirely in handcrafted claymation. With no text, it delivers a psychological horror narrative about isolation and madness through atmospheric visuals and sound, featuring multiple player choices that lead to one of two distinct endings. This bite-sized experience blends puzzle elements, dark humor, and minimalist storytelling for an unsettling yet memorable journey.

Isolomus: A Touch of Madness in Plasticine

Introduction: The Unsettling Gaze of the Minimalist Monster

In the vast, often homogenous landscape of independent video games, few titles possess the audacity to be so profoundly strange while operating on such a slender framework. Isolomus, the 2020 creation of solo developer Michael Rfdshir, is not a game one plays so much as an experience one endures—a brief, tactile plunge into a world of squelching plasticine nightmares. It is a title that defies easy categorization, eschewing complex mechanics, lengthy narratives, and even text entirely, instead serving as a pure, unfiltered conduit for its creator’s uniquely grotesque vision. This review posits that Isolomus is a landmark in avant-garde interactive art: a flawed, fleeting, and unforgettable experiment that leverages its limitations to probe themes of isolation, sadistic curiosity, and the commodification of violence. Its legacy is not one of mainstream influence, but of proving that within the cheapest Steam bundle lies the potential for a shock to the system that many AAA productions, with their billion-dollar budgets, can only dream of achieving.

Development History & Context: The Solo Visionary and the Plasticine Palette

To understand Isolomus, one must first understand its creator, Michael Rfdshir, and his preceding work. Rfdshir is a quintessential auteur, a developer who wears all hats—designer, artist, programmer, and producer. His 2019 game, Wurroom, served as a spiritual predecessor, establishing his signature aesthetic: a world built entirely from hand-sculpted plasticine (modeling clay), animated via painstaking stop-motion. If Wurroom was a “delightfully muddled” curiosity, Isolomus is its darker, more confident, and more horrific sibling.

The game’s development was shaped by stark, deliberate constraints that became its strengths:
1. The Medium as Message: The choice of plasticine is fundamental. It is a humble, tactile, and inherently “imperfect” medium. Fingerprints are visible, textures are lumpy, and movements are jarringly organic. This aesthetic immediately divorces the game from any pretense of digital polish, placing the viewer in the role of a witness to a handmade, deeply personal nightmare. The “crude” finish, as noted by several critics, is not a lack of skill but a curated texture of unease.
2. Technological Simplicity: Built in Unity, Isolomus runs on minimal system requirements (a 2.3 GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM). This accessibility allowed for wide distribution across PC (Windows/Linux) and later the Nintendo Switch. The technical simplicity kept the focus squarely on the art and the player’s direct interaction.
3. The 2020 Indie Landscape: Released in December 2020, the game arrived amid a pandemic that fostered both a surge in indie development and a hunger for short, impactful digital experiences. It competed not with Cyberpunk 2077, but with the sprawling library of Steam’s “casual” and “indie” categories. Its price point ($0.99) and 20-minute length were radical acts of economy, rejecting the prevailing design philosophy that more content equals more value.
4. The “Forced” Creation: The store page’s cryptic, fourth-wall-breaking blurb—”I swear, they forced me to make this game! Please heeeelp!”—suggests a creator wrestling with his own visions, a meta-commentary on the involuntary nature of artistic compulsion. This frames the entire experience as something extracted under duress, priming the player for a session of unsettling observation.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive: A Story Told in Silhouettes and Splats

Isolomus presents a narrative stripped bare of dialogue, exposition, or conventional character. There is no text. The story is a silent film of existential horror, inferred solely through action, composition, and sound. The player assumes the role of an unseen, capricious force—a “god” or perhaps a tormentor—observing and manipulating a series of surreal, clay-man beings.

Plot Architecture & The Cycle of Cruelty:
The game is structured around a “day/night” cycle. Each cycle begins with a simple, almost serene scene: a small, green, humanoid clay figure goes about mundane tasks (eating, reading, brushing teeth). The player’s initial interaction is to crush these figures with a click, transforming them into a paste-like substance. This act of casual, consequence-free violence is the first, shocking thematic salvo.

After “sleeping” (a transition often marked by a descent into a dark, abstract space), the player enters a “dream” sequence for that activity. Here, the rules change. The same mundane object (a toothbrush, a book, a computer) becomes the centerpiece of a grotesque, interactive vignette. The player must solve a simple puzzle or make a binary choice that often leads to visceral, disturbing outcomes—feeding a creature made from canned food to a window, stabbing a figure with a blade, navigating a landscape of teeth.

This structure creates a powerful thematic loop:
1. Commodification of Routine: The green figures represent human beings reduced to base, repetitive functions. Their existence is a series of tasks.
2. The Ease of Violence: The initial crushing is effortless, bloodless, and consequence-free. It mirrors how modern interfaces make acts of destruction (in games, in media) trivial and satisfying.
3. Consequences of Intervention: The dream sequences force the player to directly engage with the machinery of that violence. The puzzles are simple, but the outcomes are monstrous. The game argues that intervening in a system—even to “solve” its puzzles—often perpetuates or deepens the horror. As Horrorgameanalysis insightfully noted, it’s about “how we are crushed by that commodification of everything.”
4. Two Endings, Two Philosophies: The path diverges based on cumulative choices, culminating in either the “Ugly Ending” or the “Evil Ending” (as per community walkthrough terminology). The former is often interpreted as a futile, cyclical despair; the latter as a conscious, unambiguous embrace of malicious creation. The store page’s challenge—”which of them is the worst?”—suggests both are failures, differing only in their self-awareness.

Characters as Archetypes: The figures are not characters but archetypes: The Everyman (green figure), The Monster (red creature), The Two-Headed Bureaucrat, The Faceless Authority (the Earth/block). They are puppets, and the player is a cruel puppeteer, highlighting themes of autonomy, control, and the sadistic pleasure of narrative authorship.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems: The Elegance of the Barely-There

Gameplay in Isolomus is an exercise in subtraction. Its mechanics are so minimal they are almost invisible, which is precisely the point.

• Core Loop: Point-and-click interaction, with a cursor that highlights interactive elements (they turn green). The input is a single click to select, a second click to activate/use. On the Nintendo Switch, this is touch-screen only, a design choice that Geek to Geek Media found “janky” due to finger occlusion, but which physically reinforces the feeling of poking and prodding a fragile, physical world.
• Puzzle Design: There are no logic puzzles, inventory combinations, or failure states. “Puzzles” are perceptual: What does this object do when touched? What sequence of interactions causes a change? The challenge is not intellectual but observational and, at times, moral (in the sense of choosing which horror to enact).
• Branching & Replayability: The game’s 15-20 minute length is a facade. True completion requires multiple playthroughs to trigger all variations in the six dream sequences and achieve both endings. The Steam achievement system (twenty achievements, each tied to a specific outcome) cleverly acts as a checklist, rewarding exhaustive exploration. However, as The Elite Institute noted, progress isn’t saved between sessions, encouraging rapid, consecutive runs to map the game’s possibility space.
• The Absence of Systems: There is no health, no score, no resource management. The only “progression” is the accumulation of outcomes and the player’s own dawning comprehension of the game’s cruel logic. This lack of conventional Systems is its most powerful mechanic. The player is not a hero overcoming obstacles; they are a curator of atrocities, free from any in-game judgment or penalty. The discomfort arises solely from the player’s own psyche.

World-Building, Art & Sound: The Symphony of the Squelch

Isolomus’s world is its entire argument. It is a masterclass in atmospheric, environmental storytelling where every element is saturated with meaning.

• Visual Direction & Claymation: The plasticine world is a masterpiece of tactile horror. The stark black void background isolates every squishy, textured form, making them loom with a claustrophobic intensity. The animation is deliberately low-frame-rate and janky, giving movements a spasmodic, unnatural quality that feels wrong in a deeply primal way. Critics have rightfully compared it to the work of Jan Švankmajer, the Czech surrealist known for his grotesque stop-motion. The imagery is unforgettable: a green man squeezed from a toothpaste tube, prancing across giant teeth; a creature assembled from canned meat and glass shards; a two-headed entity whose heads must be clicked alternately until they pop. The “handmade” quality—visible fingerprints, imperfect blending—is not a limitation but the core of its emotional impact. This is not a world rendered by algorithms; it is a world physically molded and tortured by human (or inhuman) hands.
• Sound Design: The soundtrack is minimalist, oppressive, and perfect. It consists of low, droning ambience, distorted guttural sounds, and stretches of dead silence that become deafening. Sound effects are visceral: the wet schlorp of clay being compressed, the crunch of a toothbrush scraping against a palate, the tinny clink of glass. The audio design does not accompany the visuals; it is the visceral sensation of the violence being committed. It creates a constant, low-grade anxiety that never lets up.
• Atmosphere & Tone: The atmosphere is one of profound isolation and clinical detachment. The player is a silent observer in a world devoid of empathy. The tone walks a razor’s edge between absurdist dark comedy (a man joyfully jumping on teeth) and outright body horror. This tonal ambiguity is key to its power—it is funny until it is suddenly, devastatingly not.

Reception & Legacy: The Cult of the Squished Man

Isolomus has enjoyed a remarkable reception for such an obscure, brief title.

• Critical & Commercial Reception: Upon release, it was met with bewilderment and praise from the niche press that covered it. Game Asylum called it a “singular vision” and “worth the couple of quid.” 336GameReviews awarded it 3.5/5, praising its strangeness and heart. The Steam user reception is overwhelmingly positive (95% “Very Positive” from over 396 reviews). This disconnect between minimal gameplay and high praise is the game’s most telling legacy. Reviewers and players consistently state: This is not a good “game” by conventional metrics, but it is an unforgettable experience worth the $1.
• The “What is it?” Discourse: A significant portion of the discourse, as seen in Steam forums and reviews, revolves around interpretation. The game explicitly refuses a singular meaning, which has fostered a cult-like community trying to decipher its symbols. Is it about depression? The banality of evil? The horror of the mundane? The ambiguity is a feature, not a bug.
• Legacy & Influence: Isolomus will not spawn clones in the way Undertale or Stardew Valley did. Its influence is more philosophical and aesthetic. It stands as a potent argument for the “experience game”—a short-form, auteur-driven work that prioritizes emotional and sensory impact over traditional game loops. It joins the pantheon of surreal indie titles like Hylics or Duck Game Itch (in spirit) that prove Steam is a viable platform for digital art. Its success on a platform like Steam, and its port to the Nintendo Switch, demonstrates a market appetite for bite-sized, high-concept artistry.
• Criticisms: The valid criticisms are consistent: it is over in a flash, the interactivity is barebones, and its “weirdness” can feel deliberately opaque or even petty. As The Horror Network curator noted, its “avant-garde weirdness feels a bit forced and underwhelming.” For many, it is a curious artifact, not a repeat play.

Conclusion: The Price of a Glimpse into the Abyss

Isolomus is not for everyone. It will frustrate those seeking challenge, narrative clarity, or even basic playability. It is, in the strictest sense, a lightly interactive cartoon. Yet, to dismiss it on those grounds is to miss its monumental achievement. In an industry obsessed with scale, depth, and player agency, Isolomus asks: What if we took all that away? What if we gave you a world you can only touch, not change? What if the only power you have is to choose which abomination to witness?

Michael Rfdshir, using nothing but clay, a camera, and Unity, has created a potent piece of horror that relies on the most terrifying engine of all: the human imagination. The game’s brutality is not in its graphics (cartoonish, by definition) but in the space it leaves for the player to project their own dread. The “scream of consciousness dying in isolation,” as the store page puts it, is the player’s own reaction to being made complicit in a series of meaningless, beautiful atrocities.

Its place in history is secure as a definitive work of interactive surrealism. It is a testament to the power of a singular, unflinching vision, unburdened by committee design or market expectation. For less than the price of a coffee, it offers something no blockbuster can: an authentic, unmediated transmission of a creator’s psyche, wrapped in a package of squishing clay. You will not play it for long. You will, however, remember it for a lifetime. The final, devastating verdict is that Isolomus succeeds not in spite of its limitations, but because of them. It is a flawed, brilliant, and essential artifact of the medium’s capacity for the bizarre and the profound.