All the Delicate Duplicates

All the Delicate Duplicates is a first-person psychological exploration game that follows single parent John and his daughter Charlotte as they uncover a mysterious inheritance from an enigmatic relative named Mo. Set in surreal, dreamlike environments blending domestic spaces with otherworldly elements, the game explores themes of time, alternate realities, and fractured family dynamics through interactive objects, journals, and experimental text-based storytelling using the hybrid language Mezangelle. Players piece together a non-linear narrative while navigating between reality and fantasy across multiple timelines.

All the Delicate Duplicates: A Fractured Mirror of Memory and Reality

Introduction

In an industry saturated with sequels and safe design, All the Delicate Duplicates (2017) emerges as a haunting anomaly—a psychological exploration game that weaponizes ambiguity to dissect themes of memory, quantum realities, and familial disintegration. Developed by digital artists Mez Breeze and Andy Campbell, this experimental work defies conventional categorization, merging literary experimentation with interactive environments. Its legacy lies not in commercial success (its Steam rating hovers at 70% positive) but in its uncompromising vision: a narrative Mobius strip that redefines player agency as an act of intellectual archaeology.

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Development History & Context

The Artists’ Rebellion Against Conventions

Born from the transmedia project Pluto, All the Delicate Duplicates was developed under the auspices of The Space (a BBC-Arts Council initiative) and Tumblr’s International Digital Arts and Media Prize. Breeze and Campbell—neither traditional game developers—leveraged Unity not for photorealism but as a canvas for digital poetry. Released in February 2017, the game entered a landscape dominated by Firewatch and What Remains of Edith Finch, yet it rejected their hand-holding approaches.

Technological Constraints as Creative Fuel

Budget limitations forced minimalist environments, but this became a strength: domestic spaces—a loft, a child’s bedroom—transform into surreal prisons via textured distortion and shifting geometries. The developers’ background in net.art and electronic literature informed the game’s structure, favoring mechanical scarcity over AAA bombast. As Campbell noted, “We wanted players to feel like archivists piecing together a collapsing universe.”

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Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

The Fractured Plot: Inheritance as Existential Threat

The game’s premise hinges on inherited trauma. Computer engineer John receives arcane objects from his enigmatic relative Mo, inadvertently exposing his daughter Charlotte to their reality-warping properties. As Charlotte’s obsession grows, linear time unravels: players navigate 19 years of timelines, uncovering emails, scribbled journals, and quantum physics textbooks that reveal Mo’s influence. The narrative climaxes not with resolution, but with a chilling implication—Mo may be John’s suppressed alter ego.

Mezangelle: Language as a Labyrinth

Breeze’s Mezangelle language—a hybrid of English, code, and semantic nesting—elevates the text. For example:

“[Parent.Brackets]Encase.Me[\\/\Memory.Fragment]“
This forces players to decode meaning laterally, mirroring the game’s themes of unstable realities. Dialogues—rendered via UI text—dissolve into recursive loops, echoing Charlotte’s fractured psyche.

Themes: Quantum Grief and Perceptual Betrayals

• Quantum Entanglement: Objects in-game exhibit “spooky action,” physically altering based on player observation.
• Parental Failure: John’s emotional withdrawal mirrors the environment’s literal disintegration.
• Linguistic Relativity: Language doesn’t describe reality—it creates it, a nod to Wittgensteinian philosophy.

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Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

The Archaeology of Meaning

All the Delicate Duplicates employs a first-person investigative framework, but subverts walking-simulator tropes:
– Nonlinear Chronology: Players toggle between 1998, 2007, and 2017, revisiting spaces to unlock new narrative layers.
– Environmental Interaction: Clicking objects triggers audio logs or textual fragments, but no puzzles or fail states—a deliberate rejection of gamification.
– The Inventory Paradox: Collected items (e.g., Mo’s sketches) manifest differently across timelines, undermining player certainty.

Flaws: Accessibility vs. Artistic Intent

Critics divided over the handwritten texts scrawled on walls—praised for immersion but criticized for illegibility (Defunct Games called them “chicken scratches”). The absence of a centralized quest log forces engagement but risks alienating players accustomed to guided narratives.

“Chamber of Echoes” Mode

A post-game expansion lets players combine items in a surreal void, generating procedural poetry. This metatextual space rewards patience but underscores the game’s niche appeal.

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World-Building, Art & Sound

Domestic Surrealism

Visual director Campbell crafts environments that evoke Salvador Dalí meets David Lynch:
– A child’s bedroom warps into a forest of CRT monitors broadcasting static.
– Furniture levitates in zero gravity during emotional climaxes.
The aesthetic weaponizes the mundane—wallpaper patterns become Rorschach tests, questioning the reliability of domestic signifiers.

Sound Design: Audio as Haunting Agent

Chris Joseph’s soundtrack blends ambient drones with glitchy, fragmented melodies. Key scenes deploy strategic silence, interrupted by Mo’s whispered monologues or the click-whirr of a rewinding cassette tape—a sonic metaphor for memory’s fallibility.

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Reception & Legacy

Critical Divide: “Experience” vs. “Game”

• Accolades: Winner of the 2017 Game Design Awards’ Best Experimental Game, and a finalist for the Robert Coover Award for Electronic Literature.
• Praise: Defunct Games’ “A” rating lauded its “mind-bending storytelling,” while N3rdabl3 praised its “new form of storytelling” (9.3/10).
• Skepticism: Screenjabber questioned its status as a game (“more of an experience”), and Steam reviews cited frustration with its opacity.

Industry Ripples

The game’s nonlinear environmental storytelling influenced titles like The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe and Scorn. Academically, it’s cited in studies on “ludic modernism,” framing games as vehicles for avant-garde literary techniques.

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Conclusion

All the Delicate Duplicates is a defining artefact of indie experimentalism—a game that prioritizes epistemological unease over entertainment. While its deliberate obscurity and lack of mechanical complexity limit mass appeal, it remains essential for those seeking narrative innovation. Like Charlotte inheriting Mo’s cursed objects, players inherit the burden of meaning-making—a testament to Breeze and Campbell’s vision. In the pantheon of arthouse games, it stands as a haunting, flawed monument to the medium’s unexplored potential.

Final Verdict: A cerebral triumph for the patient, but an acquired taste. 8/10 — a cult classic in digital literature.