Coma

Coma is a short, atmospheric 2D platformer where a boy named Pete, aided by his pet bird, explores a surreal, dream-like world to uncover the truth behind his sister’s mysterious disappearance. Set in desolate autumnal landscapes and monochrome interiors, the game focuses on simple puzzles, exploration, and talking to NPCs, revealing a narrative that challenges perceptions of reality with a moody, fantasy aesthetic.

Coma: A Descent into the Subconscious – A Definitive Review of Thomas Brush’s Cult Classic

Introduction: The Dream Logic of a Flash Era Masterpiece

In the vast, often-overlooked archives of browser-based gaming, few titles achieve the status of Coma. Released in July 2010 by a then-largely unknown Thomas Brush, this succinct 2D platformer transcends its modest 10–15 minute runtime to deliver a haunting, psychologically dense experience that lingers long after the final, ambiguous note fades. At its core, Coma is a masterclass in atmospheric storytelling, using minimalist gameplay, evocative visuals, and a chillingly open-ended narrative to explore themes of grief, deception, and the liminal space between life and death. It is not a game about answers, but about the potent, unsettling power of questions—a beautiful, moody tone poem that uses the language of dreams to probe the darkest corners of the human psyche. This review will argue that Coma’s enduring legacy lies precisely in its reticence, its deliberate embrace of ambiguity, and its success in making the player an active theorist in a tightly controlled, yet wildly interpretable, dreamscape.

Development History & Context: A Solo Vision in the Flash Boom

Coma emerged from the vibrant, democratized ecosystem of Newgrounds and Armor Games in the late 2000s, a golden age for independent Flash developers. Its creator, Thomas Brush, was a solo auteur—credited as designer, musician, and sound designer—working within the technological constraints of the Adobe Flash platform. This context is crucial: the game’s aesthetic is shaped by the medium’s limitations. The fixed, flip-screen perspective, the limited palette (shifting from the monochrome gloom of the house to the autumnal hues of Redwind Field to the fleshy, pulsating underworld), and the hand-drawn, slightly rough animation all speak to a resourceful, artist-first development process. There was no budget for voice acting or complex 3D rendering; instead, Brush leveraged Flash’s strength for expressive 2D animation and tight, web-optimized delivery.

The 2010 gaming landscape was dominated by AAA blockbusters, but the indie scene was percolating. Games like Limbo (2010) and The Unfinished Swan (2012) would later popularize minimalist, atmospheric platformers, but Coma predates them in its specific, dream-logic approach. It existed in a tradition of “artsy” Flash experiments—think Daniel Benmergui’s Storyteller or the Nevermore series—that prioritized mood and metaphor over mechanical complexity. Brush’s vision was singular: to create a short, self-contained emotional journey that felt like stepping through a painting or a memory. The decision to release it as freeware on major portals was both a practical necessity for reach and an artistic statement, ensuring its accessibility and allowing its reputation to spread organically through word-of-mouth and player-driven interpretation—a model that would later define successful indie titles.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive: “This World is a Lie”

The plot of Coma is deceptively simple: a boy, Pete, and his avian companion, Bird, seek to rescue Pete’s sister, who has been locked in the basement by their father. This premise, however, is a MacGuffin—a narrative trigger that dissolves into pure symbolism within minutes. The official description’s claim that Pete must “find out what has happened to his sister” is the first layer of a meticulously constructed onion of unreliability.

From the outset, the world is flagged as unreal. Cryptic graffiti—”THIS WORLD IS A LIE,” “WAKE UP PETE,” “RING THE DORE BELL”—scrawls across walls, a direct, almost gauche intrusion of meta-commentary into the diegesis. The setting itself is a surrealist collage: a gloomy, piano-filled mansion gives way to the pastoral Redwind Field, then the inverted, disorienting Shill Bend (where left and right controls flip), the visceral “womb level” of the giant worm’s gut, and finally the claustrophobic, organ-lined basement. Each area represents a different facet of Pete’s subconscious, a topography of his inner turmoil.

Character roles are fluid and metaphorical:
* Bird: The central enigma. ostensibly a guide, Bird is the prime Unreliable Expositor. The climactic declaration, “I lied to you,” is italicized and delivered in Bird’s characteristic tweet, confirming it as the speaker. But what was the lie? The most prevalent theory, supported by player consensus in the Jayisgames comments and the creator’s later confirmation via Reddit, is that Bird is a personification of Death (or a guiding angel, or Pete’s sister’s spirit), and the lie was about the sister’s imprisonment. The rescue mission was a ruse to propel Pete toward the “Dore Bell”—a phonetic pun on “door bell” or “do rebel”—which represents the exit from the coma, i.e., death or awakening.
* The Father: Initially framed as an abusive villain (his threat, “Do it or I’ll kill you,” is a shocking moment of raw textual brutality), his static, fishing presence suggests he is a frozen memory or archetype rather than a literal character. If Bird lied about the sister, perhaps the father’s malice is also a projection of Pete’s unresolved familial trauma.
* Mama Gombossa: The “queen” of the cloud realm, she explicitly pleads with Pete to “stop what you’re doing FOREVER,” representing the siren call of the coma itself—a blissful, static oblivion. Her game with her son, Gomboysa, involving perpetually respawning berries, is an unwinnable loop, symbolizing the coma’s futile, eternal stasis.
* The Sister: Her existence is the emotional core and greatest mystery. Is she a real person waiting at Pete’s bedside? A manifestation of his longing? The figure playing the song (DEBAB) in Shill Bend? The reflection on the Viking ship? Her presence is felt through absence, her melody the key that unlocks the deepest layers of the dream.

**Thematic Core: The game is a sustained meditation on liminality. Pete exists in the coma—a state between life and death. The environments are thresholds: the Silver Shute (a purgatorial slide), Shill Bend (a brain-damaged zone of reversed logic), the basement (a descent into the biological self, the “squishy” organs presumably his own brain or viscera). The central conflict is not against a person, but against stasis. Mama Gombossa and the hanged figures of Shill Bend represent those who succumbed to the coma’s pull. Bird, despite its deception, is the agent of transition. The final ascent—flying past stars, the voice “You’ll see me soon”—leaves the outcome deliberately blurry: is this the soul ascending to an afterlife, or the first glimmer of consciousness? The player is left with the same uneasy poetic uncertainty that defines great dream logic.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems: Precision in Slipperiness

Coma is a side-scrolling platformer with light puzzle elements, governed by a deceptively simple control scheme: arrow keys for movement/jumping, mouse for dialogue. Its genius lies in how these simple tools are used to create psychological effects.

• Core Loop & Exploration: The gameplay is a linear, guided tour through a series of distinct screens. Progression hinges on environmental observation, talking to NPCs, and acquiring items/key abilities (the fishing hook, the orange seed/berry, the high-jump from Gomboysa). This structure mirrors a dream’s associative logic—solutions often involve backtracking with a new tool (e.g., using the orange seed to attract the light-vine across the chasm).
• Puzzle Design: Puzzles are simple but contextually elegant. The Fatty Panakes pipe puzzle (using the hook to deflate him and restore water flow) is a classic adventure-game “use item on obstacle” trope made organic. The Songs in the Key of Lock moment—remembering the DEBAB sequence to play on the piano—is a perfect blend of auditory clue and mechanical action. However, some puzzles flirt with opacity. The basement switch-hunting in near-total darkness is a notorious pain point, relying on pixel-hunting and audio cues rather than visual clarity, a divisive design choice that amplifies the unsettling atmosphere but frustrates players.
• Movement & Control: This is the game’s most criticized aspect. Many players reported “slippery” or unresponsive controls, particularly with the precision jumps required in the water wheel/arched rock section of Redwind Field and the trampoline bounce to the clouds. The Interface Screw in Shill Bend (reversed controls) is a brilliant, disorienting thematic device but can feel like a control bug. The jump physics have a slight momentum that takes getting used to, transforming navigation from a test of skill into a slightly tense, dreamlike struggle. The lack of a mute button, while lamented by some, is a testament to the integrated marriage of sound and play.
• Innovation & Flaws: Coma innovates by making atmosphere the primary mechanic. The “puzzles” are not about logical deduction but about emotional and spatial attunement to a bizarre world. Its flaw is in the execution of that atmosphere: what one player finds “precise and tight” (Jayisgames review), another finds “too slippery” (player comment). The game’s brevity is both a virtue—it never outstays its welcome—and a limitation, leaving many of its countless symbolic elements (the pink worm, the hanging “gibbet” silhouettes, the orange button’s true purpose) deliberately unresolved.

World-Building, Art & Sound: A Masterpiece of Evocative Minimalism

Coma’s world is its defining achievement. The visual direction, all hand-drawn in Flash, employs a Beautiful Void aesthetic. The environments are stark, desolate, yet rich with unsettling detail:
* The House: Deliberately monochrome, almost entirely black, gray, and white, with stark, high-contrast shadows. It feels less like a home and more like a memory or a skull.
* Redwind Field: A burst of autumnal beauty—golden grasses, arched rock formations, a serene river with a water wheel—that feels both inviting and lonely. It’s the “normal” world of the dream, already tinged with melancholy.
* Shill Bend: A corrupted, gallows-filled forest with a sickly purple sky. The hanged, child-like silhouettes are a shocking, context-free image that deepens the unease. The reversed controls physically manifest mental disorientation.
* The Underworld: The descent through the giant worm’s body (a literal Womb Level) and into the pulsating, fleshy basement is a guided tour through the subconscious’s biological basement. The pink, organ-like structures and the Viking ship (a classic Death symbol) create a powerful, viscerally wrong sense of place.

The sound design, entirely by Brush, is inseparable from the experience. The soundtrack is a masterpiece of lo-fi, melancholic beauty, blending acoustic guitar, subtle electronic beats, field recordings (dripping water, wind), and wordless, haunting vocalizations. It is mellow and noninvasive, swelling at key moments (the trampoline ascent, the final flight) to guide emotional beats without being manipulative. The sound of Bird’s constant feather shedding is a tiny, perfect detail—a mono no aware reminder of transience. The music does not merely accompany the game; it is the game’s emotional bloodstream.

Reception & Legacy: From Obscurity to Cult Canon

Upon its 2010 release, Coma received modest but passionate attention. The A.V. Club awarded it 83/100, calling it a “wonderful tone poem” where “some solutions are oblique.” Player reviews on sites like Jayisgames were deeply engaged, with hundreds of comments dissecting its symbolism—a clear sign it had achieved its primary goal: to provoke thought.

Its commercial performance was negligible (freeware), but its cultural impact has grown steadily. It became a legendary “creepypasta” adjacent title, passed around in forums for its unsettling ambiguity. The game’s greatest legacy is twofold:

1. The Neversong Connection: Thomas Brush would return to these ideas a decade later with Neversong (2018), a longer, more narrative-heavy game that functions as a Spiritual Sequel and thematic expansion. Neversong explicitly reveals Pete’s fate (he did die in the coma) and recontextualizes the Gombossa entity as the villainous “Mama,” who runs a system trapping souls in dream-worlds. Playing Coma HD (included as DLC with Neversong) with this knowledge retroactively clarifies many of Coma’s mysteries, but also robs it of some of its original, beautiful ambiguity. The original 2010 Flash game remains a purer, more mysterious artifact.

2. Influence on Indie Narrative Design: Coma prefigured the rise of the “walking simulator” and artsy platformer that prioritizes mood and player interpretation. Its DNA can be traced in games that use minimalist mechanics to explore psychological spaces, from Yume Nikki to LSD: Dream Emulator. It proved that a short, free game could generate more sustained discussion and lore than many lengthy, scripted titles.

Crucially, it must be distinguished from the unrelated The Coma series (e.g., The Coma: Cutting Class) by South Korean studio Devespresso Games, which is a 2D survival horror series set in a haunted school. The name similarity has caused confusion, but the two franchises share only a thematic echo of medical peril.

Conclusion: The Unanswered Bell

Coma is not a flawless game. Its controls can be frustrating, its puzzles occasionally obscure, and its narrative opacity a barrier for some. Yet, these very qualities are integral to its identity. It is a game that operates on dream logic, where friction and confusion are part of the texture. In a medium often obsessed with clarity, reward, and completion, Coma is a defiantly incomplete experience—a Rorschach test rendered in Flash.

Its place in video game history is secure as a seminal work of interactive poetry. It demonstrates that profound emotional and thematic resonance does not require a AAA budget or 100 hours of gameplay. With its haunting art, unforgettable soundtrack, and a story that lives entirely in the liminal space between its lines, Coma remains a touchstone for developers aiming to make players feel uncertainty and awe. The final image—Pete ascending into the light as Bird’s voice promises, “I’ll see you soon”—is as powerful a conclusion as any in the medium, precisely because it refuses to tell us what we are seeing. Is it salvation? Is it surrender? Like the best art, it holds the mirror up to the player, leaving us to ring the Dore Bell of our own interpretation.

Final Verdict: 9/10. A brief, brilliant, and bruising journey into the subconscious, Coma is an essential piece of interactive art that proves the most memorable games are the ones we keep dreaming about long after we’ve closed the browser.