I find myself lonely. I’m the only one left in the tree house right now. I think this is the first time this has happened. It’s interesting to think that I could try to delete the website, delete countless articles, do something to burn my work. I don’t particularly want to, but am still able to, because I’m not being monitored. There is no other employee between me and all of you. Awesome filter removed. Any typo is on purpose. How Friend doing?
This presents me with a great opportunity, because in a sense I will have a final decision on RPS this year. There are a lot of posts coming up (if we include Advent Calendar posts are gone, we have 50 bits of seasonal hashtag content this year, which I think is the most I have to schedule for the Christmas break), but most anything after that This point is all a scheduled post, made of time travel words written days or weeks ago. I’m alive and uncensored, honey. I will shoot In the Tree. Let’s go and be alone together. But don’t worry, I take my responsibilities very seriously, so I’ll make sure that last word is just a joke.
It was a strange old year for me. I’ve moved to a new country, and it’s a great place to live, but I still don’t have many friends here. I feel increasingly isolated from work, games, and people in general, even though I have to interact with an increasing number of people online on a daily basis. Sometimes it makes me sad, but other times it makes me want to be alone even more. I like being alone. There’s no pressure to be anyone else when you’re alone, you know what I mean?
Among the trees is now a little early access. This is a survival game about living in a small hut in the forest, searching for mushrooms and sticks and finally building more parts of your little house. I haven’t played it in a while and the first thing I noticed today is that it opens with a Byron quote, which I’m pretty sure it didn’t have before.
There is a joy in the pathless forest,
There is a joy on the lonely shore,
There is a society where no one is infringing,
By the deep sea, and the music in its roar:
I do not love Humans less, but Nature more
Unfortunately, I hate damn Byron. I suppose if you want to start your game with a quote from the most famous poet who can ever fuck his sister, that’s the one to say. Among the trees always makes me think more about WB Yeats poem stolen child. The world is full of more tears than you can understand. It’s tempting, isn’t it, to leave the world behind, and put enough distance between you and the world that you can’t hear the crying anymore.
I really don’t like living in an unheated pine hut in the woods in real life, because I’m very constrained and I don’t like mushrooms. Having to walk around every day to find mushrooms to eat wouldn’t be ideal. But I like to do it in Among the Trees. Two years of early access has added more berries and a small notebook where you outline the key locations you find. Turns out they have names! What I thought was “The big pond to the right of my front door” is actually called Reed Lake. I think there’s more fog in the air now. I think there are more animals. I don’t remember seeing rabbit ears in the distance as I walked down the Right-Ish Pond in the morning, or ducks. Maybe I forgot, and forgot because I haven’t been here for a long time.
When I was a kid, my parents used to get very upset with me because I didn’t like to go for walks (I grew up in the countryside, where Walking was a principled form of entertainment). Things that have been said about the risks of Not Go for a walk with my parents. The thing is, I don’t like going for walks with anyone. They will insist on starting a conversation, while I really want to concentrate but can’t. I don’t feel like I can breathe loudly when walking with one person. I can’t tell if I’m going too fast or too slow. I couldn’t stop and stare at everything for a confusing amount of time. I can’t jump around or hide behind a tree imagining myself as a spy, or an elf on a mission through the woods. I still do all of these things now, obviously. But only when I’m alone. And in Among the Trees, you’re alone, and you can jump up and down along the riverbank while looking for driftwood that no one can see.
By the end of the year, I made new friends, started talking to new people – still online, but that’s fine. No human being is an island, but they can actually be like trees, because a tree is alone, but many trees together are a forest, and forests are connected to each other. each other in a vast, invisible network of roots and fungi. They communicate, arrange and share nutrients. Now, you and I go eat Walnut Whips and crisps and watch the movies we watched as children, and cry, because the cry of the world won’t stop when you can’t hear it . I forgot that there are hostile animals in Among the Trees.
Escape, being chased by a bear.
