Generationally bad game, boxes you into a sandbox of artificial rage, completely ignoring the heart of what revolution means. Umurangi Generation attempts to utilize art as a means to showcase this, yet fails spectacularly on every end with some of the most poorly designed levels, culminating in a subpar, unconsequential, reductive check list style game, reducing what could have been a spectacular game to an average "do this x amount of times" objective system that has nothing remotely interesting going for it.

Thought a lot about how I wanted to write this, and realized there was really no way to tangibly explain everything in here. Of course, it’s fully possible to analyze the meanings behind the jazz-like ost, the weird shapes, the art style, it is possible to a certain extent to narrow the intent behind all of these things, but I find it much more appealing to look at it in a far more holistic sense and attempt to talk about how the game utilizes all of those tools effectively rather than what those tools do individually in a vacuum, because there is no vacuum. Or rather, the entire thing is a vacuum, it is devoid of concrete, logical structure, and is as insane as it is artistically creative, which is why I am absolutely in love with Genesis Noir and it remains totally etched into my mind months after I’ve first played it.

Genesis Noir is a weird game, and that weirdness immediately leaps out at you. It tries to be both grounded within a simple love story and simultaneously overwhelm you with some of the most grand and artistically ambitious depictions of a universal journey, which in my opinion it succeeds at far more than the former due to just how unhinged it is, never really following a specific set of rules or remaining consistent within itself. Genesis Noir clearly doesn’t care about contrivances or anything of the sort, as the entire 6-ish hour journey is the universe contriving itself, bending itself over, breaking and reshaping itself around you, as you give it life in the name of destruction. The black and white scheme that envelops the entire game resembles the apathy in no man, the character the player controls, as he embarks on his goal to save miss mass from an absolute god, or what may seem to be a god, but is rather just a state of consciousness striving for expansion, and that is exactly what it does until the player interferes with the bang bang that emits from its gun. Eventually, the game’s quantum driven attempt to be both grounded and grand reaches a boiling point: It breaks away, dissolves into a sort of formlessness that rivals the most grandiose of aesthetically pleasing works, laying before the player a foundation of pure and utter nonsense, with the choice to either give meaning to it, or not. The cacophony of sounds that ensue throughout the game are what breathe life to the previous apathy, culminating into one of the most glorious explosions of colorful celebrations of life. As we witness the endless change of states, the shapes that merge into themselves and morph into unrecognizable entities, the universe’s beating heart reveals itself within a 15 minute epic emotional play, tying back whatever remains onto itself.


To me, Genesis Noir is the definition of poetry in motion, with every scene containing some of the most beautiful visual imagery contained within art, the pure expression it undergoes due to the nature of how the entire world flows together without bothering to build specific boundaries, leading to an eventual crunch of all matter within itself. To me, it is very reminiscent of art that forgoes understanding of logical leaps in order to allow the player to fuse with the world it has molded. As colors begin seeping into the once dull universe, the concept of life is born and gradually begins to expand before swallowing everything whole through a perfect dance, representing the amalgamation of art as a piece of the soul, and the disordered chaos of the game becomes a sort of proof of existence, equating itself to the very presence it emits everywhere and at all times. Genesis Noir is eerily similar to an arthouse film, but with a far more immersive feel to it due to the nature of the player’s interactions with video games as a medium, while also resembling experimental poetry that doesn’t attempt to make sense of emotional distress but captures it into a metaphorical sense, in this case the entirety of the conceivable universe.