American Arcadia

In 1998, Peter Weir and Andrew Niccol worked together to direct & produce The Truman Show. It followed Truman Burbank, played by Jim Carrey, as he lived what people considered the ideal American lifestyle. A nice house, a beautiful, fancy car, sustainable job, and friendly faces as far as the eye can see. All taking place within a coastal town where nothing can go wrong. Truman has lived here his whole life and has been raised to be a happy go lucky good doer, but what he does not know is his life is being broadcasted to the whole world. A TV show created by in universe character Cristof, played by Ed Harris, where everything is scripted. Over the course of the entire film Truman witnesses strange occurrences that reveal everything is not what it seems, and it fuels his dream to one day leave his hometown and see what the real world has to offer. In a couple of ways the movie was ahead of its time. It’s both a great movie from a personal point of view and political view. Truman literally gives up the luxuries and safety of his life to journey out into the world. Knowing even though it’s filled with day to day chaos he wants to be free and decide his own life path. Christof created the show not just for money, but to help bring to folks the ease which he does. Hoping to distract his viewers from the ensuing madness outside, and show them a life they all dream for. Only to obtain the exact opposite. 

The Truman Show is about life and reality. Of a man who never gave up on his dreams despite it all. It’s beautifully well acted, shot, well told, and paced. Now I didn’t watch this movie when it came out. I was born years after it was released and it wasn’t until two years ago I finally took time to see it. However, I’m not afraid to say it’s one of the best films I’ve watched. Top thirty at least. There’s something really special about it that I don’t think other shows and films following a similar plot line have managed to obtain. Whereas other stories play the “It’s all in your head” trope or attempt to keep the expense up this one feels more direct. Hence why it’s still highly regarded as a classic to this day. Nothing has come close to matching the magic of it. That was until two years ago when Spanish independent game developers Out of The Blue developed and released American Arcadia. Their debut title was Call of The Sea back in 2020, and while I never played it I heard good things about it. They gained the trust of their publisher Raw Fury, and with enough funding made from Call of The Sea they used it to develop their next big title. Something more ambitious, technically impressive, and cinematic. American Arcadia was presented in 2022 during a gameshow and fully released one year later. The trailers made it very clear what type of game it wanted to be and the film it was heavily inspired by, that being The Truman Show.

Originally I planned on skipping this game, but I learned it was inspired by The Truman Show so it gained my interest. I waited til it hit consoles, bought it during a sale, and last week I beat the game and obtained a Platinum Trophy. After having fully completed the game I can safely say it was well worth my time. American Arcadia is the successor to The Truman Show which I was looking and hoping for. As a video game it’s not very strong, but as a story game it’s a well made and fun time. Doing enough to recapture what made The Truman Show special and separate itself from its inspiration to forge its own individual identity. It further demonstrates that it’s possible to take a film and transform it into a digital and interactive format. That it’s achievable if done well enough. Unfair to compare, but this review will not just cover the game but also explain the benefits American Arcadia has as a video game and how it holds up to its inspiration. Today we'll be talking about American Arcadia and why it happily deserves your attention. Don’t be a fool.

Story

Years before the game’s main events a wealthy man by the name of Elijah Walton used his fame and knowledge of film producing to construct a city known as Arcadia. A retro futuristic utopia thousands of people would live in. The city is surrounded by a ginormous dome and none of the people who live within it are aware of the outside world. In fact, none of them managed or have attempted to leave the city since their day of birth. All of them are comfortable living their daily lives, but what they’re unaware of are their lives being publicly broadcasted across the world. It is like The Truman Show but on a much larger scale. One of the individuals living within Arcadia is Trevor Hills, A 28 year old man who lives by himself and spends everyday of his life working for the INAC Gemini Towers. Sorting orders, feeling happy with the work he’s done, and going home to enjoy dinner and be next to his pet turtle. Everything is going well for Trevor, but things start to get weird one day. One night he works overtime to process extra orders as his coworker Gus won a travel grant. The speaker turns on randomly and warns Trevor to “not be a fool”. It all happens again when Trevor spends a night watching TV for it to blast the same words.

Then later that week Trevor is in the office again working only for him to look out the window, see a billboard across the street bug out, and tell him Gus is dead. Trevor is on the edge and the next day he wins the raffle for the travel grant. A vacation away from work, but when he steps into the elevator a voice speaks to him. Angela Solano, stage technician for Walton Media who produce and run the show American Arcadia. She’s secretly working with a group known simply as Breakout who help Arcadian citizens escape while exposing the acts of Walton Media. She informs Trevor the agents who represent the travel grant company aren’t actually representatives and plan to take Trevor away. Killing him unsuspectedly, so she instructs Trevor to walk away calmly and run into one of the backrooms. Trevor is shocked to learn the backrooms are all filled with show producing equipment, and is shown an ad for the show he’s unaware he’s a part of. Angela informs Trevor she can help him escape, and if he can possibly do so he is the next step towards exposing Walton Media for all their corruption and exploitation. Trevor, not wanting to die, agrees and together the two begin navigating an exit. All while Trevor is chased by Walton Media agents and showrunner Vivian Walton does everything she can to bring him in.

Gameplay

The best way I can describe the gameplay is asking one question. Have you ever played Inside or Little Nightmares before? Congratulations, you know what to expect except every so often you get pulled aside to do a first person section similar to ones in walking sims. It’s simple as it all sounds and is good enough to carry the game onward for the five or so hours it takes to beat. The platforming sections follow Trevor and the first person sections follow Angela. Trevor can jump, climb the environment if possible, push objects, and interact with certain devices. If you fall off a ledge or get caught by an enemy you’re forced to the nearest checkpoint. Some sections will see you running for your life, and it’ll force you to make quick decisions if you want to survive. At times you can’t progress forward as a door is locked or something is making it easy for Trevor to be seen. Thankfully you have Angela watching him through cameras, and she can use her hacker skills to hijack devices Trevor can’t interact with himself. Solve problems and jump like Mario.

The first person sections are simple. You walk to where you need to be, and solve puzzles so you can move forward. Some puzzles will have you paying attention to the environment so you can find the solution, and other times go through a short minigame. Most of these sections are quite safe and unlike Trevor you can’t trigger or run into a failsafe. Gameplay is obviously not a strong point for American Arcadia and much like Inside or Little Nightmares it carries the exact same problems for having shallow gameplay. Such as wonky platforming physics or challenges being more driven by repeated trial and error. Whenever it comes to one of these games what’ll mainly carry it is the story, and thankfully the story of American Arcadia is good. It’s the reason why I am even writing about this game to begin with. If it weren’t for the good storytelling it probably would have been reviewed as a mediocre game, but as you can tell from public perception people enjoyed it. Let’s just hope you can help Trevor escape and reach his freedom. Don’t be a fool.

Thoughts

American Arcadia may not be all that great as a video game, but its storytelling and other factors is what makes up for it. As the saying goes “It’s more than the sum of its parts” and that at times sometimes style is the substance for a game. I said this last year, but in recent memory I’ve found myself playing more casual experiences rather than play hardcore experiences such as soulslikes and roguelikes. Games that are more story driven experiences or thought provoking messages, because Yahtzee Croshaw once said that “Nobody is saying the story is bad if the story is good.” Story and presentation does a lot to carry a game, because without it more folks would complain about gameplay flaws or how shallow it is versus a game that did enough to be memorable and engaging. If we were to just talk about the gameplay alone in American Arcadia we would write it off as a mediocre experience. A game that is oftentimes simple to play. If not then it runs into problems games like Little Nightmares or Inside have. Don’t get me wrong, I love those two a lot for the same reason I liked American Arcadia. You have to agree though that gameplay for all these titles aren’t the greatest. Wonky platforming physics that takes time to get used to because the devs put more thought into realistic weight and movement rather than what is best for a game with 2D platforming. Set pieces that are extremely linear and take trial & error to overcome as some obstacles just get thrown in giving you only a few seconds to react. Then you have the first person sections which are you expect: simple to follow.

It is an okay game if we were to judge it as a video game, but as an interactive piece of art it's an entertaining joyride. American Arcadia is a visually beautiful well paced story with a great cast of characters, moments that’ll surprise you, and world building that answers any questions you may have. In fact, one benefit American Arcadia has over The Truman Show is that being a video game gives it more time to add important details to the world and develop the universe. Such as country citizens being allowed to vacation in Arcadia. They have to dress up as 1970 individuals so they don’t throw the citizens off, any modern day technology must stay hidden at all times, and they all must stay within a singular hotel only they are allowed to go to and not Arcadian citizens. Vacationers must take bus shuttles to enter and exit the city, and must go through what is basically airport security if they want to travel. That way Arcadian citizens can’t sneak out or discover what the real world is. There’s another world building detail I wanted to bring up, but doing so would spoil a massive plot twist that explains why Arcadians can’t travel faraway. It’s very good world building and while some people may feel the story explains too much at times it leads to a story where everything clicks and all adds up during the final moments of the game.

Visually the game looks very nice. It’s colorful, environments feel vast & detailed, and it all has this polygon look. Enough to tell what something is, but nothing too much so the game becomes hard to run or process. I played this on a PlayStation 5 and despite some sections using high end lighting or having tons of elements going off it ran like a dream. I just love how vibrant the game is to look out. When it comes to these physics based platforming puzzle games like Inside or the Little Nightmares series everything is so dark and dreary. It’s part of the art direction, but I have not seen many people attempt to create one of these games in a bright and colorful setting. In recent memory we’ve been seeing more of these colorful takes though such as Planet of Lana, The Artful Escape, and of American Arcadia. Three games I adore, because not only were they artistic and had something to say but did everything they can to engage you through presentation. American Arcadia does have a lot of that done well. I may have criticized the gameplay earlier, but most chase sequences are well set up and exciting. As the camera zooms out to give you a good view of what lies ahead so you can react just fast enough so you don’t die instantly. I do appreciate their attempt to mix a 2D game with a first person one.

The real defining part of American Arcadia is the story, and this is where we’re gonna bring up a lot of comparisons to The Truman Show. How American Arcadia holds up as a successor and all it does to set up its own identity. American Arcadia has the benefit of being interactive and more time for world building, but downside is that even though it’s longer it means the plot twist of it all being a show is done very early. Trevor learns about it within the first twenty minutes of the game, and then the rest of it is spent escaping. That is not to say it’s a bad thing. The stakes get higher as Trevor moves further away from the central city. Sections with Angela give us more details about the world and how Walton Media operates. We learn more about the founders of the show and what they did to keep the project alive. Things get crazier by the minute and Trevor just wants to sleep. There’s a beautiful moment later on that perfectly captures what this game is about, the simple life. It’s the opposite of what The Truman Show is about. All Trevor wanted was to live a peaceful life. It was quiet and he didn’t have a lot of friends, but he didn’t mind it. He was happy being who he was. Living his days without worrying what his ultimate purpose is. Then getting thrown into a bunch of madness that could’ve used somebody else than him. The more he learned the more he realized settling back into his old life would be difficult. That not one thing would return him back to normal. And then once you reach the end of the game and learn what all of this was for he screams into a camera begging people to leave him alone. He was given two choices, and instead made a third option.

He wanted nothing to do with political or economic affairs. He didn’t even want the news media to write stories about his journey. He wanted a simple life. It’s not a very philosophical or deep take. In a lot of ways I prefer The Truman Show over American Arcadia as it stuck the landing better, but I still like what American Arcadia tries to do. I recommend this game. It’s a one and done deal, but the story and presentation is good enough to offer a good weekend binge at home. It’s beatable within a reasonable amount of time, doesn’t cost too much, and as always giving support to indie devs is always good. Shows the game industry is still thriving and artistic vision always prevails. In the end I am going to have to give American Arcadia an 8.5/10 for being pretty good.

8.5/10, Pretty Good