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(+1)

I played your game and I must say it's very, very nice. Also reading the devlog gave insight on the thought process behind the choices you made. I liked the way in which you presented the overarching themes, the uselessness of drawing arbitrary borders between people since we cannot "escape" or "refrain" from influencing and being influenced by others. 

However, and I am not sure if this is the meaning you wanted to convey, I wouldn't agree that the arbitrariness of our life and not being a border between the "I", "You" and "Us", would result in there being "no self". Despite what you say in the patchnotes, the ending would imply a sort of "ego-death", not in the "group", or "network", but in the larger participation to humanity as a whole.  I tend to disagree. 

On this subject, I cite to you Timothy Morton's "Hyperobjects". Humanity is one such hyperobject, whose existence entirely depends on its individual components (humanity ceases to exist when every individual human does), and yet is largely independent from them (humanity continues to exist even if I, a human, cease to exist). 

Rather than saying "Always pretending to be a self, but in reality, in the beginning there is no self", completely "dissolving" (as per the chapter's title) the self's agency to the blurry whole, the hyperobject "humanity", I would (!!personally!!) leave at least some independence to the singular subject. 

Yes, I am human, and I am a part of the human hyperobject, and I cannot choose what I like, what my voice sounds like, or where I am born, but I can choose lots and lots of other things. I can choose what to eat for dinner, I can choose the words I say, I can choose the people I spend my time with. I am free to take what I am given, what I cannot choose, and make something out of it, something I am free to do - and the notion of freedom implies, at some level, the notion of self. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not objecting to what you say. You are correct in saying we are part of a larger whole, but still, that being said, we are still ourselves within this blurry "Harlequin's mantle" , with some sort of boundary, blurry enough to distinguish colored dot from colored dot, but not distinguished enough to completely isolate this very self from others, since we are all part of the same human hyperobject.

(+1)

Hi, thanks for playing the game and thanks for the very thoughtful and interesting comments.

I think I mostly agree with you. The thesis explored in the game is indeed pretty extreme, I don't think I'd stand by it as an actual representation of reality.

It's more like poetry. The complete dissolution is mostly a trick to make the loop structure and the color trick work xD 

But I do think that in our hyper individualistic era we could use some more collectivist stories and fairytales xD it's a bit provocative to make people think, and a bit vague to remain open to interpretations.

I do wonder how much of our conceptualisation of the borders between the individuals and the hyperobject depends on the culture we're raised in. It's really good that you mentioned that now, I'll pay attention to that in the future playtests that I do and see if there's something to document here.

If I had to pinpoint my actual position I tend to think of consciousness and selfhood as a story we tell ourselves, so the actual dissolution finale in this case should be something like : your story continues beyond your meat body by intermeshing with others.