Excerpt from Misunderstood Works of Genius, published 20 August 2084, retrieved via time machine:
"Perhaps one of the most collossally overlooked games of all time at release, S_prite's Electrolove is a masterwork in minimalist game design, visual storytelling, and metaphorical mechanics. While it is understandable that audiences of 2021 were not prepared for such a work, it is a grave error on their part.
The game presents itself as a simple maze game, under the theme that you are an electron inside of a circuit, looking to connect with your true love: another electron. It is your goal to navigate the maze to find the other electron, but your viewport is limited. You can only see a small portion of the maze at a time, the rest of it seen as you navigate in the maze and the viewport scrolls left and right (but never up and down, reminiscent of a long wire). After moving to the right for a while, you eventually see a pixelized representation of an electron and a heart made with the walls, reminding you of your goal and foreshadowing its proximity.
Subversively, however, coming to the end of the maze is not your electron love, but a simple LED light. The player can move close to it to turn the light on, or by continuing to the right, they'll find the other electron inaccessible behind a wall, with a path leading back and above the entire labyrinth they just crossed. To reach the goal, players must now backtrack all the way back to the beginning of the maze to find a path that goes up and above the playfield, and only then will they be reunited.
What does each of these elements suggest about the human condition then? Well, if one sees the LED light as a metaphor for work, consider that the game is placing romantic fulfillment and professional success at odds with one another. Not only can you not keep the LED lit at the same time as being with your love (suggesting of course that performing your job detracts from the time spent with your partner) but the path between the objectives is fraught with twists and turns and a rather long commute. The partners may be able to even see each other through the walls of the circuit, though they remain inaccessible, reminding us of the relationship of the person so involved and obsessed over their work that they come home emotionally distant, unable to connect with their partner.
Remember as well that the working path is filled with twists, turns and dead ends, suggesting a difficult and treacherous journey through the corporate world, before one is finally able to reach their goal and shine their light on the world. Meanwhile, the path to love is a straight line, reminding us of the idiom of following one's heart. The game is suggesting a certain purity of the romantic path which is not present in the corporate world.
The color palette is very suggestive as well. The walls and background are a very dull gray coloration, at its surface reminiscent of electron microscope images -- which are black and white due to color ceasing to exist at such a microscopic size -- but consider what it suggests about the metaphors presented earlier. With the only saturated colors of the game being held by the electrons (red and blue) and the LED (red when unlit, yellow when lit), it makes the two objects of the game even more prominent (love and work). The game presents a dull and tedious representation of the journey to get to your destination, presenting the goal as the important thing unto itself.
Let's not dismiss the subtle LGBT themes running through the game. While the colors of the characters suggest a traditional 1950s style heterosexual relationship (the player is blue, traditionally a boy's color, and is the one who is doing work, while the red electron (red or pink traditionally being a girl's color) waits patiently at home), it is important to note the contradiction that an electron is seeking out another electron, when traditionally in circuitry, electrons run from the negative terminal to the positive terminal. In light of this, our view inevitably must shift to viewing our player character, as well as our romantic interest, as both female, making the game subtly about female empowerment as well.
Also rather subtle is the lack of any kind of end screen. Audiences at the time clearly could not comprehend the lack of resolution and felt like their hard work was going unrewarded, but this lack of an end screen serves an important purpose. If a "You Won" message flashed upon the screen upon reaching your goal, it would serve to suggest to the player that their ultimate goal was the love of the other electron, but with it not being there, it leaves resolution up in the air, much like it real life. Perhaps either goal was valid, the powering of the LED in the corporate world being just as much a resolution? The game leaves it up to the player if they want to leave romance aside for the sake of their profession.
Overall, Electrolove is a masterclass in metaphorical design, representing the conflict of love and work throught the context of a circuit. Perhaps when this was created, S_prite wasn't even aware of all of the intricate and detailed meanings each element of the game was providing, in the same way that most audiences misunderstood their meanings, but the subconscious mind is very powerful and should never be disregarded. As Sigmund Freud once said "The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water." As a result, when the audiences of the year 2021 were busy playing Among Us and Fortnite, they missed out on a true classic."