In an age of photorealistic graphics, it’s hard to imagine getting invested in video game characters made up of a handful of pixels. That’s what is so magical about this hobby though, it can make us suspend our disbelief or even feel emotions over such otherworldly or basic things. I’ll never forget playing through Thomas Was Alone and feeling for the plight of the various coloured blocks, thanks to masterful narration and clever mechanical storytelling. What Surrounds Us is a similarly visually simple game, which aims to mimic an ecosystem with a bunch of little donuts.
You play as one of these hoops, and without any text or a voice telling you to do so are encouraged to explore this colourful world. You can move in six directions in this odd hexagon grid environment, across other hoops unless there’s another creature blocking your way. It’s all rather intuitive when you’re playing the game, and sets you up for the experimentation you’ll need to proceed.
As well as moving around in What Surrounds Us, you can also send out a little pulse wave. When you do this to other moving donuts they’ll sort of chirp a pulse back at you, which is a little bit adorable. This pulse can also be used to activate other parts of the environment, like activating switches that make paths you can traverse appear. You don’t know this until you play around with the environment though, which is pretty much what you’ll do throughout this entire experience.
Although most other organisms in this world are friendly, singing Cheerios, some are less docile. After a fairly slow paced introduction, I was excited to see a new patterned hoop come charging towards me. Turns out it wasn’t a buddy I hadn’t met yet, just an angry little fella looking for lunch. After a couple of deaths I got used to stunning it with a pulse and continuing my journey, but other hazards awaited me as I did. They all form parts of the puzzles that make up the game, and learning how to manage them is important.
With more than a handful of roadblocks along the way, I eventually got to see how What Surrounds Us evolves as you progress. A new power gave me another button worth pressing, this time a teleport or dash (depending on how you perceive it I suppose) which allows crossing gaps. This meant I could go back to previous areas to access paths out of reach, and explore an all new biome with a different colour palette too.
There’s a main path to follow through What Surrounds Us, but along the way you’ll also find collectibles. These little dots are usually in slightly harder to access or easy to miss areas, and provide a nice reason to explore in new directions with your growing abilities. It’s not exactly a revolutionary addition to the game, but it means after you roll credits there’s something to keep you coming back.
What Surrounds Us is an interesting and unique video game, but I can’t really pretend it’s one I enjoyed playing. What was designed as a world full of experimental puzzles for me just felt like a series of roadblocks that brought repeated frustration, where I’d miss a slightly discoloured donut and thus bash my head against a wall for ten minutes over and over again. On top of this there’s no way to ever really get your bearings, with no map or marker helping you understand where to go. While I understand this is a minimalist design choice, it means if you put the game down for a few hours you’ll be completely confused by all the similar looking screens you may or may not have already visited.
What Surrounds Us creates an interesting world of creatures and hazards with extremely minimal visuals, but I just didn’t enjoy exploring it. With no guidance and limited ways to experiment it just feels frustrating every time you get stuck, and it’s such a shame because I love the game conceptually. Hopefully others click with the coloured loops more than I did, because all that surrounded me was irritation.