Cibele

Cibele (2015) is a fully voiced narrative game about meeting and falling in love with someone online. You explore computer files, photos, and chat logs as she navigates a growing relationship with another player in a fictional game. The mechanics are deliberately clunky, but offer an intentionally uneasy window into the vulnerability, desire, and awkwardness of early internet intimacy.

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The game is based on the experience of its developer, Nina Freeman, growing up in an increasingly online world of the naughties. You look through old files and photos, slowly gaining an understanding of her life and relationships and the way they change over the years. Strikingly, it uses filmed footage of Freeman in her room to tell the story as you investigate her computer.

As you progress, you play a mock online computer game as her character, Cibele. Amongst the grind of the game, she grows close to another player. As you listen, the conversation deepens and becomes more intimate, with the pair occasionally sharing revealing photos. It's the kind of set-up that usually leads to a cautionary warning. But here, it just offers an honest account of how these things go.

The result is an unusual account of navigating online relationships. It's starkly honest to the point of feeling voyeuristic as you look through real photos and watch recreations of private moments, but it's this frankness that makes the story so telling.

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Our examiner, Ben Kendall, first checked Cibele 3 weeks ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 9 days ago.