Mediterranea Inferno

Mediterranea Inferno (2023) is a narrative adventure about three childhood friends reuniting on a summer retreat after Covid restrictions lift. You work to help them reconnect and rediscover themselves through conversations, interactions and day trips you choose. It stands out not only for the brutally intense honesty of the storytelling but how it addresses the uncommon but deeply impactful loss of childhood from lockdown.

Three young men reconnect after two years of forced isolation, hoping to rekindle their friendship. You join them on their holiday, making choices about conversations and interactions, and start to understand their different struggles with the previous restrictions. You choose how to spend time with them: a lazy afternoon by the pool, a lustful night at the club, or even a morbid visit to the local cemetery.

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Things accelerate when a stranger arrives with magical fruit offering a temporary escape. Each day you choose one of them to eat the fruit and be taken into a heightened reality. Things don't just get trippy, you also get to delve deeper into their coping mechanisms - from unbridled sex dreams to fantasies of wild popularity or nostalgic over-achievement.

The result is a game about an aspect of life not often examined. These three privileged but lost young adults are a rare reflection of the pain of endless lockdowns, contemporary anxiety, temptations and vices. What's most impressive is how the game carefully and tenderly brings each of them face-to-face with their contradictive self-pity and insists on action.

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Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked Mediterranea Inferno 4 weeks ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 3 weeks ago.