Almost every year I find myself once again in a specific kind of haze. It’s candy colored and green haired, often fueled by alcohol and drugs. A two or a three hour drive to a place I see people I sometimes don’t see the rest of the year. Out comes the camera and an attempt to make a record of days I won’t usually remember. If I’m being honest with myself, it’s as much for that reason as it is to have some kind of memory to bond over with people I know.

Whether it’s shows or anime conventions or trips out to the coast, I’m not a stranger to the appeal of a camera. I have list of favorite photographers, not all of them celebrated for the same reason. Some of them could use the camera to make an incisive cut on the stomach of America. Many of them were simply good at standing in one place, waiting for nothing to happen.

It takes a lifetime to get good at anything – much less to be the kind of person who can capture something in an instant. Me, well, I don’t have a natural proclivity towards photography.

UMURANGI GENERATION is really the first game of its kind. A photography game that isn’t on rails or about wildlife. Here our arena is a kind of twisted urban life. High rise military camps at the end of the world. Smoke covered streets underneath a maze of pipes and concrete. The back alleys and debilitated corners of a world that’s run its course.

The trick of Umurangi Generation is the false sense of security it lulls you into. Listen to some lofi and stalk the streets with camera in hand. Make a couple of bucks taking a picture of a skateboard. See if you can game it to get seven or eight specific objects in your photo.

No anxiety ever builds directly. It’s a poster here or the tightly gripped gun of a soldier there. The odd haze of the sky – the way it seems like people are stuck going about their lives even though they should be clawing at the walls.

During quarantine, I tried not to go outside. Now that I’ve returned to work full time, I don’t want to. The first day I felt like my skeleton wanted to jump out of my body. Tourists from fucking everywhere, all coming out. Overhearing conversations from people saying their state was shut down so they’d come out here instead of stay home. I like the intimacy of a photograph. I like the cruel distance of a video camera even more. Wish I could take mine into work.

Every day of this gets a little more normalized. I can be sympathetic with the people of Umurangi Generation. We only close your eyes out of fear when we’ve gotta stare at the void the first time. Every time afterwards, well that’s just because we need to blink. In the faceless polygons I can see my own eyes staring back at me.

I don’t smoke.

At some point we’ve gotta survive. Even if that means doing a little freelancing in the face of the end of the world. Camera in hand, line up the angle and take the shot. The feeling of money going into a bank account I can’t spend – oh well. No need to save for the future these days.

I don’t have any thoughts on the end of the world. I have thoughts on who finds it after us, or what we leave behind. All of our photos and art – will they have meaning without the context of our lives? I kept meditating on this fact as the hours drew later and later. The sky took on an odd hue of red, and everything started to seem certain.

In Umurangi Generation I take lots of photos of walls and detritus. The stuff just keeps piling up, even though we all know there’s no use for any of it. These are photos not prepared to catalogue the end of the world. Rarely will the game tell me to take a picture of something intentionally and I’ll do a good job. Games with time limits stress me out, huh? But I could go back and get in all of the nooks and crannies. With time for myself to breath, I did my best work. There are moments of stillness even when it seems like things are falling apart around us. In those moments, we have to breathe.

Who will find these photos after I’m gone? If the world really is ending, what kind of context does my useless art provide? Pictures of walls and smoking men. A dog running through a street. A five minute wait and just the tail side of a few jets leaving frame. Maybe these pictures won’t mean anything to anyone else. They tell me about my relationship to the world. Whether I am in Umurangi Generation or real life, many of my inspirations were the same.

Art will communicate that on a certain level, all of us are unknowable. They’ll read whatever they want into my photos. Someone will think that a picture I took is specifically a message to them. Maybe they’ll carry it around with them (metaphorically((maybe not though))). Eventually they feel about it will supersede any notions I had when I planted my feet on the soil of the Earth moments before it got ripped away and pressed the shutter button. That’s when it becomes art.

Umurangi Generation is a game about the art of photography. You can’t really get “good” at it. There are no best ways to take any of the photos that are mission objectives, and everyone’s screenshot folder will communicate a little bit about them. It is a game about the act of taking a photo – about seeing something that communicates enough of an idea or a mood that it needs to be recorded forever. There’s no picking those moments before it happens. There really is nothing quite like it.

Umurangi Generation is about recording life in the face of a cataclysm. That doesn’t have to mean trying to accurately capture what it was like to live. You can’t. In time, all photos of a time become something like caricature.

COLOR: 5/5
CONTENT: 5/5
COMPOSITION: 5/5

CHANCE OF INFECTION: 0/5