[PREVIEW] ENA: Dream BBQ – One of the Most Unique Games Ever Created

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When I finally decided to try the first chapter of ENA: Dream BBQ, I didn’t know anything about this project, animated series or their author Joel Guerra. Now that I have finished the short part of this interactive adventure, I feel like I know even less than before. And that’s why it is probably the closest we could get to have random dreams and stream of consciousness represented in a form of a video game.

An Interactive Experience Beyond Adventure

ENA: Dream BBQ takes place in a wild and surreal universe. We follow ENA, a humanoid character, on her mission to find the Boss that everyone wants to be. During our adventure we are able to explore environments filled with hidden secrets and oddities, meet peculiar characters who want us to run errands for them and use odd tools to solve unusual problems.

It seems to me that it would be more fitting to describe ENA: Dream BBQ as an interactive experience rather than adventure game – not only because of its bizarreness, but also the way it exceeds our expectations. The first chapter did more than simply bending the rules of video games; in fact, it looked like they were put aside entirely, which resulted in a chaotic, but quite intriguing story.

The first chapter is a blend of many different ideas, themes and references. The setting draws inspiration from surrealist art, post-apocalyptic fiction and worldwide culture, especially from Peru and Japan. We can hear dialogues in various languages such as Japanese, French, Russian and Italian. The artstyle combines 2D and 3D animation, utilizing webcore aesthetic, pixelated imagery and the style of Picasso’s abstract paintings. So yeah, it’s pretty avant-garde project.

A Promising, Imaginative Journey

The same mix of everything applies to the characters and the plot. There is a thin line between accessible and inaccessible parts, which can make you start wondering: was I supposed to make that jump to the other side? Did that character serve any purpose in my task? How did I trigger that event? As far as I can tell, the point of the game is not to undertand ENA’s world, but to just go along with it. Although some solutions are quite confusing and take time to figure them out, the comedic tone and pure craziness of the outcome are worth the trouble.

I’d also like to point out that despite randomness, the game is consistent in its content. There are tutorials, quests and items necessary for advancing the story, which we know well from other video games. In Chapter 1, we only get to visit the world of the Lonely Door, with its jobs and inhabitants, however the other doors we will have to go through are already present, teasing our future adventures.

As subsequent chapters are still in development, we’ll have to wait in order to learn the rest of the story – while I’m not fully convinced what to make of it yet, I have to admit that from what I’ve seen this chapter succeed in catching the interest of gamers and stimulating their imagination, If you’re up for a bizzare adventure, then this might be something just for you.