Chasing the Dragon, Except There Is No Dragon

Let’s say you’re broke, your head is wrapped in fog as thick as the Scottish coastline, and you’ve somehow talked your dealer into one last favor. Now you’ve got nowhere to go—banned from Berghain, and Bar25 is a memory by now, displaced by whatever glass tower went up in its place. No dark, sweaty room to disappear into, no Steffen grinding his pre-oiled everything into your back. So you sit in your room with a handful of pills and absolutely no plan.

That’s where Proteus comes in. It’s a "game" by Ed Key and David Kanaga in roughly the same way that staring out a train window is a "commute." You appear on a colorful island. You walk through the forest. That’s it.

Colors blur at the edges. Pixelated rabbits and bees and birds wheel around you. The sun grins down. Melodies drift past. Then it gets dark, fireflies converge on the beach for what I can only describe as an orgy, shooting stars fall in swarms, you climb a hill, stare at the moon, and then—light, color, silence. End. Beginning again.

Proteus is, at its core, the chasing-the-dragon episode of South Park: a trip in pursuit of something that may not exist, that you may have already walked past. We never found the dragon. I’m not sure there is one. Ten euros on Steam, available for Mac too, which feels entirely appropriate.