This week, I want to give another dedication to someone who passed away recently. Unlike Donald Richie though, this may be a bit more obscure. Mostly because this is a dedication to someone who reached for the stars, but never quite got there, but it is his attempts and his journey that made him one of the most compelling video game designers in history.
Kenji Eno (not his real name, he took his last name from famous musician Brian Eno) didn’t make the greatest games. It is rare to see any of his games on anybody’s “top ten” lists, but what he did wasn’t about making video games that would sell millions of copies. Kenji Eno instead made experiences that audiences couldn’t forget.
Take for example, probably his most famous game, D. D starts off with the protagonist Laura running into a hospital to confront her dad. Her father has seemingly gone insane and has taken everyone hostage. As soon as Laura enters the hospital, it turns into a baroque mansion, and everything the player sees as they go through the game is mired in the insanity of your father, yourself, or both. D takes the first person adventure established by games like Myst and 7th Guest, and creates something that plays like those games, but with an atmosphere and context that forces players to think about the experience of video games in a way they may never have before.
Unfortunately, D hasn’t aged particularly well, and it may just be unplayable compared to games that are much more user-friendly now, but there is something about what D was trying to do and what it accomplished in 1995 that deserves to be mentioned (especially the sound design, the sound of the ending credits if you get the bad ending still ranks as one of the creepiest things I have heard in a game).
Kenji Eno’s other games, such as Enemy Zero and D2 also have their own flavors of disturbing and originality. Enemy Zero being a shooter that made the player rely on sound to locate their opponents
Kenji Eno (not his real name, he took his last name from famous musician Brian Eno) didn’t make the greatest games. It is rare to see any of his games on anybody’s “top ten” lists, but what he did wasn’t about making video games that would sell millions of copies. Kenji Eno instead made experiences that audiences couldn’t forget.
Take for example, probably his most famous game, D. D starts off with the protagonist Laura running into a hospital to confront her dad. Her father has seemingly gone insane and has taken everyone hostage. As soon as Laura enters the hospital, it turns into a baroque mansion, and everything the player sees as they go through the game is mired in the insanity of your father, yourself, or both. D takes the first person adventure established by games like Myst and 7th Guest, and creates something that plays like those games, but with an atmosphere and context that forces players to think about the experience of video games in a way they may never have before.
Unfortunately, D hasn’t aged particularly well, and it may just be unplayable compared to games that are much more user-friendly now, but there is something about what D was trying to do and what it accomplished in 1995 that deserves to be mentioned (especially the sound design, the sound of the ending credits if you get the bad ending still ranks as one of the creepiest things I have heard in a game).
Kenji Eno’s other games, such as Enemy Zero and D2 also have their own flavors of disturbing and originality. Enemy Zero being a shooter that made the player rely on sound to locate their opponents
(with a soundtrack from Michael Nyman, listen to a song here)
and D2 using survival mixed with aliens to deliver a story that is as crazy as it is scary . Even Eno’s smaller games like One-Dot Enemies and You, Me, and the Cubes incorporate interesting ideas, good sound design, and charm to create games that are worth playing.
It is tragic that in an industry that seems to be stuck in a rut to how to convince people to take them seriously, that someone who managed to put their heart and soul in their games to be taken so soon. Thank you Kenji Eno, for making games that changed the way people view video games.
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