What's the best Philip K. Dick adaptation? There are countless to choose from, but it's Total Recall that always gets my vote: so many mirthless movies miss out on the schlocky, ludicrous sense of fun that's shot through Paul Verhoeven's gaudy film. Californium, a new first person exploration game that's on the show floor at this year's EGX, gets that. It gets so much more besides, too - playing through a short demo, I felt the same mind-expanding excitement I got devouring so much Dick when I was 17. Quiet at the back there.
Californium isn't explicitly a Philip K. Dick adaptation - the difficulties and cost of navigating the Philip K. Dick estate put paid to that - but it's more than merely inspired by the work of the laureate of shifting realities. It is, in fact, releasing alongside a new documentary that's airing next March on French TV network Arte, and the game is being developed in tandem by a small team in Paris. Dick's always gone down exceptionally well in France - again, shush - so it's apt that one of the better explorations of his work hails from our Gallic friends.
You're a sci-fi hack, Elvin Green, struggling over a manuscript in your apartment, and once you stir from your writing chair you're free to slowly explore a stylised, psychedelic take on the 1970s Berkeley that would have been Dick's haunting grounds as he was penning some of his most famous work. There's a lysergic colour palette at play that's perfectly unsettling, while the cardboard cut-out characters you encounter on the streets also help engender a whoozy feeling. It's an odd cast that nails the strange humour and ironies of Dick's work: the irate landlord hassling the hard-up writer for rent, the kid selling drugs in the plasticky diner and the editor coming down on you for your sloppy work as the world slowly tears itself about.
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