During my illustrious tenure as RPS News Manager, I have seen many Simslikes. Simslikes tragically canceled by publishers better known for their exploits of tactical incest! Corrosive Telegenic Sims Suggest a Paved Graveyard! Cottagecore “don’t call me a Simslike” Simslikes! And now, finally, Simslikes that look like they were designed in the Red Room of Twin Peaks.
The game I’m referring to is Noematica: Digital Dollhouse from Asphodel Cybernetics, which urges you to “behold the humble Noem!” Seductive and silly, fully customizable, monstrous or adorable: with an n-dimensional vector space of fantasies and memories. » Here’s a trailer – watch it.
This is… different from what EA is whipping up with Project Rene, which the pitiful idiots among you still call The Sims 5. And yet we still seem to be talking about a neighborhood life sim, in which NPCs struggle to do things like paint or make friends and get hungry, and you can get really obsessive about re-papering your living room. I guess the Noems need to pee, and I don’t see why you couldn’t lock them in a burning room.
There is also what might be called an element of municipal management in the ability to “use your accumulated social and political capital (and your energy and funds from the public treasury) to rezone, redistrict, redevelop and mutilate the neighborhood.” But is it a city or another of these n-dimensional vector spaces?
The Steam page murmurs of “great towers all tottering in a limitless twilight and sleepless nights that seem to never end”. It is a “phantasmagorical impression of contemporary life” that “centers the organic interaction of matter and memory.” As for your individual Noemas: “When they encounter a problem, their skill is determined by their established memories: not just a ‘painting skill’, but a memory of painting under this or that condition, combined with a certain traumatic memory, a complex of linked events all more or less vaguely recalled.
You know, I suspect Asphodel is making light of us. I’m absolutely here for it. The game looks pretty cool. This worries me in a more compelling way than InZoi. I think I’m losing vitamin D at an unsustainable rate just from clicking on screens. There are a few street scenes that remind me of Urban Chaos. There’s also some cringeworthy bottomless wall art, and a white doll reclining in a bathtub, glimpsed through a doorway. Certainly, we are far from the realm of H&M bundles.
Speaking of which: Perhaps the least “silly” part of Steam’s description is the part about how “Noematica will NEVER charge you for DLC”, which is definitely not how EA Maxis does it. “We intend to release a single full-featured game at full price, a single, distinct project with its own voice, easily customizable with in-game tools and community modifications,” the developers insist. “In the long term, we intend to create more Noematica games: more digital worlds with their own unique qualities. Any core engine changes will be backported to previous Noematica efforts (to the extent technically possible) to help modders with their work. Assets will be made interoperable, for custom games with mixed themes.
“A game with ten expansions is always very confusing,” they continue. “It’s best to have ten games, each speaking with their own voice, in an open, cross-compatible mod ecosystem. Noematica is not (never will be) a platform. We want to be equal partners with a community of DIY content creators, hackers and modders, etc.”
It comes out in 2027. We will keep an eye on the situation.
