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The first time I encountered Proteus was in the chill-out room of a hip indie party at last year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The game, projected onto a wall, was enveloping a dozen or so lounging spectators in its warm pastel colours and tinkling dynamic soundtrack while one player wandered around a randomly generated pastoral landscape, doing nothing much.That should tell you most of what you need to know about Ed Key and David Kanaga's first-person exploration game. Proteus is very much an ambient mood piece. It offers no goal or challenge and it doesn't even have the storytelling impulse - however ambiguous - of last year's Journey or Dear Esther. It's beautiful and meditative, with just enough strangeness and sadness about it to avoid coming across like the video game equivalent of a whalesong CD from a provincial head shop.
That's not to say it's without structure or point, however. The most impressive thing about Proteus is how compact, sculpted and purposeful it is under those loose-fitting hippy duds. You're free to do whatever you like, but somehow the game will always take you on the same journey to the same uplifting conclusion.
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