Every One of Us is Dead at the Beginning of The Silent Age

Plenty of video games have toyed with a desolate future in which an extinction level event has wiped humanity from the face of the Earth. The Silent Age isn’t about the future. It’s about right now. Bang, you’re dead.

Well, maybe bang, possibly whimper. Discovering the how and why is the mission of a mustachioed janitor named Joe. One moment he’s cleaning up blood in a nondescript office building in 1972, the next he’s handed a portable time travel device and thrust some 40 years into the future—our present day. Only it’s not ours, because you’d be dead and writing this all out would serve no purpose.

Gifted with the ability to jump back and forth in time at will, Joe must unravel the mystery of the end of life as we know it. His first task: getting out of prison after being arrested for the murder of the dying man that handed him the time travel device in the first place.

The Silent Age is an intelligent point-and-click adventure game with a stunning sense of style. The faceless Joe wanders through a series of stylishly stark environments, finding items and using them to find other items—standard adventure fare, with uncommon flair. It reminds me of the classic PC game Flashback, only with a 70’s vibe and exploration instead of action.

The combination of intelligent puzzles and sexy spartan design has iOS adventure fans flocking to The Silent Age in droves, though the price might have something to do with it. Somehow House on Fire has released the game for free. There are no in-app purchases or microtransactions—you can play through the whole thing.

The catch? It’s not quite the whole thing. This is just the first episode of The Silent Age, and it ends without answering any of the big questions. House on Fire is working on episode two, and while they’ve got a lot of the funding taken care of, they wouldn’t mind a little help.

Considering iOS gamer reactions thus far, it shouldn’t be too long before we know what killed us all.