I can't stop contemplating this mysterious new game focused on AI.

      It's a Monday morning as I sit down to write this. My day is just kicking off, and I’m organizing my to-do list. As I cross off tasks, I pause to think about any recent games I’ve played that I meant to write about. Nothing comes to mind. My weekend was spent watching wrestling and an Oscars-related live stream with friends.

      Wait, I did play something, didn’t I? My memory is a bit fuzzy, likely due to too much pizza, but a game starts to surface. Something strange. Uneasy. What was it called? Centum. Was it a fever dream brought on by indigestion? My Steam account says otherwise, reminding me that I embarked on a three-hour point-and-click adventure over the weekend in between social activities. It’s not that I forgot what I played; it’s just that it felt so surreal that it seems like I experienced it in a different lifetime.

      I find it difficult to describe Centum. I don’t know how to recommend it, or even if I should. But if this has piqued your interest, you might consider diving in without prior knowledge.

      Centum is a very cryptic point-and-click adventure game that has been released today on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Nintendo Switch. Its premise appears straightforward at first: You are a prisoner and must escape. The most reductionist (and deceptive) explanation I could provide is that Centum places players in a series of rooms and tasks them with clicking around to solve puzzles and escape. In the first room, I need to find chalk to draw a figure on a wall, address a rat problem, and clean a filthy window with a cloth. Sounds pretty typical, right?

      Not quite. The story of Centum unfolds entirely within a malfunctioning AI computer program. I find myself trapped in a desktop environment, clicking through programs and engaging with occasional minigames while sifting through random text files. If you’ve ever had the misfortune of using something like Google Gemini, you’re aware that AI can be an unreliable storyteller. Sometimes it produces jumbled images and nonsensical information. It mirrors our own reality but is always slightly off. The details can be misleading, and AI tends to get them wrong.

      Through this perspective, you begin to penetrate Centum's initially baffling exterior. Amidst solving puzzles, I engage in conversations with various odd characters who speak in philosophical riddles. Initially, I can’t decipher their meaning and feel that I’m simply not smart enough to understand what Centum is conveying. It resembles how I feel when I’m in academic discussions about philosophy, where references often escape me. As I delve deeper, I start to realize that perhaps I’m not the issue; it’s a world filled with incoherence, deceptions, and outright absurdity.

      Serenity Forge

      What is my role in all of this? That’s the question that truly captivates me. I’m eager to uncover the identity of the prisoner I’m controlling. I get glimpses of their life, seemingly marred by tragedy. Or at least that’s how I interpret it. Centum continually taunts me, even altering my identity at one point. My memories are murky, trapped inside a deceptive machine that has absorbed me and produced a version of myself that’s only partially recognizable. There’s a disquieting horror in that, and I choose to believe that it’s what Centum seeks to convey through its perplexing world.

      Days after completing it, I'm still unsure what to make of Centum. Maybe it’s a bit too obscure for its own sake, mistaking vague and cryptic writing for depth. Perhaps. What I do know is that it occupies a special place in my mind that few games do. It’s nestled in a distant part of my brain, the area connected to my most surreal dreams. It feels like a half-remembered nightmare that I’m struggling to recall the next morning. It will linger with me, even if at a distance. This makes it all the more striking, as it feels like a memory slipping through my fingers. It’s similar to how I'm beginning to feel in my waking life as the world around me dissolves into misinformation at the hands of imperfect machines.

      Centum is now available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Nintendo Switch.