When I was a kid, I always had a dream of running away to a place where I could be all alone, preferably alone with dogs, and never have to be a part of society ever again. That's kind of what Arctico gives you. The chance to escape, to explore, to embrace your yearning for wonder yet simultaneously erase your spot in the world.

My longtime girlfriend and I currently live in a town, not a city, a town, that borders on Possum Springs levels of dead in terms of economy and such. It's empty, there's a Walmart and there's no escape, because all the roads lead nowhere. Despite this, there's an odd sense of comfort and safety in it, and I would miss it in some strange manner if I were to leave it, because having the ability to be alive but not be a part of life is something I've always struggled to achieve, but now I have it. Not in the same sense Arctico is giving me, sure, but in some sense nonetheless.

In fact, Arctico is even more appealing to live in than the town my girlfriend and I live in, because it's even emptier, and I crave emptiness because it's all I feel inside. You live in a handful of - let's not be fancy and let's call 'em what they are, okay - techno igloos, and you take care of your plants and you look for materials and you search the frozen tundra wastelands for remnants of anyone who was there before. Sometimes there's tech left over, sometimes there's materials left over, sometimes there's absolutely nothing but the burned out remains of an airplane.

And yet...I could be fine without ever coming across any of those things. In most games, the emptiness makes the game feel unfinished. In Arctico, the emptiness feels intentional, and gives the game life. It feels real, because really, what would be out there? Nothing inhabits space that empty, nothing like people anyway, without doing it intentionally. I would do it intentionally, in case that wasn't already super fucking clear. I live with the nothing, for the nothing. I can spend hours in the snowy lands of Arctico on my sled, only my dogs as my companions, much like my actual life honestly, and come away with discovering absolutely nothing...and being 100% okay with that being my game time. It's controls can be wonky, even downright janky at times, and its interfaces can be clunky (though they've fixed a lot of that) but guess what, the real world isn't any better. I'm a clumsy bitch who can't function outside of a computer screen, so whatever.

Arctico is a game to clear your head. It's a game to level your sense. It's a game to remind you that, sometimes, nothing really is more. It's minimalism at its peak. Less is more. What do I do in real life these days besides read and garden and play with my dogs (and churn out online work, I guess)? I'd be doing the same thing living in a place like Arctico that I do in my actual day to day life, because that is my actual day to day life! The two are only differentiated by their vastly differing landscapes. With nothing but the chilling wind to listen to and only your fuzzy cohorts as friends, there's just something really soothing about Arctico and the world they created, or lack of a world for that matter, that makes me want to let it envelope me with its eternal nothing.

I have always longed for nothingness, ever since I can remember. As a little girl I'd hide in the bathroom for hours at a time (thank goodness our house had multiple bathrooms) and read or listen to music on a discman simply to escape the world. I've always been looking to escape the world. I have a love/hate relationship with the mere concept of existence, and that's what Arctico, more than any other video game I've ever encountered, allows me to have. That escapism into the seeming void of ethereal emptiness. Where I can be one with myself and nothing with everything else. I don't really need other people in my life, I don't really need a career, I don't really long for interaction with the world around me. This pandemic alone has been so extremely easy on me simply because it hasn't changed how I live my life one bit, because up until this point, this is how I've always lived my life! Alone, in a room, with some dogs. I love my girlfriend, don't get me wrong, but I would be just as okay in the long run on my own...barring the possibility I wouldn't off myself, I suppose.

Arctico is enchanting because it's a game with virtually nothing in it. The visuals are pleasing and simple, the soundscape is soothing and meditative, and the world is not a world. It's a blank sheet of paper you can't draw on.

Arctico is one of the best games I've ever played simply because it doesn't feel ashamed of what it is. It basks in the glorious obviousness of its nothingness, and even with constant monthly additions of new content (new tech, etc), it still winds up being nothing. Because, in the end, nothing is more suitable than something. Nothing is more welcoming. That's why, at the end of our lives, most of us wind up embracing our deaths instead of wishing we'd lived longer.

...I guess that got kind of dark, sorry.

What I'm trying to say is Arctico hits me in a place I never thought anything really would, because it was a place I never thought anyone other than me knew about, or experienced. The urge to be nowhere. To be no one. The urge...to not be at all.