“Okay,” I think to myself. “I have an empty cookie can. It was, at one point, filled with cookies. Now, it is filled with nothing.

“What do I do with it?”

It is a simple question that is often repeated while playing The Starship Damrey. “What do I do?” For some games, this question is treated as a problem. Yet here, in one of Level 5’s smaller, independently developed Guild games for the Nintendo 3DS, it is the whole point.

As you begin the game you are warned that no tutorials exist, that no instruction will be provided. To be more specific, the game never tells you how to interact with it using the controls on your 3DS device. The player is instead forced to press buttons and wait to receive bacon in return. In this case, bacon is shorthand for feedback.

There is narrative purpose to this. The character wakes up from cold sleep, but they cannot escape from their confinement. Trapped in cryostasis, the character, and thus the player, have to figure out how to escape from their interstellar tomb.

The Starship Damrey’s refusal to provide tutorials is simply one aspect of refusing to break the fourth wall. It isn’t supposed to be “the character”, it’s supposed to be you, the player, being forced to work things out. You have to start pressing buttons to try and escape. You have to figure out how to repair the operating system (which, yes, does technically provide instructions, but it’s instructions on using the software from within the software, not how to interact with the game itself). Then you have to remotely operate a robot around the ship, learning what happened and trying to figure out how to escape.

Unfortunately, I’ve already spoken too much about how the game plays. While everyone has a different threshold for how seriously they take spoilers, the truth is that this game is intended for you to go in clean. You should not have any prior knowledge to it, as the character themselves wouldn’t. It is fully intended to be an immersive experience where the player is as 1-to-1 with their character as possible.

To that end, I really don’t know how to write about The Starship Damrey. Anything I want to praise it with would require discussing it in too much detail. Being too vague would just be confusing. As a result, I have to be more concise than usual when discussing the game.

In The Starship Damrey, you will not be given explicit instructions on how to progress through the game. The point is for you to feel as close to your in-game avatar as possible, struggling to solve puzzles and figure out their solution as the character would be. The game manages to lead the player forward, in some ways very obviously and quite clearly inspired by the Metroid series, and in other ways with sneaky little hints and lessons. Never is the fourth wall broken, from start to end credits. The entire game takes place within one perspective, truly placing the player in the role of an unnamed protagonist.

It may only be around two or three hours in length, maybe a little more, maybe a little less, but The Starship Damrey is a worthwhile game to any 3DS owner with an appreciation for horror, sci-fi, or puzzle solving.

Just do not look up any walkthroughs or FAQs as you do so, or you will break the illusion for just a moment.