Elation for the Wonder Box 6000: A surrealistic quest for a perfect video game

Elation for the Wonder Box 6000 is a game that keeps its cards close to its proverbial chest. The demo, a short vignette of a narrative-based adventure game, lasts only long enough to set up its premise. In doing so, it enshrouds itself in just enough mystery to maintain a healthy amount of wonder about what to expect from the full release. And honestly, sometimes less is more with games like these.

Seated at the computer, the player posts a lofty diatribe on an internet forum that Elation, a Wonder Box 6000 game, is a title of monumental artistic merit. Swiftly rebuked and banned from the forum by "philistines", they exit the computer and return to the depressing squalor of their dour physical life. The man that lives within the walls suggests maybe the player should go outside and see if they can find the game they're talking about: you know, Elation. For the Wonder Box 6000.

The game's surrealistic tone cushions the cynicism of this initial framing device. Fortunately, Elation seems more interested in exploring the obsessions of the player character with the titular game and poking fun at the contradictions in their reverence for it at the cost of all other pleasures. Some of this material is very funny, including hyperbole that computer games are the "sequel to pornography", and that even the guy in the wall seems fairly tired of the whole Elation thing.

No surrealist art game could take off without striking visuals, and Elation seems like it won't disappoint. Claymation is used in part to portray character art, creating an uncanny vibe that feels somewhere between Neverhood meets Bad Dream Adventure. The demo is fairly confined, but does open up to a scene of depressing post-industrial landscapes. The trailer hints at more interesting environments, including a ramshackle cityscape that will be interesting to explore.

Elation is being developed by Digital Tchotchkes, a solo outlet of a developer known as Logan. Logan discussed with DreadXP that they had worked on the game since 2022, and aimed to a game with ambiguous and dreamlike narrative qualities, citing the stop-motion visual effects of the Shin'ya Tsukamoto film Tetsuo: the Iron Man and the approach of the films of David Lynch.

The game is Logan's second after Go Fly A Kite, which in some ways feels like a compartmentalised version of the vision for Elation. Playing Go Fly A Kite was strangely reassuring, seeing a similar concept to Elation realized in a full and surprisingly coherent title. In Go Fly A Kite, the player develops a terminal illness, creating a tumor that will consume them just before an apocalypse destroys the world. The game has funny and insightful things to say about the idiosyncrasies of how people cope with finality and death, or how they become focused on denial.

So, that's Elation. For the Wonder Box 6000. Is the game a surrealist's deranged fever dream, or a terminally online byproduct of our doomed digital world? Does the game double down on the video game commentary, collapse under the premise of its concept, or transcend it? Do we ever get to find, and more importantly, play Elation, the game released for the Wonder Box 6000? These are questions of a depth that has not been prompted by a game demo in some time.

A demo for Elation for the Wonder Box 6000 can be played on Steam, with an expected release some time in the last quarter of 2024.