Grave Gamer News & Views — datura

Datura (PSN - May 8th)

PSN’s next unconventional download comes in the form of a stylistically unique puzzle game that challenges players to forgo cunning problem solving and logical analysis and instead flex your intuition, trust your emotions, and follow sporadic impulses.  Puzzles don’t always make sense or unfold neatly, nor does the story whisk you along in a linear fashion.  Built from the ground up with the Move controller (and 3D functionality) in mind, the game relays your motions into an on-screen virtual hand that interacts and manipulates Datura’s rife world of choice and consequence.

I’ve got some more weird for you; developer Plastic Group claims meaning can be derived from the name Datura itself, which is borrowed from the toxic plant that has historically been utilized as a debilitating poison and, to a lesser extent, a highly volatile hallucinogen.  On a recreational basis, no other psychoactive substance tops the amount of negative firsthand experience reports datura has received; short term side effects commonly include hyperthermia, delirium, disassociation with reality, violent behavior, and – what is sure to be the mind trying to erase itself after ingestion – cases of amnesia.  Long term side effects include photophobia, mydriasis, and, oh, death.

Despite all the hell datura has wrought on our world, the plant still manages to spurn beauty, producing gorgeous, white flowers often referred to as “moonflowers."  That natural juxtaposition may be the idea Plastic Group wants us to compare their game to, but now I’m too afraid of datura to think about Datura.  But as I understand it, you can only forget datura by taking datura.

Watch an official trailer hereabouts.