American Arcadia Review
The Truman Show is one of those films that instantly become a foundational pillar of pop culture, a story so iconic that there’s no chance to borrow even a sliver of its core conceit without this film being an obvious point of inspiration. American Arcadia is massively indebted to The Truman Show, but adds its own twists and more modern day ideas and themes into the mix.
The game follows Trevor Hills as he tries to escape the domed city of Arcadia, the setting for a Truman Show-style reality series. Arcadia is an idyllic retro-futuristic vision of a city, trapped within the 1970s with flares, discos and lampchop sideburns all around, but with a Tomorrow’s World-ian element thanks to electric cars, monorails, drones, super computers and all the rest. Life within the gilded cage isn’t all that bad.
It isn’t just Trevor who’s at the heart of the show and its unknowing star, as the tens of thousands of Arcadia-born citizens all blind to their lives in front of the TV cameras and the millions of people watching the ultimate reality show. In fact, he’s barely even a background character, as he happily focuses on work, heads home and relaxes by himself.
But strange things start happening to Trevor, and through the intervention of an outsider who reveals the web of lies that makes up everyday Arcadian life, Trevor is practically forced to go on the run as the sham city’s security forces try to clamp down and catch him.
And run he does, going doggedly from left to right in a light side scrolling platformer that lets you take in the vibrantly colourful cityscapes – no, the 70s weren’t just 15 shades of sepia – and the contrasting backstage gloom. There’s some simple environmental puzzles as well, with block pushing to get you up to
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