Identify the scary numbers in macrodata refinement with this free Severance-inspired game
As much as I'd like to dredge up an old RPS tradition and write "Severance is back!" repeatedly for 500 words, I'll resist the urge and instead just slide a nice free game over to your side of the table, hidden underneath an inconspicuous pile of photocopies. Lumon by Mark Gomersall is a free number clicker based the fourth best television show ever made (Succession, Hannibal, Scavenger's Reign, discuss). It's not a rip-roaring videogame time or anything, but it is cute. More importantly, it's topical. More importantly, it means I get to write "Severance is back!" a bunch. It's back! It is!
The idea here is that you colour match floating numbers with your mouse cursor before exporting them. It's neither challenging or exciting, but it is mildly meditative in the way that all highly repetitive drudgery is, and I imagine that's the point. The show's own macrodata refinement is itself a play on gamified busywork, complete with addictive-looking animated flourishes like a magnifying glass cursor and a satisfying crate-opening action. It's the archetypal bullshit job, but with a lingering mystery to whether the data is actually significant in some way.
Lumon is the only game I've found that's a direct tribute to Severance, although there are a few others either inspired by the show or that inspired it directly. Fractured, for one, is a TTRPG with a very similar concept. Creator Dan Erickson has also spoken about the direct influence of The Stanley Parable on the show. There are also approximately a scary number's worth of games based on creepypasta-adjacent Severance influence The Backrooms.
As for the show, I need to sit with the latest episode a bit more, but I did enjoy it. There's a fun echo of the idea of capitalism subsuming critique in Lumon making the team's uprising part of its own corporate legend. Also, the camera work was immaculate.
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