Exploring A Planet From An ER Waiting Room

"It's a small planet, but someone's gotta make the deliveries."

Last Friday my grandma had a stroke, but we wouldn’t know that until Saturday night. All we knew on that first day was that she felt weird, had puked and fainted. My mom— her daughter— went with her on the ambulance, and I followed suit with my stepfather, aunt, and uncle.

We reached the hospital around 4PM with basically no information. The ER was an absolute mess, as it usually is here in Lisbon, and there were people everywhere. An older man pale as chalk was puking his heart out. A younger man with his shirt completely torn following a bike accident was so drunk that he was slowly falling forward as he blew on the breathalyzer, like the leaning Tower of Pisa if it was held by a cop’s index finger.

It took hours just for a doctor to check grandma out. She got a CT scan somewhere around 9PM, but we wouldn’t know its result until the next morning. An ER waiting room lives up to its name. You’re not doing much other than waiting, wondering, creating your own— often overly-dramatic— idea of what happens beyond the sliding doors. So after a quick exit for a terrible meal close to the hospital, I went back to the ER waiting room, took my phone out, and went travelling.

Messenger’s Main Square. Image via Abeto, screenshot captured by Button Musher.

Abeto’s Messenger had been on my list since I read the Aftermath article aptly titled: “You Could Play Messenger Right Now, There’s Nothing Stopping You”. Turns out Luke Plunkett was more right than he probably guessed. Even though I was sitting in an ER waiting room, there truly was nothing stopping me from playing Messenger. That is because the game’s most unique feature is how playable it is, in every sense of the word.

It is a browser game that works seamlessly on most devices you own. You can play it on a laptop, a powerful PC, an iPad, or a basic android phone. I wasn’t sure how well my Samsung A25 would do, but it turns out that Messenger runs well even on lower-end phones. So I searched for the game— which was harder than expected, google always thought I was looking for The Messenger, a 2D side-scroller. To avoid this, simply search for “Abeto Messenger”— and opened it.

An unreasonably smooth main menu. Image via Abeto, screenshot captured by Button Musher.

You’re immediately greeted by a fancy animation of a comically small planet with a stylized logo spelling “MESSENGER”. First impressions are crucial, and this starting menu is more interactive than most. The planet keeps endlessly turning, the sky has particles swirling, the logo is animated and reacts to your touches. Press Begin and, following a short loading screen, you’ll find your character, the titular Messenger.

LOOKS LIKE I SLEPT IN… I BETTER START TODAY’S DELIVERIES.

Without a tutorial, a pop-up, or anything remotely similar to it, you’re inhabiting the body of a teenager who has to make five deliveries. Open the hamburger logo and you’ll have a five item checklist with hints regarding your tasks. You’ll also see three logos: one turns the music on or off, the second allows you to customize your character, and the third lets you use emojis. Why would you use emojis, you ask? Because Messenger is an MMO (Minimally Multiplayer Online) game and you can see other players exploring the tiny planet. You can easily identify them as the only characters constantly jumping around.

And that’s it. There is no compass, no tutorial, no waypoints. Explore the planet and talk to people who have a tiny triangle above their head, and figure it out as you go. This planet is essentially a spherical square of a Japanese town. Despite having a convincingly realistic layout, it features just enough distinct landmarks and buildings to prevent you from getting lost (too often). Once you’ve completed all five deliveries, you’ll be greeted with the following message:

The last message in the Messenger. Image via Abeto, screenshot captured by Button Musher.

This tiny game was created by Vicente Lucendo and Michael Sungaila, with lo-fi music done by Kevin Colombin. It was published by Abeto. It is completely free, playable from most devices, and it is an hour of pure, relaxing escapism. In a world where cozy is a term that includes games where you are mostly grinding, Messenger distils the cozy experience to nothing more than its purest essence. You are immediately thrown into the gameplay, there is no barrier of entry, and the experience is seamless. There’s no frustration, no time limit, no overstimulation. You go at your own pace, tackle tasks in the order you choose, and you stop playing whenever you want. From now onwards, this will be the game I use as an example when I want to describe what cozy means to me.

Once I has done with my deliveries, an hour had gone by. Throughout that hour, I wasn’t inside the ER waiting room, I was exploring a tiny planet. Despite being limited to the tiny 6-inch-something screen of my mobile phone, Messenger immersed me deeply, drowning out the endless chatter, the deafening pings from the TV every time a new ticket was called, and the procession of stretchers coming in and out of the hospital. For that hour, I was just a kid delivering letters, like kids used to do when my grandma was one.

Grandma’s left the hospital today, thankfully free from any long-lasting issues. I’m confident she’ll still be around 20 years from now, celebrating 100 years of travelling through her own tiny planet, in her little corner of Europe.