Excerpt

Oceans are our friends, or we will not live. Regardless, Ecco and Bloodborne are games kept apart by decades, fashions, even dimensions of illusionary geometry. But when I watch Ecco drown over and over again, lungs bursting deep underwater, spent from chasing cosmic beings who kidnapped his entire pod, the fevered Fishing Hamlet and its milk-eye moon spill into me.

I’m not trying to convince anyone of this link, but in making this record of thoughts and feelings, in brightening the murkiest corners of my fear and grief, I found that thinking these two games together creates an insight to soothe harsh mourning and allow us to pass through and beyond the guilt that so often colours our feelings about the world and our friends of all forms with which we share it.

Author’s Note

Drown in Time is the strangest and most difficult zine I ever made. It’s essentially putting the games Ecco the Dolphin and Bloodborne into dialogue with each other. I can’t say that this is in any way justified outside of my fevered imagination, but I like to think of these two works as having something to say to each other, especially when put in the frame of our increasingly awful relationship with water and the ocean. It’s weird, it’s a little silly, it borrows a ton of style from Sega Saturn marketing materials and PC-98 visual novels, and it’s the best thing I’ve probably made up to this point.