From the genre-bending, convention-bucking world of independent video games, Coil emerges to challenge the popular notion of what games can do, and what they can be about. Coil, a Flash-based game played entirely with the mouse, is clearly interested in breaking the traditional rules of game-making to present a new experience. Unfortunately, it rushes so eagerly into uncharted territory that it tends to get lost.

The game's makers clearly were not kidding when they said Coil has no clear direction: The intro screen doesn't even tell you how to start the game. There's nothing that says "Press Enter" or "Click Here." It took me almost a full minute just to realize the game was waiting for some type of input from me to get started.

Once I figured it out (I won't spoil it for those who wish to play the game themselves), the enigmatic nature of the game kicks into full gear. The flow of the game basically consists of reading a screen of expository text and then playing a scenario that relates to it. Once you finish the scenario, you read another screen of text, play another scenario, and so on until the end. The challenge, however, lies not only in figuring out what the objective of each scenario is, but in figuring out how the text relates to each scenario.

Each text screen tells you a little bit more and more about "her," a character going through some type of emotional distress, though she is never named. By picking up hints in what the game tells you about "her" (such as, "She would find herself reaching out to others…."), the clearer the objective for the next scenario becomes.

The relationship between the text and the scenarios reminded me heavily of Jonathan Blow's Braid, in which books tell you about Tim's memories and emotional state in a way that relate obliquely to the main gameplay portions. Coil's story too can clearly be interpreted on several levels. However, the way in which they relate to the playable scenarios is rather, dare I say, black and white.

The first scenario has you controlling a sperm cell, swimming in search of an egg. In the next scenario, you manipulate cells inside the fertilized egg to facilitate growth. By the time you reach the final scenario, you're controlling a fetus as it floats gently above the sea at night, with a glistening full moon in the background. Each of these scenarios is interspersed with a short story segment about "her."

The great thing about Braid was that, although there was clearly a non-symbolic story that the designer was trying to communicate, it left enough to the imagination so that anyone could develop their own ideas about it. Coil tries to do the same thing, but it just doesn't do it quite as well. The segments that talk about "her" are written as though they're meant to be open to speculation, but a lot of the speculation goes out the window in light of the scenarios attached to them. Develop any idea about Coil that you want, but know beforehand that saying "This game is not about the stages of pregnancy" is demonstrably wrong.

The game's biggest problem, however, is that the playable scenarios do not have much to offer beyond figuring out what to do in the given situation. Once you've figured out what you're supposed to do (which might take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes), there's not really any reason to keep playing. There isn't any element of fun or challenge to keep you coming back for more. Once you've played the last scenario and read the ending text, the game is inevitably done.

Despite its flaws, however, I see Coil as a step in the right direction for indie games, and indeed for video games in general. After you've played the umpteenth version of Tower Defense or Space Invaders, you begin to yearn for Flash games to aspire to do more. In terms of abstract storytelling, I still might prefer Pi or Eraserhead over Coil. But at the very least this game proves that the tired old clichés of traditional games have reached their endpoint, and it's time to give birth to the next stage of game development.