Manifest 99 review: train traveling through purgatory

Two words spring to mind after experiencing the darkly beautiful and surreal Manifest 99: trains and eyes. Let’s start with the former. This 30-ish minute narrative experience is set on a train traveling through sunset-coloured purgatory, the environment outside a combination of dreamy landscapes—from dystopian-looking desert, scorching with burnt autumnal colours, to an underwater world with orange fish and reed-like plants the size of buildings. 

On board we encounter three anthropomorphized animals, styled in a graphic novel-esque aesthetic that reminded me of TV’s Bojack Horseman and VR’s The Under Presents. There’s a grizzly bear in an old military uniform, a deer in corporate attire and high heels, and an owl dressed as a nun.

Each of these characters, initially bathed in shadows, are encountered on different carriages, triggering the experience to reverse in time and reveal details about their lives and backstories. We see the bear for instance say goodbye to a loved one before going off to war, fighting in trenches. When this cutscene-like sequence is over, he appears in another carriage, behind us, waving goodbye. The carriage dislodges from the train and tumbles spectacularly away from us, disappearing into the distance. 

This represents the format going forward: navigate the train, find a character, absorb their backstory, then witness them entering oblivion, in quietly moving melancholic send-offs. 

Manifesto 99’s interesting navigation method brings me to the second key word I mentioned early on: eyes. We make our way through the train by being transported into the body of various crows situated throughout the carriages. And this is sight activated: we look into a crow’s bright eyes, take its form, then look into another’s eyes, take its form, etcetera. It’s a compelling way to move through virtual space. Each moment of body-swapping transportation reiterates that we’re somewhere unusual, somewhere beautiful but sad—an otherworldly place situated outside reality, informed by the language of dreams. 

Like in the feature film Snowpiercer, having the train as a central location allows for both straightforward spatiality (we move in linear progression, from A to B to C) and metaphorical opportunity. The separation of each carriage represents, as it were, the end of the line: the final severance between consciousness and eternal sleep. Like the best short VR experiences, I left Manifest 99 wanting more. I also left with some images seared into my head. Images including that train, those eyes, and the way the characters bid farewell—waving goodbye as the carriage carrying them breaks free, screeching and tumbling and crashing, arriving at its final destination.