After years of developing it, the USC Game Innovation Lab finally released Walden, a game some days ago, which allows players to immerse themselves in a six-hour experience in which they play Henry David Thoreau on his calm quest for solitude and mental clarity.

You can either play in a task-oriented way, building your cabin and foraging for foodstuffs, or you can explore the detailed environment.

In fact, Walden, the central text of Henry David Thoreau‘s play, as a video game might look like an oxymoron. Video games seem to be the opposite of the life that is postulated in this book. In Walden, Thoreau chronicles the 2 years spent in the woods in New England, living a contemplative life on the side of Walden Pond. Thoreau built his own cottage and lived from nature (of which he not only naturally fed but spiritually communed with her).

A simple, reflective life, far from civilization … and perhaps because of all this is that a video game about Walden is so appealing. While it can never replace the fact of retiring to nature, at least it is a way to make people who play video games reflect and perhaps put a seed for the future.

Walden, the video game, is a project of the USC Game Innovation Lab and in it the users become Thoreau in its first day in the forest; Survive by collecting food, fishing and building a cottage, but also finding meaning in the harmony and beauty of nature. Within the forest are quotes from Thoreau’s text that seem to come to life. Users can experience some of the central events in Thoreau’s life, such as spending a night in jail for refusing to pay taxes as a protest or visiting Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great American Platonist who was one of Thoreau’s mentors. They may even choose to abandon this simple life and seek a more active and decadent life, and write to their editor that they want them to get them public lectures.