The Company of Myself

The Company of Myself is a short Flash platformer in which the player learns to rely on themselves quite literally - a recorded playthrough of the level creates a clone that repeats exactly the same steps for the rest of the level. Gradually, up to four copies of the main character can be on stage at once, and they must cooperate: one holds down a lever, another stands on a platform as a springboard, a third lures away a trap. The controls stay minimal - arrow keys and jump - but the puzzles quickly force you to think across several timelines at once, since each clone reacts to its surroundings exactly as the player last performed. As the levels progress, the number of clones on screen grows too, so the simple premise gradually turns into a fairly demanding puzzle choreography.

Behind the simple mechanic hides a melancholic story about loneliness, which the game tells sparingly, between levels, through short narrator text passages. Pixel art in muted colors and calm music round out the feeling of isolation without the game ever raising its voice or reaching for pathos. It is precisely this contrast between the cold logical puzzle and the emotional undertone that makes the title one of the typical examples of the so-called "art games" of the decade's end. The narrator's voice never slips into explaining things outright - it merely hints at why the main character lives surrounded by copies of themselves, leaving the player to figure out the rest.

It was created in 2009 by studio 2DArray and belonged to the wave of independent Flash games that spread across portals like Kongregate or Newgrounds, showing that a browser game could tell a story just as powerfully as a big-budget title. To this day it can be completed for free in the browser in under an hour, making it an ideal example of how minimalism and a good idea can stand in for both budget and length. Thanks to its original mechanic and sensitive storytelling, it still holds the reputation of a title that isn't forgotten even years after finishing it.

Why play it: Anyone who wants to experience a clever cloning puzzle with emotional depth in a single sitting will find exactly that in this short, freely available game.