The Big Bang is a bit of a stretch when you think about it. Space, time, our universe, and life as we have come to understand it are all part of a long chain of dominoes that began at one precise moment. Just the thought of the earth being a speck of dust trapped in a giant Hoover Bag filled with hundreds of billions of galaxies would send anyone into an existential crisis. But Stray Cat Den's "Genesis Noir" takes all of these grand themes and mixes them into a cosmic adventure and noir tale that can be drunk up like a smooth glass of whiskey.

In Genesis Noir, the Big Bang is not only the greatest event in recorded human history, it is a shot frozen in time, its bullets racing toward your lover. To prevent this event from reaching its inevitable conclusion, you must explore the various pockets of time in the vast universe, trying to undo the chain of events leading to this moment and alter the course of history.

This thematic epic adventure is shrouded in noir mystery, and your character is caught in the middle of an ill-fated love triangle. That love triangle is a watch peddler named No Man (the character you play), your lover Miss Mass, a femme fatale jazz singer, and Golden Boy, a jealous marksman who makes up the third person. These characters are not real people, but are more like gods, interdimensional or cosmic beings. The stories resemble the dramas of the gods of Greek mythology and Norse legend, except that this particular god wears a trench coat, a fedora, and is familiar with trad jazz.

Genesis Noir's themes may be ambitious, but it's easy to follow along on this time-travel adventure. For the most part, you are swept along by a series of animations, with the occasional puzzle-solving thrown into the mix. Gameplay is a bit experimental, with players clicking through parts of scenes and manipulating the environment. [You can participate in call-and-response improvisational jazz, plant seeds to expand into a black hole, or join broken bowls together. Most of the puzzles are pretty easy, but the interactions are a bit abstract, and it was sometimes difficult to figure out what the game wanted me to do. Spending so much time clicking on every part of the scene and pressing every button stopped the game's effortless groove.

Even though there are moments lost in visual translation, the majority of the game flows as smoothly as the coolest saxophone solo. There is a sense of movement in Genesis Noir as you move from one scene to the next, and it is all thanks to its wonderful animation and visual style. Often there are no puzzles at all, just tweaking the reality of a scene. In one section, I'm using an old rotary phone, and when I turn the dial, the background swirls around. When I jam on a giant piano keyboard, it melts and appears as a giant skyscraper window. The imagination that went into this game is amazing. It is pleasant to play and visually enjoyable.

Playing Genesis Noir is a piece of cake, but it loses momentum in the final third. There are numerous moments that hint that the game's story is coming to an end, and after the third false ending, the game felt like it had overstayed its welcome. However, the game's ending was more abrupt than dramatic, and felt somewhat anticlimactic.

Genesis Noir may have some pacing issues in the endgame, but the tight interweaving of story, theme, and visuals is spectacular. It was a really clever idea to blend the idea of the Big Bang into a brooding noir story, with Norman constantly being drawn into Miss Mass's orbit as if he were helplessly caught in her orbit, and the explosion of gunfire being visualized exactly like the scientific diagram of the Big Bang, I like how the ice cubes swirling in the gin glass look like the spinning planets of our solar system.

The noir genre is about characters getting caught up in situations beyond their control. Genesis Noir captures just that, and the deterministic framework of human history and the poetics of the Big Bang are a great way to explore it.