Why ‘Virginia’ Is a Fascinating Narrative Experiment You Have to Try

If you love David Lynch, you have to play newcomer Variable State’s Virginia—it’s really that simple.

It’s a “walking simulator,” sure, but unlike any yet drafted, framing its mysteries in strictly visual terms, without audio logs or text dumps or even the grounding cadences of spoken dialogue. Ever more sublime after multiple play-throughs, Virginia trades that sort of clarity for another: that of the subjective, ever-precarious moment. (Read TIME’s review here.)

The game, out September 22 for PC, Mac, Playstation 4 and Xbox One, invites you to “take a trip,” then launches you down a rabbit hole of baffling vignettes.

But what if Lynch gave us control of the camera and the freedom to study his sets? What if like some auditor of oblique facades, you could scrutinize an automobile’s sun visors and glove compartments, a sun-dappled glade’s strange vegetation and oracular grottos?