Here's an indie that I came about a hair's width away from buying. The clincher; Leopard, and a Mac graphical capability I'm not sure I possess. Yup. Chunky pixels for me. Preferably not styled, if you can. Just geometric shapes on flat fields of color, please. (I'm just kidding, mostly. When I finally get Leopard, I'll figure out if I can run it, and if I can, I'll give them my $10. Maybe. Tale of Tales is really interesting in what they're doing, but they still limit themselves by their ambition of creating nothing more reaching than a pretty space to explore. That has value, but isn't an ark you'd want to float on forever.)
Chris Crawford Jason Rohrer Arte television documentary:
Alright, so, this is big. Like, really big. Probably the best piece of game-related film I've ever seen. Completely timely, and yet fully aware of (and celebrating) the incredible history of the medium of games.
Here's the link for the full movie download. It's a big file, mp4, which will require new Quicktime if you're like me and never update your computer. In the end, though, this is probably the best thing I've watched this year. Balance of Power looks really hardcore.
One of my favorite scenes was the strange encounter with Pixeljunk Eden, a game that I've heard a lot about but never played (and probably never will, but I suppose that's its own topic, mostly economic). Listening to them describe their "grumps" and their wristwatches felt so beside the point. Not to mention that moment when Rohrer said, "Well, we all know 3-D is just a fad." Uproarious laughter. "I'm not joking." It felt significant to me, in that while Anthony Burch perhaps has a point here:
(that he mercilessly belabors) I think he's overlooking an incredible amount. How indies look is such a minor, tertiary issue. Should they look good? Yeah, maybe. So Dwarf Fortress is an abject failure? Or You Found the Grappling Hook failed in what it was doing? Because the edges are sharp, and the colors un-gradiated? If the rope were visible (with fraying threads and beads of water) then it would be a better or more fulfilling game? That's a failure all right, but not of the game.
(I'm probably being a bit unfair toward the overall argument that he was trying to make. Maybe the tone of the video in general just gets on my nerves. There is no good indie-gaming online television. Thankfully, there are some really great podcasts and lectures. I don't know. Maybe that Arte documentary made me feel rather bummed out about gaming as an industry. Still, I know I'm looking in the right places, because I'm playing some of the best games I've ever seen.)
DESIGN REBOOT HD from superbrothers on Vimeo.
DOT MATRIX REVOLUTION* from superbrothers on Vimeo.
I've been listening to a lot of Jonathan Blow lectures lately. He sometimes raises a concern about the type of audience that the industry is catering to, and what the larger significance of that direction might be. I'm coming to realize that, in a sense, the reason why these concerns feel relevant is that we've already lost a lot of ground. In looking at the area of graphics, people like to define certain types of games as "retro," which depending on the argument you're trying to make is either an attempt to pigeonhole and belittle what is possible in an indie effort, or make some kind of personal, self-aggrandizing statement. "Well, when I was on my Commodore." Rather than thinking Hi-Def and 60 fps (it's gotten to a point where when I read about modern gaming I'm completely at a loss as to what these specifications are really referring to), retro, lo-fi, or whatever, I would prefer to be thinking in terms of either what a game is doing in terms of what it invokes internally (abstraction in games has always succeeded as a conceptual framework on which further imaginative wandering can be hung), or in a visual design way, such as typographically, color theory, balance and asymmetry, etc. There are probably other elements of visual interest that I'm completely overlooking.
Also, Glum Buster must be happy, since they (he) just got a big, loving mention over on Boing Boing. I was about to write something about the percentage of people that would be likely to pirate Glum Buster, before suddenly remembering that GB is, in fact, free to download, and with a portion of donations given to charity. Indie game makers; they live in shires. (The problem of indies making money is actually a fairly serious one that I'm not in a position to talk about knowledgeably.)
My own Glum Buster progress was pretty roundly halted by one really killer puzzle that was more reflexes than brain power. But up until that one sticking point, my experience (I think I was just over half-way done) was pretty fantastic. That's one of the games that I'm most dying to finish, at the moment.
Through a rather convoluted path of interest, I've found myself thinking about the concept of "open world" games, which, though interesting, I feel is a rather narrow area of focus. Open world is less interesting, to me, than what it means to explore a space. What are your motivations for doing so? A pattern of item acquisition is a typical bread trail to encourage someone to explore a virtual space. But item acquisition can only be separated into either foraging, digging up items of little relative worth and no individuality, or pog collecting, accumulating unique items for the pleasure of examining them. Foraging behavior can be found in almost any modern game, and pog collecting is still quite popular as well. Siren did this really well, as does Psychonauts (some of its scavenger hunt items actually had very funny descriptions, maybe the only thing I actually did find amusing), Pokemon, the Sims, Shenmue. Harvest Moon tries and fails. Even when it's done well, it still feels wanting of something. I wonder if everyone doesn't have one round of pog collecting that they can engage in satisfactorily, and after that it isn't just a series of diminishing returns. After all, it's only an imitation of fairly base materialistic impulses. That's bound to create problems. (That's not true if you're collecting items that are interesting in and of themselves, but that is a serious challenge.)
Indie games don't really seem to rely on these techniques, by and large. They seem to be something else entirely. Instead of trying to successfully supply a narrative of quality, they aim to open up an abstracted interior space for speculative narration. Fan fiction, you might call it. At least, Enviro-Bear 2000 did that.
Das Überleben Dem Großen Sprung (PC)
This game doesn't leave any space open for an interpretation of its narrative because there is only the frame-work of its mechanics. It's lucky that those mechanics are completely exhilarating, something I don't think you can get watching videos. Although it's easier to improve with a stationary fall, you haven't really seen it in action until you start experimenting with the different methods of rotation. (Another really interesting aspect of independent game development is the bizarre fragmentation taking place. Below is what this game would look like made by a design team or programmer that totally doesn't get what I'm interested in, but was very instructive in making me realize what was valuable in Das Überleben Dem Großen Sprung. Specifically the sound. Das Überleben doesn't have music. It suggests a radio station, which I've never seen before and view as quite clever, creative and brimming with potential, but each level does have a sound design, consisting of roaring wind, falling water, and churning sounds of an abyss. Yes, please. If I'm going to fall eternally, I'm going to get pretty tired screaming like an idiot and listening to the worst, most generic extreme guitar bullshit I can find; who wouldn't rather just fall in silent concentration?)
(Please mute this video before playing.)
Queens by Noonat (Browser)
Not a unique game, but special for the emotional space that it successfully puts you into. Games that are actually hard tend to feel more vindictive now, in this stage of game design, and Queens relishes that sensation.
Warning Forever by Hikoza T. Ohkubo (PC)
My most recent new game. I'm not terribly well versed in the depths of the Dōjinshi shmup culture, which is quite large, terribly nerdy, and yet unnervingly static. I've never delved, because it always looked wider than deep. Warning Forever gets a lot of praise, though, and I've felt something of a hole since finishing Gamma Bros, so I decided to take the plunge. WF is essentially a skeleton. You have a ship that starts with its entire capability set activated from the start. You have one gun that doesn't get upgraded and is as good as it's going to get. It's capable of fine aiming in 360 degrees, and in a variable spread, and controlling it is natural, fast and exciting. There aren't stages, only bosses, and those bosses are supposed to change their structure as you play to reflect response toward the techniques you're exhibiting. Now that very core aspect is something that I feel I have yet to only barely observe, which could only mean that it's subtle.
Alright, finally got a second session, this time with sound. Wow. So this is what indie guys were freaking about about at that time. I found an interview with the developer of Everyday Shooter (which I still haven't played) that checks WF as an influence.
I feel a vague desire to be dismissive of Warning Forever simply because it's a shooter. Don't we have enough of those? Well... that's kind of missing something. Although WF isn't unique in what it is, it is quite singular in how it does what it does. I wasn't going to post a gameplay video since YouTube isn't very friendly to fast, clean, elegant vector graphics, but... well. Okay, here's a Russian playthrough and discussion with actual resolution. I suppose if it hasn't been cross-platformed by now...
Обзор Warning forever from Vitalii Zdanevich on Vimeo.
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