Garbage Dreams

Created by Duane Dunfield, Mai Iskander, Jeremy Bernstein, Kevin Kulp, Sean Nadeau, Alex Court

10 - 15 mins (but you'll probably need to play more than once and have good mouse skills)

Ok, hands up who knows stuff about recycling? Well, I know that I throw my paper, plastic and glass into an opaque bag and Mr Trashman takes it far far away from my conscience never to return. And that's all I need to know right? Even if I'm ignorant of why recycling is important, how recycling happens and what its limits are.

Fortunately for the likes of me and my conscience there's Garbage Dreams, a promo game for the 2009 film by Mai Iskander that seeks to increase our knowledge by pitting us against the recycling powers of the Zaballeen (Arabic for "garbage people") who live and work in the world's largest garbage village. 

You start with one neighbourhood, one factory and one hungry goat, and the objective is to expand your business as much as possible within 8 rounds. You have to stay within budget, make the right decisions with regards to upgrades and expansions, and then have quick mouse skills to recycle the right waste within the given time.

Immediately I was forced to learn about recycling in order to progress; I learned why I couldn't recycle things like coffee cups and plastic bags and found myself investing in education, and found it more profitable learning to recycle a greater variety of things rather than a greater volume of things. Also it became quickly apparent that each neighbourhood around Cairo had different characteristics and therefore had different costs to maintain and develop.

On the outskirts of Cairo, Garbage Dreams gives us a window into the way of life of the afore-mentioned Zaballeen. For centuries they have recycled a whopping 80% of the waste they collect to become the most efficient recycling community in the world. Unfortunately their livelihoods have been threatened by privatisation of the cities recycling services. Cairo has given contracts to companies that are only recycling 20% of the city's waste and leaving the rest to landfill. It's a situation which is ongoing and the Zaballeen waste system has since received international recognition as a model to follow.  

Be patient with this game. It's hard and it's not immediately rewarding. However I think the knowledge of recycling you gain, combined with a community under threat, along with a wider message of consumerism and privatisation makes it worth including in this blog. It's certainly unique, and I don't think a more in-depth game about recycling has ever been made. Enjoy - JP  

The Asylum 

(Psychiatric Clinic for Abused Cuddly Toys) 
Created by Parapluesch

About 2+ hours (unless you're a psychiatrist) 

This is a very, very dear game. One of my friends works in psychiatry and I just watched her laughing her head off as she was told that cuddly toys have no defence against the violent tantrums of their owners in a dysfunctional lonely world, and then I watched her methodically try to diagnose the mental health problems of a traumatised stuffed snake. And suddenly there you have it - the most realistic sim I've seen of psychiatric therapy that exists on the net, and it involves sock puppets, crazy toys, cuddly drugs and fluffy dream therapy.  

Once you get past the badly drawn nurse, what becomes immediately apparent in The Asylum is the incredibly high level of depth and personality in our cuddly characters, and the Sherlock Holmes-like diligence needed to solve the mystery of their cutesy wutesy mental illnesses.  

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In gameplay, tests on our furry friends do not work if applied haphazardly, also it sometimes takes time and repetition for a breakthrough to occur. This quickly brings home a sense of responsibility and commitment to the toy, and I admit I felt brilliant when I actually "helped" a toy overcome it's early 'toyhood' trauma. I now feel adequately qualified to go into an Asylum and give a few treatments here and there with my sock puppet :) 

Meanwhile it's isn't exactly clear what Parapluesch's motive is, why does this game exist? Throughout the game there are opportunities to buy a real toy as portrayed in the game, so I guess the motive could be to get people to buy cuddly toys, but the game is so deep and relatively unknown that I thought it unlikely that it's a for profit. There are crossovers with other toy projects, links to field studies, a link to a forum which had scores of "doctors" posting about treatment of cuddly toys... 

Digging a bit further into the Parapluesch website, there are diagrams on psychoanalysis of cuddly toys, you can find referral letters for each character, and even discussions on animism (the idea that non-human entities, including animals, plants, and often even inanimate objects can have souls). This is clearly much more than just a simple game. In fact I feel a bit like I've discovered some strange spiritual cult. What on earth is going on here? 

I finally googled the name "Martin Kittsteiner", the contact name at the bottom of the Parapluesch page, and found the truth. Martin Kittsteiner is a toymaker from Hamburg that thought it would be a good idea to create and sell toys with psychiatric problems that you could then solve online. There are brief articles and interviews scattered around the net in 2010 and nothing since, but the game remains and is being discovered to this day. Well. I hope Martin is doing well out of it. I'm going to order a Sly snake, or a Dr Wood crow. And never never do anything bad to it ever.

This is a great example of an idea FAR surpassing it's original intentions, I would argue that most players don't even know The Asylum is more than a web game, but many will wonder at how something so deep could ever have been created. Well now you know - Enjoy! - JP

400 Years 

Created by Scriptwelder

About 10 - 30 mins

Scriptwelder's rather zen offering takes patience. 400 years of patience to be exact. You are a sort of walking Easter Island head who wakes from his slumber with the vague knowledge that some sort of calamity is approaching. A calamity that you are going to try your damned hardest to prevent... in a very measured fashion of course. And off you trot at a stone's pace to do something to save the world.

Playing 400 Years can be a bit laggy on some browsers (the best link for me was the one I've posted here) and you may find yourself cursing our hero's inability to move faster or jump but these are all tolerable conditions in order to marvel at how the game uses TIME to overcome this. Your superpower is simply to be able to wait and not die, while helping your environment develop to aid you (mini spoilers ahead). 

The first time I watched my power manifest itself, I watched the seasons whizz by so that I could walk across a frozen lake in winter. This was mildly intriguing. When I planted a chestnut and waited decades for it to grow into a tree to climb, I felt that this was rather special. By the time I was helping civilisations out of hunger by introducing crops to them, so that they evolve and build bridges for me; that's when I realised I was playing a great game. 

400 years is a unique gaming concept that hasn't been explored in this way before. The music is great too, a tinkling soundtrack that adds to the feeling of biding one's time and patience. Finally the ending made me feel that I'd experienced a mini fable of timeless and dignified self-sacrifice without expectation. Enjoy! - JP

ImmorTall 

Created by Evan Miller 

About 5 - 20 mins

I realise that if I'm not careful, I'm going to end up with a blog that is full of thinky games that sort of leave people confused and a little depressed. Actually that thought makes me pretty cheerful. 

"How do you WIN?!?" scream the forums around this particular game. Well you er, don't and that it seems, is the point here.

ImmorTall has been around for a while and unlike the tortured genius and complex existential mechaniss of Infinite Ocean, or vastly researched playability of Oiligarchy. Creator Evan Miller has stumbled upon something profound with a game that only requires the use of your computer's left and right keys.   

You are a wormy alien crashed on earth and discovered by a little girl. Her and her brother feed you and you grow much bigger, you then are taken in by her family. All would be calm and peaceful in the forest if it weren't for the rest of humanity, who aren't friendly at all, callously shooting through the family to get at you. But you are big, strong and tall. Big enough to shield others from mortars and bullets, or big enough to try and outrun attacks without protecting the family which nurtured you, or big enough to turn tail and leave the earth behind completely. 

There's a quiet and grave dignity about ImmorTall that sets it aside from most games, in fact many will question whether it is a game at all. From the atonal soundtrack and sfx to the slick yet emotive silhouetted graphical style, Immortal is a 3 minute experience that will leave you wondering who the real monsters are. Also it will test your character (as an alien) in terms of how far you are willing to go to protect those you care for. Love - an altogether human concept - is portrayed by an alien with a subtle variety of consequences and endings.  

There is a surprising amount of thought in the simple AI personalities ascribed to each of the family, when someone dies certain members will grieve, oblivious in their tears to the danger around them (which is stressful since you may be trying desperately to keep them alive). Other members seem bullheaded and cowardly at the same time, willing to put others in danger but at the first sign of trouble retreating behind other family members.  

Many people have come away from this games feeling a little downtrodden and wistful about the human condition. If this is the case with you then welcome to the club; ImmorTall is an experience where it can be said that rather than you playing the game, the game plays you. Sucker :)