A Dark Room

Created by Doublespeakgames

2 hours 

Haven't written for a bit, was starting to worry that I wasn't really finding any games worth blogging about until I found this gem from doublespeak games. 

Taking minimalism to new heights - this is the first screen for "A Dark Room":

You start the fire. You try to keep the fire going. You need to get more wood to to keep the fire going. There is no telling where you are or what you have to do apart from just keep stoking the fire. The room gets warmer. Suddenly a stranger hurtles through the doorway and collapses in the corner. It is freezing outside apparently. She does nothing for a while as you find you need to collect more wood, a new option appears for you to visit the forest outside. When you have gathered more wood, the person has thawed and says she can build things, and if you build more things, people will come.

This is the beginning of a seriously EPIC adventure in text form. You have no idea what is coming next but as you figure out the game's rhythms and try to balance your resources, you slowly become obsessed by it, collecting things you don't know the use for (yet) and consumed by a burning desire to build and learn more things.

I'll give you some carrots for perseverance. 1 - there is a map. 2. If you play your cards right you'll see the stars. 

From zero to space hero in the most minimal way possible. This is evolution at it's finest. JP :)

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

Treasure Box 

Created by Nanahiro Wada 

About 5 mins (longer if you can't read music).

Ever wanted to PLAY the beginning of a Monty Python's Flying Circus? Well now you can with Treasure Box, created by Nanahiro Wada. It took me a while to track him down, but I really do recommend clicking his name above and catching a glimpse of his world - it's a good world and certainly very wacky. 

Anyway I won't dwell here too much. Treasure box is exactly what it says on the tin, it also has an ageless feel that adds to the inward pleasure of this interactive visual feast. If you can't read music it might take you slightly longer, but only slightly. Enjoy the game :) - JP 

Oiligarchy

Created by Paolo Perdecini

About 20 - 60 mins 

You know, this blog is EASY. I just write whatever comes into my head and it like, is counted as information by way of it being somewhere online. Sorry, my head is still reeling from the existential wonderland of Infinite Ocean (last post). Anyway as I do these little posts I find I am checking out the creators of the games and looking at their takes, then looking at other bloggers who like these games and seeing their appreciation and critiques. I feel like I have stumbled onto a somewhat undiscovered, intellectual and wonderful part of the gaming community. However I will endeavour not to become too chinstrokey and therefore... buttocks, poo and willies. 

Oiligarchy is little, yellow and different. For a game made in 2008 it's very close to what we now are seeing as the uncaring reality in 2014. Tar sands, arctic drilling, fracking (it's gas I know), are all part of our reality now, and we don't seem to care as a people, let alone attempt to stop it. Apathy is rife.

However it's the little acts that count, and many kids who have mistakenly clicked on Oiligarchy thinking vacantly "Oo! I get to be an rich oil baron!" will have quickly and expertly been guided to the wisdom that oil is war, oil is subjugation and oil is ultimately inhuman. Whilst being very entertained. 

I've played through about 3 times now and each time I'm astounded about how much detail is in there, stats, peak oil forecasts, secret government plots to invade oil rich nations. There is deeper meaning in seeing how politicians are just passive partners that need a little money thrown at them in order to aid the oily agenda, it doesn't matter who wins when they are both being funded by the same interest. But we knew that already didn't we? 

Paolo Perdecini has managed a marvellous act of making the player the perpetrator of atrocity in order to 'win', pitting our morality against our ego in trying to beat the game. I also like how money becomes almost inconsequential next to the robot-like feeling of power you get in expanding and progressing at the cost of EVERYTHING. I've killed off indigenous tribes, massacred marine life, invaded the middle east, but I have yet to create human oil/fuel resources; I haven't yet got that far (I got the "Farewell West Ending"). Ironically the morally best ending for the world is the one where you 'lose' i.e. you lose your grip on politics, oil dependency decreases and there is the beginning of the transition to a more carbon neutral future. 

Here's a detailed postmortem by Paolo that will knock your socks off, play the game first though. I hope you enjoy it - JP

The Infinite Ocean

Created by Jonas Kyratzes 

About 30 - 120 mins

 











Ok, I reckon when you first play Infinite Ocean you will think "this is shit". However the reality is that you have no patience young padawan. In truth if you don't persevere with this game and get a slowly growing sense of trepidation and wonder, YOU are shit. Go back to Candy Crush Saga, we don't WANT you to play, bam! Ahem. That is to say, sometimes it may be challenging and I certainly needed to use a walkthrough at times. 

In short, this awkward, tense, black and white monolith slowly evolved into one of the most moving games I've ever played. Seriously, how can a progression of mostly text based blocky windows almost make a grown man cry? I've written and deleted a few sentences here before realising that I can't write any more about the story unless I want to give some of the plot away. Also I am lazy, so here is a great blog post from The Nocturnal Rambler with spoiler alerts that will give you more info than I ever could. 

The writing is amazing, the development of main character of the story is what makes Infinite Ocean so compelling. Also, it really seems that a point and click environment is the only way the story could be told to this level of effectiveness. A movie couldn't do it better, or a book. 

Dear readers, if anything justifies the existence of the point and click format, and indeed the world of casual gaming itself, it's this. Enjoy - JP

Samorost

Created by Jakub Dvorský

About 10 - 15 mins

 







I played this game in 2003 and it was instantly unforgettable, way ahead of it's time and has gained a cult following ever since. Music and sfx are brilliant, and sometimes you feel like you are playing within a piece of organic art. Amanita Design have since created a few more games, including one of the best games EVER made - Botanicula - but if you want to see where it all started this is where to go. Enjoy!