Think of this as the game equivalent of a webcomic. To follow this train of thought, the advent of the internet allowed cartoonists free reign in their work. It's like making an underground zine where everybody is a potential reader. All someone needs to make a webcomic is a scanner or MS Paint, but it wasn't till recently that Flixel was released and game developers were given the tools to rapidly create short, online little games. Developer Pixelate set out to make four of these experimental webgames for every week of December, and this is the fruit of his labor.
All four episodes are unconventional and take less than five minutes to complete. The first one is about building a social network, you're a small ghost in a dark maze where the walls are invisible. If you're alone you won't get far, but if you make contact with somebody else they will light up the path they walk over. Make enough friends and you can reach the exit. The second episode (pictured above) tackles how to make a platformer without having the "jump" verb. The third one is tough if you aren't musically inclined, but as a guitar player I dug it. The final episode is an alternate way to view having an NPC significant other ala Passage, here you choose which path to take and the other person does likewise. It takes more effort to stay on the same wavelength, so to speak, but (through aesthetics) it makes the argument that staying together is more desirable.
With Flixel and the upcoming Flash Punk it seems that there's a future in this format. Maybe one day we'll all have our favorite weekly games bookmarked right next to our webcomics. Here's to hoping.
Curiouser and curiouser
I found 3 difficult, as you predicted. I found 2 rather buggy, and got stuck on a few levels. None of them was particularly interesting in and of itself, except in an experimental sense (which is how they were intended, I realise), but taken as a whole it's an interesting series of meditations.
The culmination of the four
The culmination of the four episodes is what lead me to doing the write-up. There's tons of untapped potential here; one could make a nibble-sized adventure game focusing on a punchline, we could have a story-driven platformer that doles out a level and snippet of dialogue a week, or like Pixelate they could release an experimental proof of concept and churn out cool ideas. Alternatively, developers could go the comic book route and deliver monthly and have a substantial amount of content each release. Once developers get used to these tools and learn how to tell a story via gameplay some cool shit will emerge.
I'd recently considered a
I'd recently considered a blog in a game format myself.
But really I'd hope they'd learn to make games where the player tells his own story, within/with the concepts the game author puts in. Thus merging the concepts the authors interested in, and the players own story telling desire.
I almost think telling a story via gameplay is an oxymoron, rather like the Forges 'impossible thing before breakfast' which I can't seem to find a link to right now.