The Crossing

Most games aspire either to thud-and-blunder or cuteness -- or, as with Zelda, sometimes both at once. It's exceedingly rare to find a game you might legitimately characterize as, well -- a tone poem.

In The Crossing, the screen is filled with a beautifully lit forest crossing. Deer spring nobly from left to right across the screen, but at screen middle is a chasm. Left to their own devices, they will plunge, sadly, to their deaths.

You control a paddle. Yes, a paddle, a line straight out of Pong, moving from left to right across the screen, with no vertical movement, in accordance with your mouse. If you position your paddle so that a springing deer lands on it as it attempts to cross the chasm, it will leap safely to the other side. Sometimes, depending on the strength of its leap, you will need to guide it twice before it reaches safety.

Each time a deer touches down, the size of your paddle diminishes; but occasionally, stars fall from the sky, and if your paddle intercepts one, it grows. Of course, sometimes you have to choose between rescuing a beautiful forest denizen and increasing your paddle so you can rescue others.

In the meantime, a haunting woodland orchestral tune plays.

Yes, there's a scoring system; if too many deer die, you lose, and each you guide to safety gains you points. And yes, this isn't a game you're likely to play for hours on end, because it's much of a sameness after a while.

Yet there's a haunting quality to it; the music and the imagery are beautiful, and these noble woodland creatures need your help. Despite the inherent simplicity of the system, and the fact that the frame is virtually all -- it would be nothing like the game it is with monocolor blips adhering to the same physics -- still, you cannot play this game without being moved, and without thinking: "This is art, in its own way."