Art Game

If James Lipton interviewed game creators, he'd have Edmund McMillen sit across the table, then state with breathless, definitive poise: "And then you did Clubby The Seal."

This is the work of a deranged, austere soul: a badland vista, a range of horrible, mutant creatures, an alien fetus, a living ball of tar. Compiled together, you have more carcinogens and tasty flavor additives than an industrial cigarette. He's a brimming, creative LED, burning efficiently but also with a sickly, radioactive aura, his distortions splurging as if through a spigot.

The first project listed in the collection is Gish, which many saw upon first release as a benchmark of quality in the then young "indie" segment. Collaborating with a programmer buddy, McMillen carved the distinct character designs and aesthetic of the bizarre, tar-tastic roll-scape. The results marked a major milestone in his career.

Over only a few years, McMillen has been involved with the creation of 11 more games, mostly short-form casual/art/warped jaunts into a rapid imagination. His web comic, The Outlands, paints the setting from which five of these titles are mined. Each one puts you in the role of a different mutant species existing in the fraid desert. A Cactus that kills not for food, but for sport; an in vitro glob of flesh called a "dumpling"; a skull-toothed brain parasite; a wispy, wailing whelp. What's most striking is that these are not merely cosmetic explorations, each game is its own. While Host and Peashy are typical 2d, spatially-oriented, collision-em-ups, the Whelting and Dumpling games are pretty fresh dynamics, like Diner Dash meets Rosemary's Baby meets Mr. Rogers meets Planescape: Torment. Why not?

His most intriguing works, however, are his latest.

When Coil was released, the Jay Is Games mailing list was buzzing with discussion. Many of us wanted to praise it, with some claiming to "get" it, and others enjoying the vague mystique. One woman called it "totally offensive shit". Coil is an "art game" more firmly than his other work, by far, having you play mini-games, without instruction, that mark periods of a pregnancy. Thematically, it's a more somber look at gestation as a game arc, originally played out in Viviparous Dumpling. Its text leaves implications of a rape victim coming to terms with her condition... or does it? The meaning, like the gameplay, is largely open to inference.

His most recent title was Twin Hobo Rocket, a phallic-themed game where you and your hobo friend sit at the base of a rocket, trying to hit up aliens for change. Hilarious bits of speech annotate this hallucinated fund-raiser. It's a nice yo-yo back from the avant-garde ineffability of Coil.

The compilation site is hosting Windows-only, .exe builds of these titles. However, with an easy bit of Googling, you can play the Flash builds in your browser. I asked McMillen if he wouldn't compile and host .swf files, but he declined. I guess he's pretty much giving the finger to all non-Windows people. That's ok, he's a fucking genius.

Click through for video review.

What's the best way to express one's angsty, teenage feelings these
days? Many would pick up a guitar and write a pop song. Others might
set about writing a self-indulgent autobiographical novel. This Singaporean lad bared his soul to the world by making a game, and that
very fact immediately raises him high in my estimation.

The game in question –- QRP -– is a charming way to spend five minutes. The designer intended it to express how he felt about girls when he was in school, and indeed I do feel that I achieved a fairly good understanding of how he felt about them by playing this game.

Lost in the Static is visually striking game, quite unlike anything you've seen before. As you can immediately understand from the screenshot. Right?

Well, no, you can't. Let's try again. Lost in the Static is a conventional, short, enjoyable platformer with nothing particularly innovative about the gameplay. But the mechanism by which it produces its images is highly unusual, with effective music that (purposefully, one assumes) carries a sense of the static you might get by playing music on an old AM radio or a 45 turntable, providing an interesting and artistic emotional frame for the game itself.

Passage is a special kind of game made by an unusual kind of game developer. Jason Rohrer lives with his wife and child in a cabin in upstate New York. This cabin is specially insulated to maintain heat during the winter; it has means of collecting rainwater and a fully implemented garden in the back yard. As a result, Jason and his family live on around $800 a month. He has an MS in Computer Science and experience doing network applications, but he doesn't play the Corporate America game. Instead, he's free, and he's free to make beautiful art games that, like his house, are technically and experientially tight to the point of self-sufficiency.

Passage is about the literal passage through a maze, but it is also about the passage of time. You begin as a young man; you have a wall fore-grounded directly to your north, and can move to the right or explore the maze to the south. Early on you encounter a woman; if you bump into her you will fall in love and become her companion. Together you walk through life, illustrated as a variation in wallpaper; you age together, you explore together.

nullpointer is a digital artist who experiments with algorithmically generated digital imagery. Playing around with fractals, he decided that rather than simply exposing people to pretty pictures, he wanted them to interact with the imagery. And being a serious fan of old-school shmups, he created this game in which you interact with the images by (what would you expect?) shooting them.