MinecraftPointless | Submitted by costik on Wed, 08/12/2009 - 16:42. |
Back in the day, I entered Habitat and played around with it. And I remember Chip Morningstar telling me that it "wasn't just a game," and thinking "Too bad! It could be a pretty good game!" That is, if you bolted on some, you know, actual gameplay. Something to do. An objective.
<Backspace<The Logs of Yesteryear | Submitted by costik on Wed, 01/07/2009 - 16:09. |
<Backspace< is, in essence, a typing game from Sean Chan (creator, among others, of Battleships Forever). It has some interesting visuals -- floating text in the background, a chartreuse-on-black scheme reminiscent of an old school monitor, circa 1982. You're presented with text to type, and the faster you do so (accurately), the more points you score.
The gimmick is that the text you type is an MSN chat log. The "load" option defaults to subfolder in your Documents folder where MSN stores chat logs, and you can load any one. You're typing both sides of the conversation.
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.
