ChaserFollow With Jägerbomb | Submitted by the99th on Wed, 01/27/2010 - 14:57. |
Chaser invites you to follow it at first, you're thinking its another lo-fi arcade game where the emphasis on extremely iconic entities makes the simplicity of the controls stand-out and gives you something to meditate on as you fail over and over. It is that. It is more. But it won't tell you just yet, you've got to chase it.
Free Will: The GameMetagame or Philosophical Argument | Submitted by costik on Fri, 07/10/2009 - 18:20. |
Like Upgrade Complete and Achievement Unlocked, Free Will is metacommentary on games in the form of a game. In this case, the design trope it is addressing is one of the oldest mechanics of the videogame: the ability to replay or continue, the fundamental consequencelessness of "death."
In form, Free Will is a GameBoy-like Flash title, with the sort of black-and-white sepiatone graphics you would expect to see on a primitive handheld device, and the moment-to-moment gameplay is a spot-on re-creation of the platformers of yore. It is, however, only one level in length (despite the existence of stage-and-world numbers at screen bottom, which imply a lengthy Mario-like saga).
The surprise, and indeed the point of this short game, comes when you die and replay. Spoiler and discussion below the fold; you might want to play it yourself first, which won't take long.
The Chinese RoomBe a Turing Machine! | Submitted by EmilyShort on Thu, 02/14/2008 - 22:31. |
The Chinese Room is a little like Norman Juster's Phantom Tollbooth in interactive form. Taking place entirely in the realm of philosophical thought experiment, The Chinese Room tackles questions about the nature of perception, the foundations of ethical systems, and the theoretical basis of calculus. If you've ever wanted to meet Aristotle or Karl Marx in text adventure form, this is your opportunity.
Gregory Weir swerves from the psychology of being trapped in a room or the body of a tentacled monster to give us a casualized take on the hacking type of game we could probably use more of. In fact, now that it´s been thematized to a more blantant puzzle, I think we can go ahead and level these things up to "sub-genre" status, in the same way that a Squire in FF Tactics levels up to become a Thief. The game itself doesn´t have a whole lot to do with actual hacking; it´s an abstract logic tracing game with time sensitivity on a turn-based cycle. That´s my one sentence analysis. You just click on these little packet launchers and try to clear a packet to the pyramid (why is the cliched hacking goal always a pyramid? Is there some Amon Ra/Illuminati current to the cyberpunk genre?). In order to clear it you have to shoot switches and things, which means you have to figure out the right order of packets to fire with the right timing.
