LOTFL Commentary: Stagnation

For those moments when I catch myself with the loaming deadline and no time to sit and review a game I bring you some commentary on the scene.  For which I will bring up stagnation today.

You see, as I'm sure some of you have noticed, it sometimes feels like you are playing the same game over and over game... just with a slightly differing aesthetic... if your lucky.  I know we see this in AAA gaming, where as game cost five time more to make and sell than movies no one wants to take risks.  So that should mean that in the world of the flash game, as they are cheaper to make, there should be no stagnation.  Yet there is.

Why?  While I cannot dispute that the lowered bar of entry has made it easier for creative people who are broke to make masterpieces it has also made it easier for talentless hacks to create more shit to add to the internet as the same lowering of the entry costs makes it easier for every dick-obsessed twelve-year-old with a bootlegged version of Flash to make something.

Here's the deal.  Innovation breeds imitation breeds stagnation.  Its just, again, with the reduced costs and time to build a game, has sped up the process that turns the unique into a cliche.  This is why there are so many Hedgehog Launcher knockoffs and why most TD games are the same game with a different skin.

It doesn't help that there are people out there who want to make games, but have only played, like, five games in their lives ie the twelve year old.  This is why we see a lot of Mario-remakes in Flash, and why most Flash Games, especially on NewGrounds where content is user-generated, tend to be remakes of the same game.

There is a final horror that, alongside the cost of entry, developer/s do not have to answer to a publisher.  Oh, high end indy developers might have to sing for their supper for a site like Armor Games or Kongregate, but there are a friegtonne of sites that are not as scrupulous, and then there is the infamous NewGrounds, as, like mentioned earlier, is purely user generated content.  Now, I should ask you: do you think a publisher would have allowed games like Death Trap or Horror to be developer?  I seriously doubt they would have rubber stamped the Godlimitations trilogy simply for its religious context (not because someone told them that their game made no sense).

Course, I'm not advocating for quality control on the internet.  I mean, it would be nice not to find shit everywhere I go, but the issue boils down to when it stops being quality control and when it starts being censorship.  Topic for another time.

Course, at least in this sea of TD clones, stupid point and click adventure games, and pretension, at least there is enough being ejected through the sewerpipe that someone shat out a gem or two on occasion.  However, after doing this for a month everything is looking the god-dam same.

Thousand Dollar Soul

Link to game

Guess what?  I made a game!  I made a game, I made a game.

No, its not Thousand Dollar Soul, that would be silly.  Me review/comment/discuss a game I made?  Retarded!

Seriously though, to celebrate the first installment of my DHTML game Beneath the Shadows of Cydonia, I'm looking at the game that I credit for some of the idea for.  That game is Thousand Dollar Soul, a flash game in the Interactive Fiction genre...

Yeah, one of those games.  Many hear "Interactive Fiction" and think "Pretentious game with no 'gameplay' whatsoever."  These games harken to the day of the 'choose your adventure' storybooks that fell out of favour when enough of us realized how stupidly easy it is to program such a game.  It is one of the reasons why Beneath the Shadows of Cydonia went this route.  That and my graphic art sucks (thank you Hero Machine!).

Digression aside, the game, if I can call it that, follows an awkward teenage boy named Todd, who gets a visit from his future self, with a determined desire to get Todd hitched with the girl of his dreams: the elusive Angela.

Gameplay revolves around reading a wall of text, and from that deciding from a list of options what to do based on what was read.  This post won't be as image intensive as the game screen at any given time looks a lot like this:

Now I should also note that this has multiple endings, and a little achievements system that encourages you to get all the endings.  Sigh.

Though I should note that the music is really fantastic.  There are only three tones in the game, but they are highly atmospheric and seem to fit in with whatever is happening in the story.  Other than the usual looping to annoyance that I've started to expect from game music this shit is amazing.

Ok, its IF, so if you really hate reading this isn't for you.  There, I saved you some reading.

To further this, gameplay ends up going into "scrub the timeline" mode where you just randomly click options just to get another ending out of it, making individual choices meaningless.  This was where I departed with Thousand Dollar Soul when I made Beneath the Shadows of Cydonia, where I tried to have the choices mean so much more than that.

Still though, I can't go on about this game without bringing up our favourite mature woman who is screwing the immortal friend of her parents.  So...

I totally saw that one... spoilers ahoy!

Now, if I may, the first time I played though this I went with my instincts.  I tell Angela that I knew of her mother's heart attack because I had psychic powers.  I tell my future self to shove his 'angelfire' up his ass (by the way I Google searched this out of morbid curiosity and I am pleased to inform you that there is no such drug).  I claim to love Angela and I stop my future self from peeping at her in the bathroom.  Seriously, what kind of pervert monster did I become?  Course, I defend Angela from muggers, marry here years later and tell her to get her brain scanned as she had a tumor in it.  It ends with me talking to her conscience in a computer of sorts.

In that run alone I get the impression that my future self is someone that can't (and shouldn't) be trusted, and in later playthroughs... fuck is the future Todd a piece of work.  He spends the story trying to get me to take advantage of Angela, and there are moments where he tries to get in on it.  In some playthroughs I find that the police are on to him for something really horrible.

Now, the title of the game sounds really weird, and I can say that this does get explained, while there is the loaming question of whether or there is actual time-travel involved, or if everything is from the perspective of a character in a simulation.  There are some really trippy moments, like one where the perspective shifts to Angela.

I think I can say that while the story starts of a bit slow this little flash game might actually be better than the AAA title Heavy Rain.  There is a sense of intrigue that this game brings that does make the repeat plays necessary to understand what the fuck is going on, but if you don't have the patiences to do that much reading this is not for you.

Oh, and play Beneath the Shadows of Cydonia prologue.

Yes, I feel very ashamed.  Why ask?

Every Day the Same Dream

Link to Game

Get up, go to work, go to bed, get up, go to work, go to bed, get up, go to work, go to bed, get up, go to work, go to bed, get up, go to work, go to bed...

Its going to be one of those games.

While I've mentioned that art games can be nothing more than the polish one puts on a turd, a 'true' art game is suppose to demonstrate that interactive media is capable of high art.  Now, my opinion on whether or not this is a game worth your time is irrelevant because Extra Credit beat me to the punch, and who am I to argue with Daniel Floyd?

Seriously, how?

So, anyways, back to Every Day the Same Dream.  Everyone get your razor blades, its one of those games.

By that I mean that, in honour of the Ture Art is Angsty, this has all that any aspiring art game has: its in black and white, its bleak, it does not have a happy ending, and it involves someone losing themselves one way or another.

So, you're this dude.

In your little appartment.  You have a bitch for a wife.

Everyday you must commute to work

At the cubicle farm.

For your boss the jerk.

Yes, it is going to be one of those games.  For gameplay involves walking around from point A to point B, wash rinse repeat... just like real life if you think about it, all while the depressing music plays on in the background.  Course, there is more to it than that, else the Extra Credit crew wouldn't have bothered to mention it.

I mean, there's this:

To translate there are five things you can do at certain points of this routine to make the day different.  Each make the day different in their own awesome way.

Now, this is definitely a 'true' art game, and not a pretentious douche with access to Adobe Flash.  However, I think we all know that this is a game worth at least one peek, so, let me discuss the darker implementation of this game.

First of all this game scares me.  It really does.

You see, I bet there are many of you reading this now who feel that their life is like Every Day the Same Dream?  Everyday is the same boring routine with no end in sight, over and over again.  Now, the thing that gets me is that when I finally finish my schooling and end up out in the world of work the life of the protagonist is the life that I look forward to leading.

Does this scare anyone else?  Is anyone else reminded of their futile life if this is your reality?

Now, for more details.

This one's more fitting to subject matter than the one I usually use.  Yeah, spoiler time.

Ok, so I think that the game is documenting the demise of the protagonist.

How, do the changes in a certain order... it will all make sense.

I mean, check out that brown leaf at the entrance to the work building.  The player, and therefore the protagonist likely noticed that the colour was out of place.

Next the guy gets stuck in traffic and walks out of his car to find a cow.  Only interesting thing to happen to him that day.

It gets to him, so he shows up to work naked!  His boss was not impressed.

Now jobless he goes for a walk downtown where he talks to a hobo, who shows him to a quiet place:

So the protagonist takes the last step: hurls himself from a tall building to his demise.

The interesting thing is, if you notice, at every step the chart at work keeps taking a nose-dive?  Then, when all the steps are taken the company goes out of business?  Something is being symbolized here.

Really, the only escape from the dull waste that is life might be suicide.  The harsh reality is that this is life for some of us... I know it will be for me once I get my BA and be working for some tech firm.  It gets hard to be excited about life when you know this is all you can aspire to.

That is what the game is showcasing ultimately.  Is the only way out death?  I don't know, though it feels like it a lot of the time.  Course, I don't want to endorse suicide, but if there is another option I am open to it.

Bowja the Ninja

Link to game

I have a confession to make.

I have a guilty pleasure for games on pencilkids.com.  I mean, I know these are games intended to be played by six year olds, aka that demograph that could be playing an epilepsy-trigger app and think its the cat's bollocks.  I know these games look so diabetically cute, with big-eyed characters that drip with insincere cuteness.  I know that you could play through many of these games in under fifteen minutes without a walkthrough.

I still think these games are awesome.  So let me introduce you to the game that introduced me to pencilkids.com: Bowja the Ninja.

Anyways, this is a point and click adventure game where you play the role of a ninja named Bowja (oh no fuck) and your red-jumper ass is charged to commit murder on Randy the Robot.

and have rival ninjas swear at you.

So you see my introduction to a site dedicated to kid's games was an innocent title that dripped with badass on top of cuteness.  Now there are things that I like about Bowja the Ninja that wouldn't have been placed into a game intended to be played by teenage boys suffering from testostrone poisoning.

For one thing, Bowja focuses on stealth and using the environment to outsmart his enemies and achieve his goals.  The reason for this is obvious: a focus on violence like one would see in other games about ninjas is a blatant foe-pas if you are making a game for kids.  This actually makes Bowja interesting, as he is doing things that actual ninjas are doing, sneaking around to dispatch his foes and progress though the game, not by getting into multi-man melees with a bunch of baddies.

Isn't making a circular block a wood roll onto a baddie more awesome than simply reducing said baddie into gibbets?

Now, there are many awesome things that Bowja the Ninja finds himself doing over the course of the game.  I mean, this is a game for kids and kids do have a higher tolerance for weird than adults do.  I mean, there's a moment in this game, as an example, where you have to shoot down a helicopter with your bow!

In a broken light-rail lift!

Now, this game has some interesting puzzles that not only have enough rhyme to reason that you can figure them out without a walkthrough, but some of them are kind of brilliant.  Now, remember that kids aren't going to have the patience to go reading up walkthroughs on puzzles that employ no logic to them whatsoever.  While there is a degree of combing the screen for hotspots to click everything you need to do comes intuitively.  As a Dr. Song example, there is a bossfight with a helicopter where the solution is to shoot the tail propeller.

Pro-tip: this game LOVES roman numerals

Course, as this is a point and click game, shit needs to be click in a certain manner, and this is how you commit your murder on Randy the Robot and other shit.  Course, I'll admit I was disappointed with Randy the robot: I mean he started off badass by shooting at Bowja every time he had his red little head poke up, but it took only one click to dispatch of the threat... or at least I think it was a threat... we are never really told why Randy needed to be discommissoned... I'll just assume that Bowja needed to prove his badassness by taking out a war mech so he can get earn the title of master or something.

Bowja makes robot murder look so easy

Course, you beat the game and get a screen linking you to the pencilkids site where you can claim a desktop background for beating the game or something... look, unless you are a member of the game's target audience you will not care.  Also, this game is short... or at least it felt short.  Maybe the kids that play this game might find it tough, but older player should be able to get through it within at most thirty minutes.

The game aesthetics are just so fitting with what you might get from a children's cartoon about a ninja.  Everyone has a high-pitch voice and the game avoids grey and brown a lot.  Its bright in some points and dark in others.  And Bowja is a cute little guy... I mean cute in a non-sexual manner, please don't get the wrong idea.

Now, if you are a douchbag whose homophobia is so sever anything colourful and cute will cause your testes to shrink into your groan don't play this game.  However, for the rest of us that is secure enough in their sexuality and social standing that playing Kirby wouldn't destroy us, well, for what its worth, Bowja the Ninja is a fun little distraction.  Really, it is!  Go play it and see why I do like pencilkids.com.

Fault Line

Link to Game

Jump, split, jump, split, jump, split...

Yeah, this is an interesting puzzle/platformer game, a game in a genre intended to keep the 2D platformer from dying out.  Now, I've already noted my aversion to platformers in the flash realm in my Endeavor review, and I put it on the simple fact that the platformer handles more awkwardly with a keyboard in place of a controller.  Now, this game is interesting, if of anything.

The controls involve using either the discriminating WASD or the arrow keys to move around while occasionally using the mouse to connect nodes together that 'fold' part of the level together.

Now, let me take a moment to rave about the amount of programming prowess and animation awesomeness that went into that effect of the stage folding into itself like that.  I mean, holy shit!  Play the game for yourself and you will know what I mean.  I mean, the nice illusion of 3D being employed is mindblowing.  The graphics do remind me of gaming on the SNES, right down to the mode-7-esque moment with the folding.  I just wanted to note that for it isn't an easy thing to achieve, trust me on this.

Moving on to parts of the game the reader base might actually care about, the game itself, there are also horrible knob things to contend with... and what would a platformer taking a retro look be without moving platforms!

Casting two birds with one stone

Aside from the sparky knobbies there are also lasers.  Now, anything that is in a fold will go with it, and if you are stuck in a fold it gets reverted and you are going to have to figure out how to fold it.  Now, along the way there are also switches that will reset folds back to their original positions.

Lazers, check.  Platform, check.

So the puzzle aspect of the game is to fold and unfold the stage in a manner where you can clear it to move on to the next stage of the game.  Course, as I hinted to earlier, as the game asks you to use the mouse and keyboard, you are likely going to be using the WASD setup instead of the arrow keys, and lets hope your not a poor soul in Germany that has an AZERTY keyboard.

Course, there are later moments in the game where there are pre-folded places, and they serve to screw around with moving platforms more than anything else... after all, what if a fold intercepted the usual course of a moving platform?

This apparently.  Interesting temporal anomaly!

So, the game appears to be reinforming this motif that you are a robot test subject going through various rooms with a prototype device that can fold the bounds of reality.  I mean, this is the vibe that the game music gives me, and why everything is machinery... other than maybe the pixel artist didn't want to make a person.  I mean, the music is in a minor key, and gives this sciencey feel with an undertone of hopelessness.  That, and there is a lot of purple.

Overall, it is an interesting take on the genre of puzzle/platformer that is worth a peek, though I can't rave on about it after that.  Its fun, its interesting, and its a brain buster.  If your looking for a douchy art game this isn't it, but if you are an old guard gamer missing sprites you will love this.