Blind Drive

I always thought it would be interesting for gaming to put on some sort of physical limitation to the gaming experience so that it might herald in new forms /gaming genres. Like, eliminating one sense from the equation and letting the player's hightened experience and anxiety do the rest. In Blind Drive you get to drive a car along a main road just by using the sense of hearing. As you progress and get accustomed to the fact that you don't see the road ahead , in comes music and other distractions. Strangely enough , the experience doesn't come off as fake- despite simple graphics and limited commands available you feel genuinely entertained. Plus you can always remove the statistics from the screen and make it even more life-like and immersive. Highly recommended!

THE NIGHT JOURNEY

The Night Journey is an art installation as much as it is a computer game and, being a decade-long art project , it managed to prove art belonged in gaming.Your choices and actions inform on the hazy landscape, changing it all the way to an ineviable darkness of the nightfall.Viola's responsive installation/world /archive is combined with timeless poetic passages by famous mystics. Our deeply emotional reaction to this game and its artistic stimuli transcends the notion of a gaming experience. But then again, why shouldn't our gaming experience include our observations on and experience of art and art exhibitions?

THE ARTIST IS PRESENT

Recreating a part of a MOMA  conceptual performance experience in the form of a short computer game is certainly something I haven't seen before.The pixelated graphics, the painfully slow motion of the protagonist and the aggravating period of waiting only to be awarded by a silent encounter with an unflattering image if Marina Abramovic represent a highly personal take on this exhibition. Although this game might be a dart at MOMA, Marina Abramovic or contemporary art (no viewer pays attention to a famous Matisse painting to their left) , and though the game maker clearly and effectively showed what he thought about the show and the pricing, it is still significant that it was made. It makes people think  of the significance of high art and its misinterpretation in our lives and inspires some to get acquainted with Marina's extensive opus. I wish there were more games challenging people this way.  

you can play this game here:

http://www.pippinbarr.com/games/theartistispresent/TheArtistIsPresent.html

OK/NORMAL

Finally -a soundtrack to your typical vaporwave album cover !This early 90s-inspired third-person 3d delight is everything that a sinister vaporwave genre might evoke. I do not see OK/NORMAL as a visualisation of a traumatised psyche , but a world your normal, everyday, consumer-self might conjure  while connecting the "wrong" dots. If you seek a unique combo of grievances about your gaming self and games of today in a single title OK/NORMAL might just be what you've been looking for.

FELIX THE REAPER

An elegant, overweight harbinger of death named Felix (what a clever name choice!) hopelessly in love with life and dancing and a certain Betty is instructed by the Ministry of Death to terminate people. Playing a full-blown psychopath with eerily whimsical dance moves cavorting in the shadows of a series of cleverly devised puzzle sets / dance floors while being guided by an instructor voiced by Sir Patrick Stewart? If this isn't a recipe for a classic I don't know what is. People can whine all they want about the unsavoury punchlines or slapstick gags or particular unjust deaths or the basic polygonal graphics or the uninspiring ending scene, it is a one-of-a-kind gaming experience for the open-minded.

WHAT THE GOLF

The fans that prefer their games absurd and funny and packaged in a single bundle of joy should look no more. This is probably the best golf game ever made and it's not necessarily even about golf or sports. It might have to do with sporting life, or making sense of the world in accepting and celebrating all of its absurdities, or the fickleness in us. Cats, houses, poles, office chairs, sofas, TV sets - anything can replace a golf ball. Movement becomes golf. The game makes fun of it, makes fun of us, and makes fun of a number of  indie genres and casual gaming tropes and the gaming world itself.
Another instant must-have classic.

PROGRESS QUEST

I've only recently found out about the "idle game" genre and it only proves to me that people need to enjoy or come up with new approaches and genres. Made as a parody of a famous role-playing game, the PROGRESS QUEST sets a blueprint  for the entire genre by allowing the player to set up their character at the beginning of a session and then see the game play itself out without their further  input.Truth be told, all the character's statistics and equipment play almost no role in how the action unfolds anyway. What is magical about this gem is that the "auto-attack" combat system and item acquisitions were parodied into a whole new genre. It spawned a host of games that play themselves out in real time with or without the player actually playing them...or even without their computers turned on. Fun is fun.