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.

DREAMS

A one-of-a-kind game-making game where possibilities are virtually endless- you can play the games others have made using Dreams, or make your own game, or improve the games others have made, and even make   clones of A and indie  titles (the Superhot clone looks fabulous!). A perfect combo where a gamer is given free rein to make a game without being a game designer, the ultimate wet dream.

AI DUNGEON

In the early-to-mid 80s textual adventures were almost as equally popular as arcade titles as they allowed for the imagination spread its wings. The players would easily transport themselves into some imaginary world and didn’t even require the accompanying images that some late 80s titles had. There was one thing that kind of spoiled the fun - you were extremely limited in your variety of answers and actions and syntax and the content that the author of the adventure intended for you. We would nevertheless have a go at writing obscenities or absurd instructions in hope of triggering an intelligent response. Enter AI Dungeon.
This game allows you to make any appropriate or inappropriate comment, action, detour, and anything you type gets immediately recognized and responded to by AI. There are virtually no limits as to what you could write on the screen. As a result, the main story frame, if there be any, can be cut short as many times as you like with as many bizarre things as you like. I sense this game could even be a great creative writing exercise on how many new narrative episodes or subplots to add without completely destroying the main plot.

This is exactly what we;ve always wanted from a textual adventure. A genuine breakthrough.

KIDS

The second interactive animation by Michael Frei and Mario von Rickenbach presents another compelling meditation on the human condition. This time it has to do with crowd mentality and the clean slate mind of a child. Growth implies conformity and willing to fall over the precipice if others do so. Even if they reject to follow others they will eventually be misled by somebody else. The dark chasms kids fall into is dark and milky and resembles intestines, and digestion is painful. It is invigorating to participate in a massive flapping of hands or singing in unison or swimming through dark waters of life in company, but do our attempts at establishing connection with others really bring us any closer to understanding our own life? Or could this game be about something else entirely?

PLUG AND PLAY

I thought it was time people used actual video art/ video works in gaming. Sure, Plug and Play is confusing and outright bizarre as a video game , but it works perfectly well as a piece of art sending a powerful message to the viewer,the player. A nightmarish meditation on connectivity and isolation where people and circumstances are sockets,plugs,coins and fingers shows us a life full of half-uttered sentences,emotional and verbal outbursts,the hurting within and outside groups, and all of that is exceptionally depicted with brilliant , hand-written animations and the sparse sound and musical accompaniment highlights.This interactive animation has come closest to a true game of art I've ever seen.

MOSAIC

Any game that dares tackle whatever is mundane in our own lives deserves our utmost respect. And if it happens to do so in a visually compelling way it is bound to become a classic. Though your life might not be as bleak, you’ll see aspects of your nameless protagonist’s life that are readily identifiable. The tasteless meals, the meaningful corporate life of chasing other people’s rainbows, the joyless world of meaningless social interactions and relations, the bland and empty entertainment-everything’s there. The compendium of useless actions and toils is further emphasized by clunky controls and 3d graphics and music that comes off as both optimistic and claustrophobic. It is by putting up a mosaic of your  mundane life that you become aware of the need to change it. In truth, I was expecting something else by becoming proactive, something more daring and unrestrained, a bolder statement against  the world that made the protagonist a shadow of his former self as a perfect ending for this beautiful short game. Or maybe the game was supposed to let us know that misery always remain part of our existence, whether or not you pull the plug. No game’s perfect, right? Games are just games.

 

LIFELIKE

Lifelike is a meditative game exploring a microcosm of interacting particles where shapes, frequencies and sounds make the meat  of this exceptional game. Guiding a bundle of light you touch ,collect and interact with other particles or beings producing soothing melodies or respect their decision to interact with you the way they want to. It's as much about immersing yourself into this wonderful world as it is about the ease and elegance of the game mechanics and discoveries of any particularities of movement or interaction that awaits you. All this bright bioluminescence washing over you is accompanied by an incredible game soundtrack by the inimitable Loscil introducing new melodies with each track/level to accompany new forms of interaction, making  Lifelike a highly immersive experience.

SUPERLIMINAL

Superliminal

This is a game about perspective and our perception of it that uses a lucid dream as a concept as much as it is a mockery of modern attempts to solve individual problems by exploring the depths of the subconscious. Yes, there’s a good bit of the Stanley Parable and Portal in it, but it’s to be expected since all three explore the hopelessness of the human condition. There’s so much that makes Superliminal a unique gaming experience. You manipulate perspective and objects by placing objects above or below you to make them bigger or smaller in order to solve spatial puzzles in each room. The game designers experiment with game’s mechanics and other physical aspects of its world as you progress making you confused and disoriented, and this is also part of Superliminal’s charm. No amount of stale dialogues or seemingly awkward treatment of subjects and philosophies can change the fact that you’re partaking in a unique gaming experiment treating gaming, happiness and life.

KNIGHT QUEST

I love it when game makers are brave enough to tackle board games that have existed for centuries and combine them with other gaming genres. Knight Quest is a unique endless runner-chess hybrid. Your knight piece  prances around evading or taking other moving chessboard pieces against an endless chessboard or 45 different levels collecting keys and treasure chests along the way.To make things real, your piece has to wait for its turn to make a move and thus those who like chess but are not particularly good at it would feel as if their skills at playing chess have significantly improved. This game makes people feel good about themselves, it amuses them and has a high replay value. Another instant casual gaming classic.

APE OUT

Finally a game drummers and lovers of drums will truly enjoy! Though not necessarily a rhythm game, Ape Out follows a large ape fleeing his cage and killing guards in a facility built for biological research in a bloody beat 'em up classic. A steady-paced swinging drum chops are backed by anything you do on the screen, and so the sounds of glass breaking,foot tapping, splashing the guards against the wall or smashing things, and of bombs ticking all  add to the drum phrases that leave the player mesmerised and driven. I haven't been this impressed  by any gaming music in decades.The fact that Matt Boch decided to make the ingame music entirely around solo drumming is enough reason to try the game. The gameplay itself is never dull or repetitive, as the walls and guards are randomly generated with each try. Add the aviary perspective with extremely high walls and exceptional stylized graphics that remind me of beebop and hardbop mid-century jazz coverart and book covers of beat poets and you have a unique piece of gaming history well worth you 15 euros. Highly recommended!   

GRIS

This is the most visually astounding and satisfying game I've ever played. Although less expansive than its 3d counterpart Journey which is a personal all-time favourite, GRIS leaves you completely in awe of what the game designers achieved. When you play a game and its visual component beats everything else you've ever seen in a game the gameplay comes second.It's as if the designers in this game had over 500 years of art and design experience collectively - it's daunting how immersive  admiring someone's artistic achievement can be, as it completely affects the gaming experience itself. You seem to foget you're actually playing a cleverly designed platform game.This is what Dali\s Dysney movie should have looked like.

RUN AN EMPIRE

Pokemon Go was a revelation and paved the way for games to come, but very few games have ventured into this area since. Another game did go even further into getting people out of their homes and arcades for a unique gaming experience - Run an Empire does not only expand on what a strategy game could be, but it also makes the running application meaningful for those who are not diehards needing no external stimuli apart from the Sun and the track or the road..
Using a real map, players go for catching hexagonal tiles , and  running through an area marked by a hex more times than others enable the player to claim the area and build structures ,encampments objects etc. Now, I know lots of people cringe at the very thought of gamification and think games should be games and not means to achieving short-term real-life goals, but I believe Run an Empire  shows us one of the many possible ways of introducing new concepts into the stale world of gaming and dealing with the mundane in real life. At least we can now do away with boring running track routines and stops -we can look at them as checkpoints.
I wish someone else in my area played it, would love to have some competition,

PUSH ME PULL YOU

Been waiting for ages to see this gem come out. I  remember seeing people play the beta version  somewhere on Youtube and thinking how great it was to invent new sports. And while at it,  why not alter players to the point of their physical appearance defining the very game? CatDog finally got their own sport and it works beautifully- it is fun, weird, and the controls are easy to learn but impossible to master as the awkwardness of physical movement  is a substantial part of this game and it's charm.  You keep coming back to it, satiating  your sick desire to  see and  be two human bodies seamed at the waist  claiming the ball and owning  their half of  the playground. With different modes and a possiblility to move both heads with a single controller, or share controls with a friend on a single controller, PUSH ME PULL YOU becomes an even more exciting ride. It  will surely become a timeless co-op family multiplayer  classic that everyone will still love revisiting 20-30 years from now.

KATAMARI DAMACY

You're on a mission from your father, the mighty King of All Cosmos, to rebuilt the stars that he accidentally destroyed for no known reason., and you do so by using adhesive balls called katamaris, sticking many objects trolling the katamari over them until there's enough material for a  new star amassed. Naturally one has to make sure the overall shape of your "creation" stays  as "rollable" as possible in order to complete the task more successfully. Sometimes it's about a time limitation to do a task and other times it's about about specific materials used for particular stars.

With engaging soundtrack of various styles, odd and funny cutscenes, easy-to-master controls, blocky graphics that allow you to appreciate the concept and attention to details even more, its high replay value , and its absolutely magical  child-like quality, Katamari Damacy quickly proves to be a fun and unique experience for anyone who tries it. With  characters like  Kings and Princes of the Cosmos one would think a  fantasy world  would be the only obvious choice as a setting of choice, but making the Princes whereabouts mundane and common only makes the contrast suit the story even better. The fact that the game is about "mass consumption" (Takahashi) might make you look at events in the game with a new set of eyes, but this information does not tae away from your play sessions.