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?

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.

 

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.

PASSAGE

A genuine piece of art, this game excells at unravelling the entirety of human existence and eliciting a strong emotional response in a player in just 5 minutes of its running time. During these 5 minutes the main character gets to live his life, find his significant other (or not) , attend to his livelihood (or not), witness the passage of time and die. Different lifestyle choices yield different results  and affect aging, physical and emotional decay, though naturally, the end result is uniform and unavoidable. Looking at its rudimentary graphics and controls one has to acknowledge the skill in the game designer  to make a bold statement from such a finite gaming experience. It's free to download, it questions the preconceptions in gaming and leaves you thinking. It's among the first 14 games  included in MoMA's permanent collection for its artistic statement. Try it.

CULTIST SIMULATOR

Somebody said the best way to earn a million was to start a cult, and this game allows you to do exactly that. Being your sole source of income, the cult must thrive and grow in numbers and strength which is somewhat easier in an era where even high intellectuals would gather around ludicrous clubs such as "The Ghost Club". People are more conducive to the acceptance of such ideas, but the cult leader in you has to act, interact, learn, build a following and be dedicated, passionate and sane throughout all business operations. Time and resources management paired with experimentation is what the game is about. The devil's playground is a card table so everything you do is a card game simulation that requires some wit on your part. Many wrote off this game as a fad , but the way it is devised and structured make CULTIST SIMULATOR another unique page in gaming history.And I find it disorientingly fun.

EVERY DAY THE SAME DREAM

Ever since I've read Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" every game that resembled a life parable and had metaphysical and philosophical considerations at its core turned into a unique gaming experience for me, and each title seemed to approach it from a different angle.The name, the simplistic, but stylized and highly effective black-and-white graphics with sparse coloured details and depressing instrumental indie/lofi pop, sounds and noises  pretty much reveal  what you'll be doing throughout - fighting or giving in to your sense of alienation and your 9-to-5 job.With different choices come different outcomes of a single boring work day that you just can't seem to wake up from. Each attempt  seems to slightly affect the next iteration of your "groundhog day".The 5 persons you interact with bring you closer to finishing the game and to your final release.

Whether  you consider this title to be a game or not, or whether it qualifies as a game by modern gaming standards, EVERY DAY THE SAME DREAM is a unique point in gaming history  and another great effort on the part of indie game makers to make real adult games that open new horizons for games, indie and otherwise.

HOMO MACHINA

Not realising this was a game tribute to the work of a certain Fritz Kahn, I played Homo Machina and thought "Wow, somebody made Osmosis Jones into a game with an early 20th century industrial feel, how come nobody thought of that?". The entire game is based on Kahn's illustrations that appeared in his "Das Leben Des Menchen" book series almost a hundred years ago. The series and the game transport us to technical and societal advancements of the Weimar Republic. By depicting the processes of a human body as  machines, his intention was to introduce the inside of a  human body in a way that would be more appealing and easy to grasp to a common man. Aided by a group of graphic designers and architects , he would depict ears as cars, sight and speech as a mental movie projector, the human body as an industrial company with a number of departments and facilities with a firm power structure, the internal organs as landscapes where scientist shrunk to microscopic proportios study blood and glandular cells (sounds familiar?). The game is organised around these clunky designs and bygone industries , and  patience and precision with puzzles gets you through Chapters, each dealing with a different bodily function.
Now, people can say the game is too short and lacking more features, and that the original designs were wrong , but I applaud the effort of the game designers in trying to essentially make a gaming tribute to some man's work. I hope this catches on and that somebody made a game tribute to Alan Turing.

THE NOVELIST

Never have I found a game that explored family struggles so vehemently as much as THE NOVELIST did , nor a story-based game I bought into more whole-heartedly. A struggling novelist fighting his writer's block that's taken a toll on his family comes to a summer house with them in hopes of getting back in the zone creatively while hoping to become a better dad and husband. You play an ectoplasmic entity monitoring their interactions, entering their thoughts and memories and trying to make them reconnect and solve their problems by inobtrusive interventions.

The minimal settings, the sollid, mellow background music, the repetitive movements and locations all allow the player to focus more on the story and feel its grasp more intimately, as it's honest and relatable (despite the fact that some dialogues and thoughts may seem forced at times)

Each time I played it I experienced a different sequence of events, and I didn't find the rndings as limiting and abruptly stupid in comparison to the subtleness of the story that unfolded as other people seemed to have had. Are we really in control of our own decisions, even with benevolent voyeur ghosts by our side?

FAR FROM NOISE

Not the most perfect choice for a New Year's post , but certainly an important moment in gaming history. I was about to write something about this game yesterday when I heard that one of my 16 year-old ESL students took his own life by jumping off a balcony of his family apartment. A great kid who was far superior to me at everything he undertook and  was gracious and kind.

The game starts with all the questions a living human faces - fear, doubt, transience of one's physical existence, reality and fabrication in one's life, one's place in the grand scheme of things, the lack of purpose, the loneliness etc The idea for a game is unique - an old car with a young woman inside is balancing on a cliff overlooking the vast  ocean. Aware of the predicament she got herself in, she tries to make sense of it all and reflect on her own life, first on her own and later in a company of a wise deer.The  author gravitates heavily towards and builds the girl's character around his own philosophical views, namely those of naturalism and transcedentalism. The girl came to a place she used to visit as a kid, and you can almost see the storm that goes through her mind as she reflects on her failures and inadequacies. It takes a deer talking nature and natural phenomena such as rain and lightning and thunder to bring her round to a different understanding of life and Universe.

A high level of interaction is successfully achieved solely by using dialogue and  life story building around the main character which is close to impossible to achieve in  textual adventures. Animations liven up the  pace, every details serves the narrative.The game could do without additional intermezzos of poetry, but unlike those recorded lectures in EVERYTHING they are not that demanding and don't grab your attention that forcefully. The conscious decision to not include voice acting and limit the game to texts and background music and ambience is another brilliant way to keep the emphasis on Nature and its grandeur. The intellectual clash between the deer and the girl is reflected in their different use of language, but the rift seems to be growing smaller as the story unfolds. Or not?

Despite this being a game changing title for me, I feel the author is trying to impose his views on us and grin derisively at the world and I think it would be even more ground-breaking if he developed several different characters adhering to different philosophies the player could choose from. This way we only get to see the author's views as the story unravels and him toying with a young mind who might have had  enough. Free will, yes, but moral responsibility first and foremost.

DRAGON'S LAIR

Before Dragon's Lair a truly cinematic gaming experience could have only taken place in the imagination if the player while they were mentally traversing magical kingdoms inside the confines of textual adventures.The game appeared almost a decade before interactive movies would become a thing  (and would fall from grace soon afterwards) and heralded the genre in the best way possible . I'm not really sure what kind of processing power a laser disc could have provided an arcade cabinet with , but my personal impression at the time was one of sheer awe. In the years when cheap animation reigned supreme on TV (MOTU,Tarzan etc). the emergence of a game that was visually even more appealing than the series was a huge thing. At that time the animated series wasn't being broadcast anywhere in Yugoslavia, so imagine my surprise when I first laid eyes on the game. Who could resist playing out a cartoon, being at the same time entertained and annoyed with a myriad of excellent ways to die. Nowadays people say the game is nothing more than a series of movie sequences you become an able director of after spending a fortune on your trial-and-error learning curve. Memorising steps to  victory wasn't something that was unknown to 80s gaming anyway (one can easily evoke  memories of titles that taunt the player in a number of largely similar  ways). so a credit should be given where it's due , and this game surely deserves the credit and pomp it got.  Whining about coins lost in the local arcade isn't the way to go about writing a  game review.

FLOWER

This game  evokes a powerful set of emotions, not unlike those I felt playing Journey. Albeit another game from the same team and implying the idea of a voyage, and whether perceived as a life's parable or not, it takes the player on a voyage of pure emotion, the one of tracking and observing the fate of a seemingly insignificant thing in nature such as a simple flower petal. Hardcore gamers probably rolled their eyes in horror when they first saw this game, but it takes only a bit of streching to accept it for what it is - a marvellous, pioneering, genre-bending gem. You go from light to dark,  enthropy to order, cityscapes to country landscapes, chaos to creation in joyous motion that gives you a sense of genuine freedom, and all of that is accompanied by music that suits each particular change along the way. No enemies to kill or mame or hurt in any way

A tale of a windmaster dancing with a single petal- who can resist embarking on such a great adventure?

EPISTORY - TYPING CHRONICLES

There have been other typing games so far, yes, but none so elaborate, original and as beautifully programmed as Epistory.You do get incrementally better at typing  as you progress with this title, but the way the game unfolds  and the joy you get from playing the game is magical! You help the narrator of the story by running a girl riding a 3-tailed fox using only your keyboard. By following the narrator and helping the story unfold, new terrains and landscapes reveal themselves and your wisdom and magical abilities increase. You engage the enemies and manipulate  objects by typing out letters of the words that appear above them, and it plays a hundred times more exciting than it sounds. If you look at a game while it's played by someone else you do not get the feeling of experiencing a typing game at all.

Papercraft and origami designs were a clever addition to the "search of knowledge" premise behind the game, though largely introduced due to Unity's Tiled Map Editor's limitations.The exploration is easy, battles pose a real challenge to your  typing skills and you're presented with many tactical choices at each point in the story.

The fox/kitsune character  derived from Chinese/Japanese mythology was an incredibly clever thing to introduce, as the general non-conformity of available tales and myths surrounding kitsune through ages lend themselves beautifully to using the 3-tailed fox as a more generalized symbol. With a hundered years for each tail to grow, our fox has grown much wiser and powerful  and has already unlocked a number of magical powers that come of age (mouths or tails generating fire , lihtning, ice) , yet she has a lot to go to see all of 9 tails  grown on her, and this makes her a suitable companion to the main character.Kitsune also manifests itself in dreams and create illusions one cannot tell apart from reality. Should this be taken into account while playing Epistolary? You could , but being completely igorant of the story behind kitsune won't spoil the enjoyment of playing this wonderful game for you.

Oh, yes- the game's available in 9 languages and supports different keyboard layouts.

BULLY: SCHOLARSHIP EDITION

The game is unique and skillfully made,I'll give them that. The story is cleverly built, the characters are well-outlined , though quite archetypal, and the narrative needs them to properly unfold. I understand trying new thing in games is a thing to aspire to, but I've never understood this kind of morally reprobate titles that some software houses simply excel at making. BULLY attracted a lot of attention for its concept and playability and its several re-released versions proved its grasp over players. But the question remains: who benefits from playing such a game? Whether you were bullied or a bully at school or a lone wolf who silently observed what was going on around them you feel pain upon playing  this game- very few people like reliving their high school days. If you're in high school and have already taken up a specific role at either side of this spectrum and you aspire to up the social ranks at school, this game can hardly be a training simulation for you. I guess it could  only be an interesting experience for girls who would like to try being a boy bullying and fighting other boys , making out with girls or boys, and doing what they want. Otherwise , no excuse can be made for fighting violence with violence.

I'll go and play some Mikie  on my good ole c64 right now for comparison.

BEHOLDER

Surveillance State is old news in most of today's world , but the Russians were the first to openly deride it in their art, movies and culture, and so it's only befitting that they be the ones leading the pack when it came to games dealing with this subject.
I loved Papers,Please when it came out , but it was way too broad for my taste. I find  the ominously titled BEHOLDER game approaching the entire thing from a more interested angle. Being a landlord appointed by the State to record activities of all the tenants looking for traces of illegal behaviour you're given a choice- you can either blindfully obey your superiors and  tell on every single person or you can choose to turn a blind eye to what the tenants are doing.You can be friends with some and tell on others.Your finances  depend on your performance, so protecting the tenants might considerably affect your incurred expenses and lead to unsatisfied family needs and to ending your gaming session very early on,  You evesdrop on conversations with guests,peek through keyholes, search the apartments when tenants are away in search for illegal material, rob them of an item or two, or even plant illegal materials in their rooms only to tell on them later on. Anything you do seriously affects everything else. The navigation is simple and effective, and so is the music.
The player is faced with a myriad of moral dilemmas present in this day and age and that's what's most endearing about this title. Great art imitates life.

HUMAN: FALL FLAT

Now this is what  I call gaming entertainment! This may easily be the most successful attempt at putting one's dream into a computer game.No gory details, no beheaded beasts, no visits from spectres or ancestors, just your own inadequacies, the fear of failure , loneliness and curiosity that you get punished for on a daily basis.The landscape is simplistic and stripped of  any detail that could be inconsequential  to such a dream.  Bob is naked, wearing only a protective helmet , and fears heights. Accordingly, he solves puzzles by moving different objects around and pushing buttons while walking across floating islands so that he could address his fear by jumping off the platform and falling flat onto another level.To spice the feeling of inability to run things and limited physical movement while we dream , Bob is innately clumsy. In order to get Bob through all the 12 levels you have to master the awkward mechamics (OCTODAD  comes to mind)  that's integral to the game's value and charm. Failure is awarded by laughter in the proud tradition of slapstick humour and  narration borders on misanthropy. This is the kind of dream you can easily see yourself waking up from in a pearl of sweat.
And if you want to introduce your friend to this nightmarish world, there's always the split-screen cooperative multiplayer mode. Enjoy!

YEAR WALK

Year Walk was a divination folk ritual in Sweden performed at Christmas or New Year's.The year walker locks himself in a dark room for a day with no food or drink or company. At midnight he circles the local parish church 3 times and blows through its keyhole. He temporarily turns non-Christian and is challeged by supernatural beings and if he passes the test he's given  fragments of what is to come in the year to follow.

The game was originally designed  as a movie script and that is the most unique aspect that sets it apart from other games in the genre. The authors retained the stillness of  native landscapes and stripped the game of everything that would lead us away from storytelling that uncovers beauty in death and terror; their timing and suspense building is impeccable  and we get the impression that we are slowly unravelling a mystery filmscript more than playing  a game.

Daniel  the protagonist is asked by his lover Stina not to go through the ritual . He also finds out she is about to be engaged to somebody else and decides to year walk despite her plea. We're given no insight into what goes on  and nothing prepares us for encounters with mythical creatures of nordic folklore and the meaning of puzzles they present us with. The sounds and music are fantastic , the atmosphere is unreal, and the horror draws upon the collective unconscious where macrocosm meets individual madness...all of this is partially explained in the end when we see the words "it is too late" and Stina lying dead in the field. The journal post-game component of a  modern-day man named Theodore explains what happened in detail.

It is as if we are magically drawn to the darkness behind the ritual that  erroneously justifies the coming of Daniel's madness. The neo-paganism is strong with this one, but I also see the intensity found in early modernist literature of Sweden and Norway (Lagerkvist) present here.

I hate horror and suspense stories, but this game will keep you glued to your seat until its very end whether you like such stories or not.

Another piece of art in the gaming world.