-------- EVERYTHINGSTAKEN --------- /////////////// Affection //////////////// Chrissy: I loved walking down the hall and flattening everyone in my path. I was such a bad-ass ninja. No one could touch me. Clyde: You don't even have to press a button to smite your foe. Chrissy: That's how bad-ass of a ninja I was. --------------- Alternative: Clyde: The lethality of a warrior is so high that everything they touch dies. With these instant wins, and a one-tile wide hallway, any form of interaction with non-player characters is deadly. So killing is the only form of affection available. ////////////////////// The Allegory of Christ ////////////////////// Clyde: There seems to be two main themes in this game. Chrissy: Is one that everyone needs something to live for? Clyde: Yeah, interdependency. The other is metaphysical motives. Chrissy: What are metaphysical motives? Clyde: I'm referring to things like the concepts of "order" and "chaos" being personified so that a character can explicitly decide to obey or defy them absolutely. Chrissy: Do you think that the interdependency is tied to the metaphysical motives? Clyde: Interdependency seems to be the substance within which the personified metaphysical concepts must manipulate things in order to reach their goals. ////////////////////// Asceticism ///////////////////// Clyde: What is this game? Is it a prompt not to play the game? It seems like an ineffectual concept-piece. Chrissy:I think the game is trying to show an actual representation of asceticism instead of just mentioning the concept. Clyde: What do you mean? Chrissy: If someone just tells you what the Wikipedia definition of "asceticism" is, you'll just be like "Oh, hmm, that's interesting." But this game says "Here, we are going to actually practice ascetism and not do anything forever." and you are like, "This is boring, asceticism sucks." Clyde: Even if the author was sincerely hoping to encourage actual practice of asceticism, this is your personal reaction to it, You are repelled. Chrissy: Yes, because it's unrealistic. I can't imagine anyone actually ever trying it. Clyde: I wouldn't. I wasn't compelled to give the ascetic practice a shot while playing Ascetism. I think maybe it's because of the expectations I have when approaching any and all games. Maybe the idea is to mention asceticism, so you may attempt to practice it later. Chrissy: Maybe we should try it later then. ////////////// Death Walks /////////////// Clyde: Did you see the woman or the skeleton? Chrissy: The woman. But the narrator didn't believe me. They said I had insincere motives. I guess this is a depiction of getting blamed for having insincere motives when picking women? Clyde: I think it's more general because the same type of thing happens when you pick the skeleton. Chrissy: What happens when you pick the skeleton. Clyde: You are diagnosed as depressed and unwanted. Chrissy: Maybe you never pick the right thing? Or you are always criticized for your choices? Clyde: I know that I often get wrapped up in all the possible motivations of why I choose things and it can make me feel shameful. Chrissy: I get more wrapped up in how other people view my motivations. Clyde: Yeah, that can bother me too. /////////////////////////////// Destroying Time with Agency ////////////////////////////// Clyde: Time in turn-based games is an artificiality I take for granted. Having the passing of time being the only thing you can control really brings the concept into perspective. ///////////////////////////// Different Worlds /////////////////////////// Clyde:The situation in Different Worlds is similar to making small-chat with someone with whom you have fewer and fewer shared experiences with. Chrissy:And in this case, they have so few of their own experiences that a chair is as novel as a lion. ///////////////////////////// Dr. Dr. /////////////////////////////// Clyde: All the February 18th games show a deep distrust of the medical field. Chrissy: This one is different though. The doctor is excited about their job, but they discover that the office is a sham and everyone is just having sex with skeletons. Clyde: You mean it's true what that last skeleton said? Chrissy: Yeah. It's some skeleton sex-ring thing. Clyde: I didn't think that information was reliable. But now it kinda makes sense. Is that why those three skeletons are in the room with those three people? Chrissy: You didn't realize that's what was going on? Clyde: No. I thought it was about an doctor with impostor-syndrome. Chrissy: No, it's about an doctor who discovers that they work in a skeleton-brothel. //////////////// Harpies on Harpy Island /////////////////// Chrissy: This game is important to me because this is the first game where I considered that games can make you feel a certain way. Before I found out that the tower could be reached, the only thing I could do was just feel frustrated and confused because I could barely move. Other games have made me feel emotions, but because this one was so small and focused there was nothing to distract me from the frustration of futility. Before this game, I thought games only represented ideas. Now I know they can actually make you feel certain ways. ///////////////// Horse Island //////////////////// Chrissy: You know what is really creepy about this game? Clyde: No, what? Chrissy: You avoid people in the same way that you avoid Death in everythingstaken's other games. Clyde: After the first playthrough, I sure do. People are dangerous. I love how areas inhabited by people are signified with tree-stumps. People tend to dominate and claim everything as their own. /////////////////////// Honey Bear Honey Dare //////////////////////// Chrissy: It is so interesting how many of everythingstaken's games are about walking around and killing everything, or running from Death. I guess to a fish, a bear would look like Death. Clyde: I agree that it's best to take this game in context with everythingstaken's other games. We Hated Those Guys, Meet Your New Friends Where You Are Dead, Affection, The Allegory of Christ Chrissy: Yeah, I get the idea. Clyde: Etc. With Honey Bear Honey Dare the use of a bear as a protagonist makes killing feel more like natural predation though. The other games with killing as a main mechanic focus on other perspectives on killing and death. Chrissy: But it doesn't really feel different from killing in those other games. I get your point, that it's natural for a bear to kill fish but... Clyde: I suppose you end up killing your friend who loves you too though. I guess the expectation of natural predation doesn't making killing any less isolating. ////////////////////// Infinate Illusionary Space /////////////////////// Clyde: This is like some combination between a relief-rubbing and a labryinth. At first you don't know what you are looking at, but by feeling around, you start to see the paths. It feels very tactile to me in a similar way to Raw Meat Town, and Outback Food For Boy House, and Harpies On Harpy Island. It's like I'm combing through a collage, poking everything to find the hard spots and then identifying the shape. //////////////////////// Irrcatsponsibility /////////////////////// Clyde:Irrcatsponsibility seems to be about how trying to take action and solve problems often just leads to more problems for more people. Sometimes you can get more done by not doing anything. ///////////// Just a Really Deep Dark Thought ////////////// Chrissy: The holes are the only things in the game that cause a reaction with the exception of Death. I walk over them on purpose because something happens. Clyde: I think of those tiles as moments of pain and pings of regret that the protagonist encounters on the way to their inevitable demise. But now that you mention walking over the hurt-tiles on purpose, I think they may represent the perspective that pain is occasionally desirable. Chrissy: Why would you think that? If there was another type of tile that did something, I would walk over that one too. Clyde: There are no other tiles that do something. Only pain-tiles. They let you know that you are alive. //////////////////////////// Lift Me Up ////////////////////////////// Clyde: The sprites and the background are identifiable enough that I tend to try and extract meaning from them. Eventually, I find myself playing it similar to the way I play Shifty Lights by ihavefivehat. But the knowledge that I am a harpy flying amongst a swarm of dragons makes me feel like there is a location I should be trying to reach. /////////////////////////// Meet Your New Friends Where You Are Dead ////////////////////////////// Clyde: I'm not sure if everyone prefers death over hanging out with me, or if this is some sort of suicide-cult. It's like a suicide-cult that is motivated by how unpleasant it is to be around me. Chrissy: What about the bridge? I think everyone feels stuck and believes the hype about other places, but then it's all the same. I don't know why you kill everyone. Clyde: They all kill themselves. I think that after meeting you, they kill themselves. ////////////////////// A Mirror is Worth 1000 words //////////////////////// Clyde:This game communicates a surreal creepiness to me. Chrissy: Comforting things like family, feel dangerous in this game. Clyde: And duplicitous. You are expected to know who they are, but they keep changing their identity and appearance spitefully. It's creepy. Chrissy: But isn't it your own paranoia? You are looking at a picture of yourself. You are just paranoid that your family isn't who you think they are. Clyde: The protagonist seems like they are paranoid of some conspiracy. Like that their family has been fooling them the entire time. Chrissy: I think the person is remembering the family they've lost and contorting the reality of what happened. They are trying to figure out what was bad about their family in retrospect. Or they found out that their "happy family" was a lie and everyone was actually miserable. So when they look back at happy photos, they are seeing that everyone was really just pretending. /////////////////////// Nail Clippers ////////////////// Chrissy (solo): This game gave me the sensation of going into my roommate's room to legitimately look for something and being afraid that I will get caught. Even though I know I'm not doing anything wrong, I'm worried that they will think I'm doing something criminal. --------------------------- Clyde (solo):I don't understand why I couldn't use my roommate's nail clippers. Is that a gross thing to do? /////// One Dollar Meal /////// Chrissy: It's so uncomfortable having to ask people for money. Clyde: The only person who has the patience to talk with you requires massive amounts of patience themselves. Chrissy:You have to listen to him cough and wait because you are desperate for a meal. Clyde: Yeah, you both require simple things that you can't find elsewhere. You need food and he needs someone to be interested in his opinion. In the end, the two of you can't even provide each other with those things. //////////////////// Outback Food for Boy House ///////////// Chrissy: I like how people are the obstacles instead of the obstacles being objects or walls. This is what it's like to navigate a crowd. Clyde: When you are a kid, crowds of adults form a puzzle-maze. Chrissy: I also like the differences in the bathrooms. There were more stalls and more mirrors for the ladies. ///////////////////// Tent Rock Trail Roll ///////////////////// Clyde: How does walking down lengths of trail affect the way you perceive the rhymes? Chrissy: The walk gives you time to think about them. I think about what the next rhyming word might be. Or I might think about why the rhymes get funnier. Clyde: Encountering a new rhyme punctuates those threads of thought. Chrissy: This is a good thought-generator. Clyde: The lengths of the path give you time to think. The narrowness of the path demands less thought. So you have both the time and the concentration to think about the rhymes. //////////////// We Hated those Guys: ///////////////////// Clyde: This is an accurate depiction of the expectations I thought both boys and girls had of me when I was an adolescent. I had the impression that girls wanted me to establish territory for the two of us to be alone. And that by proving that there exists a hierarchy among men that you can effectively influence I would be rewarded with sexual activities. The skeletons in the game leave so easily. They seem to understand your motives and leave because they don't want to cock-block more than because you are a threat. I've always been more of a "Let's find a romantic view" kinda guy though. I'm glad that option was included along with the possibility that you will weird her out in a failed attempt to find one. ----------- FIRECATFG ----------- /////////////////// Attack of the Birds People /////////////// Chrissy: I'm reminded of how people are supposed to prepare for disasters. You have to have a plan or you will die. Clyde: It's like your first couple of playthroughs are developing a plan for which exit to run to in case of a fire. Chrissy: This game points out how the only way to prepare for certain disasters is to have been in one. How else would you know that running away is the only solution? /////////////////////// Battle of the Squids //////////////////////// Clyde: My favorite part is that the energy bolt came from the alien squid that LOST the battle. Chrissy: What is important about it coming from the alien that lost the battle? Clyde: I like how their desperate, violent act doesn't just dissipate after they lose. It depicts the act and methods having a longer lasting impact than the motive or intention. ////////////////////////// Call it What You Like /////////////////// Clyde: I enjoy seeing a poem getting a literal translation into the language of RPG Maker. Chrissy: I would have preferred not to have heard the poem before I went into the game. Clyde: Really? I enjoyed recognizing the details of the poem throughout the game. It's similar to something like Pictionary or Charades where you have to communicate in a non-verbal way. There is something neat about trying to make the most direct representations possible with limited tools. Or watching the results of someone else trying to do the same. ///////////////////// The Cheap Dentist //////////////////// Clyde: In this game and in The Dead Optician, the health-care experts are incapable of healing. Chrissy: I find that this is the case in real life too! When people tell me that they are unhappy with being diagnosed, I'm like "At least you got a diagnosis. Don't you know how rare it is for a doctor to know what is actually wrong with you?" Clyde: They probably are just unhappy with having the illness, not with the information from a diagnosis. Chrissy: Well having a diagnosis is better than just having a bunch of weird symptoms and not knowing what the cause is. Clyde: A clear diagnosis from a doctor is both rare and easy to take for granted. ////////////////////// Crusader of light ////////////////////// Clyde:It's interesting that this game requires multiple playthroughs to get the full context. I like thinking that the realizations that occur after success do not come immediately, But after years of being praised for this victory. Chrissy: I really like that when you go back into the game after it's over you are now in your natural demon-form, and you get to decide whether or not to do the same thing knowing what you didn't know the first time, That you are the real villian. Clyde: Returning in your demon-form and intentionally failing is a neat representation of regret. Chrissy: It makes you feel like you regret setting evil on the world and can go back and set things right? Clyde: If you begin to have ethical doubts and you play it again but you do it differently, You still need to know what it was like to be evil. Chrissy: But it feels like you are just pretending to set things straight when you go back in and lose. I can only do that if I have won and this is like saying whoops, but the thing has really already happened. Clyde: Failing on purpose because you have regrets about your victory is this narcissistic privilege that only the survivors have. Chrissy: Word. //////////////////// The Dead Optician ////////////////// Clyde: Since the dentist is featured in this game and in The Cheap Dentist... How do you think they are related? Chrissy: The Cheap Dentist seems to be about how poor people can't afford good care. Clyde: The dilemmas in both games stem from lack of available skilled labor. Chrissy:So in The Cheap Dentist, the skilled labor is too expensive. And in The Dead Optician, the optician... Clyde: Is dead. //////////////////////////// Early Bird Special ///////////////////////////// Chrissy: In an urban setting, the only option people have to get meat from the source is to go on the roof and shoot pigeons. Clyde: Or trap rats. Maybe farm some bugs. Chrissy: No one is going to do that. No one is going to grow a garden in their apartment either. Clyde: I think this game is about our culture's distance from our sources of food. Ordering things like a "kid's meal" or an "early bird special" is not at all similar to being involved in agricultural methods. The fact that the way the cook gets the food seems ridiculous to us is a good testimony to how far removed we are from the ingredients of combo-meals. /////////////// Mountain Trail /////////////// Clyde:I think the ending is important. Chrissy: Why, which part? It just seems like an excercise in frustration. This is one of those games that are about extreme skill. What is it about the "good job" at the end that you think is important? Clyde: I think this game is about a woman who does this regularly in order to sustain herself. I see her as a native woman who trades pottery for a living. Chrissy: It's like, she just did her job that day? Clyde: Yeah, she doesn't really get any achievement beyond sustaining herself even though the entire thing takes effort, time, attention and she can easily fail. I see the "good job" at the end being a bit facetious; Her skills and efforts are both impressive, but completely unappreciated except for their ability to do the task she is expected to do. I see this as a game about labor that is not valued beyond its immediate results. Chrissy: That's awesome, I like that interpretation. /////////////////////////// Orange Room /////////////////////// Chrissy: I like how puzzle-rooms make you focus on your intelligence rather than your strength. Clyde: It's a power-fantasy for people who think of themselves as smart. Escaping a prison by untangling your own confusion is based on the fantasy that you will always have the tools you need to remain free. /////////////////////////// The Plant ////////////////////////// Chrissy: Fantasy choices like this one try to get you to reconsider everyday assumptions about morals. When you make moral choices in your own life you are invested so it's harder to see the ethics clearly. Clyde: The player-character is so distant from the consequences. Choosing who to kill results in a few pieces of gold or an honorary title. Chrissy: I think the player is supposed to favor the life of plant over the needs of the town. This is a made up problem to make people question assumptions about human progress. The game removes all the possible alternatives like having the town look into how much it would cost to build a new path. Clyde: At no point does a member of the town reconsider the plan even though their method of getting back to business-as-usual will destroy a sentient being. /////////////////////////// Pretend this is a rhythm game /////////////////////////// Chrissy: The thing I like about finales is that I get to enjoy seeing all of the characters again. It's exciting to see a bunch of the game characters partying together after playing all the games they are in. Plus it's a dance-party. Clyde: After seeing a play in a theatre, I don't get much out of having the entire cast come out and bowing, but I'd love to go to one of their after-parties. I have conceptual difficulty separating actors I've never met from the characters I've seen them play, so it would be bizarre. ///////////////////// The Race /////////////////// Clyde: I broke the game by tying. But really, I won the race of life. We just stood there. Together. Chrissy: The interesting part of this game is that I want to give up after two races. Clyde: You extrapolate that the competition will never end and you want to just reach the inevitable loss? Chrissy: Yeah, but then when you die and you still have to race, it's fucking depressing. It's like, "Can't I just die?" Clyde: No, you must push onward. Until you manage to tie. Like I did. /////////////////////// Sundial Town ///////////////////// Clyde: The world is destroyed before 5 o'clock. Chrissy: I wonder if FirecatFG picked 5 o'clock because that is when everyone gets off work. I was really impressed by the environment of anxiety. As the clock ticked down and everyone panicked and moved faster and the music changed, I felt anxious too. Clyde: I just keep thinking about how the world ends at 4 o'clock. And then I have an hour to walk around and digest the destruction. I get the impression that the world is ending because it's an expendable game-universe that is destroyed when I quit, but it is destroyed before I leave. I like that mixture, It's like seeing behind the stage-curtain between acts or something. Usually I only get to watch the feet moving around in that tiny crack at the bottom of the curtain. Which is enjoyable in its own way, now that I think about it. /////////////// Too Many Blobs //////////////// Clyde: Orange Room uses a room flooding with water as a time-mechanic, but Too Many Blobs really expresses the essence of drowning. Space is filled up rapidly, you become claustrophobic, then paralyzed, and finally you are absorbed into the surrounding body. I'm going to misuse a word, but it reminds me of catabolism. Chrissy: What is catabolism? Clyde: I'm using it to refer to simpler organisms feeding on complex organisms. Breaking them down and reusing the material for something dumber and unglamourous. There is a ego-death involved. Your humanity is dissolved and you become part of the slime mold. Too Many Blobs has a different feel from anabolism, where you contribute to something "greater". -------------- IHAVEFIVEHAT ----------------- //////////////// Bird Time //////////////////////// Clyde: How does the music make you feel? Chrissy: Relaxed. Clyde: But it's entertaining too. It feels like playful amusement to me. Chrissy:I think it's creating the expectation that nothing bad will happen. Clyde: Since something horrible happens, the music trying to make me feel like nothing bad will happen seems like some sort of trap. Chrissy: From the birds' perspective, nothing bad is happening. Clyde: Maybe they are playfully amused. /////////////////////////// Butterman Adventures /////////////////////////// Chrissy: Butterman Adventures feels like a happy go-lucky tale of someone fulfilling their destiny. But it's kind of depressing thinking about his disposability and self-sacrifice for someone else's breakfast. Clyde: This is like a children's book version of Black Swan with Natalie Portman. Chrissy: How is it like that? Clyde: They both depict a protagonist who accepts extreme self-sacrifice as their cultural role. ////////////////////////////////// Cat Eyes /////////////////////////////////// Clyde: I've never considered that cats might have spiritual coma-adventures when the are anesthetized. I think each room reflects an emotional reaction to the confusion caused by the cat's dream-state. The saturated colors that flash in the background give the dream-space a sense of urgency in an unfamiliar place. Chrissy: Cat Eyes has a similar style to the everythingstaken games where you interact with non-player characters who then dissappear or die. Clyde: But in this case you are gathering them. The cats feel like kittens who have wandered too far from the mother's teat. The teat of consciousness. /////////////////////////////////// Couch Friends //////////////////////////////// Clyde: The slow, determined descension in the scale combined with the downward visual scroll gives me a sense of sinking or becoming embedded further and further into a slothful immobility. But why is that? It's not like notes actually go downward in space. Chrissy: I think it is a learned cue. ////////////////////// Do the Tent Rock ///////////////////// Clyde: The two things I notice about this game's style are the chopped up and tiled-mapped .jpgs and layering of audio tracks. Chrissy: The layered tracks reflect how Tent Rocks was formed. Starting from just one track and slowly building them up makes the layering of the audio track more noticeable. Clyde: The stretched resolutions of the photos and the sun-bleached color palette is a neat way to represent hiking through a sunny expanse. ////////////////////// The Darkness of Soul's Journey Towards Death //////////////////////// Chrissy: The backgrounds are made out of depictions of juvenile nihilism. Which is kinda what the poem is too. Clyde: They've created this world of high-school nihilism for us to explore. It's like seeing a misunderstood teen's bedroom for the first time. ////////////////// Divine Inspiration: /////////////////// Clyde: I love Scrappy-Doo Jesus. And I enjoy that there exists this familial hierarchy between members of the Holy Trinity. The Holy Ghost does all the work and Jesus is still always Yahweh's favorite. Chrissy: The characters are so great in this game. -------------------- alternative: Chrissy: I like how you can't control making the art, but you are still making it. Clyde: It's a good representation of artistic output being a valve to expel energy ecstatically rather than as the eventual manifestation of calculated design. //////////////////////// Divine Intervention /////////////////////// Clyde: It's novel that this game taught you how doves are often used to depict the Holy Ghost. Chrissy: Now that I know, I see it everywhere! The Hallmark store is like the Holy Ghost Headquarters. Clyde: I like the idea of greeting cards being Holy Ghostings of some sort. Chrissy: Didn't you say that the Holy Ghost in Christian mythology is like Hermes in Greek mythology? Clyde: Yeah, pretty much. They are both messenger-gods. Kind of. I'm not sure if God the Father or the Holy Ghost got Mary pregnant the same way Zeus knocked Danae up. Chrissy: But who did Hermes knock up? Clyde: That may be where my theory falls apart. ------- Alternative version: Clyde: The victory-condition of this game is that all of mankind is damned for eternity. It's like an "It's a Wonderful Life" version of the New Testament. ///////////////////// DreamHorses ///////////////////// Clyde:I see three layers in this game. Clouds, the weave of horses, and the dream horses. Chrissy:That's four layers, don't forget the backwards music. Clyde: Good point. I'm interested in the use of low opacity in all of these layers. Chrissy: Maybe it makes it more dreamy. Clyde: Do you think low opacity is a way to represent dreaminess? Chrissy: It could be, solid things express things being real. Clyde: The muddledness of the backwards music also gives me a feeling of low opacity layers superimposing. Chrissy: So the music makes you feel like there is another low opacity layer? Clyde: Yeah, it makes me feel like there is another group of low opacity layers. ////////////////////// Fist Puncher ////////////////////// Clyde: Fist Puncher shows an incredible understanding of the RPGmaker 2003 engine. There's something so interesting about seeing an engine being used to make a different type of game than what it was intended for. Especially when the game the engine is as specialized as RPGmaker 2003 is. //////////////////////// Horace and the Plant ///////////////////////// Clyde: This game feels like time moves so slowly. Chrissy: Does time move slower in Horace and the Plant than in Mountain Trail by FirecatFG? Clyde: I think so. I think going back and forth on the same path feels longer every time you retrace it. In Mountain Trail you only retrace the path once if you are as skilled of a player as I am. Chrissy: Maybe they are trying to create suspense in Horace and the Plant by making it feel like it takes a long time. Clyde: Well I mean, it is a game about plant-growth. It makes sense that the game would make you feel that a lot of time is passing. /////////////////////// Infinite NInjas ////////////////////// Chrissy: Infinite Ninjas feels similar to Raw Meat Town and Couch Friends. Clyde:I agree, but the difference I see here is that the material of the environment is a character rather than a place or thing. In Raw Meat Town the represented material is raw meat. In Couch Friends the represented material is the soiled nooks of a comfortable, lived upon couch. In the case of Infinite Ninjas, the material is the fictionalized ideal of "ninja". The game abstracts the stereotype of a historical character to such an absurd extent so that the environment itself can be made of ninjaness. ////////////////////////// Nail Gazer /////////////////////// Clyde: I think Nail Gazer depicts the spiraling shape created by an increasingly detailed focus. It's a movement further and further into insularity. Chrissy: I agree. This is a good representation of getting sucked into a detail. In this case, becoming more and more worried about your health because you find a spot on your nails. Whenever I see or hear a list of symptoms, I start worrying and thinking that I have the disease. Clyde: But the deeper you go into conjecture, the more ridiculous your concerns and conclusions become. Except the paranoia that you have become paranoid. That paranoia is probably rooted in fact. //////////////////////// One Minute To Live /////////////////////////////// Chrissy: I went to the grave site and wish I had desecrated it. Clyde:It's hard not to believe that something will help you win. This game makes the inevitability of death seem funny. Chrissy: Yeah, there are some random things that you get to do that make you feel somewhat satisified, Clyde: Right, and it kind of makes fun of you for feeling somewhat satisified, or feeling like you have any element of control. Chrissy: It doesn't matter what you pick. Clyde:Regardless of what you do, you are going to die in less than a minute. //////////////////////// Raw Meat Town /////////////////////// Clyde: The combination of the moving mesh of colliders and the dynamic weave of visual obscurity in the context of the title, and with this color palette, gives me the sense of swimming through ground beef. Chrissy: I feel like this is similar to Couch Friends, They've created a completely representational atmosphere or environment of the subject, raw meat. //////////////////////// Shifty Lights /////////////////////// Clyde: Usually when I look at an image like this, I look for an overall picture. But in this case I look for movement patterns instead. //////////////////////// Skeleton Racers /////////////////////// Chrissy: I think this is referencing the desire to be popular for making something. Clyde: I get the feeling that the author is making fun of their own desire for people to play their own game. Chrissy: I feel like it's presented as an unrealistic fantasy. I don't think it's the creator's desire, I think it's trying to show that people want lots of credit for doing anything. Clyde: I get confused because it feels like the message is directed to me (the player), but that it is insincere. How would this be different if it was two in-game characters, one promoting a game to another or telling a promotional success-story? Chrissy: I think the difference is that it is insincere. If it was two characters in the game, then it would be encouraging, But since the message is directed to the player it is like saying "you aren't going to do this." Clyde: Especially because it inflates the success as the lines progress. Chrissy: First they are making fun of themselves for wanting it, Then they are making fun of the player by saying that it would be as ridiculous for you to do it as it would be for the author to expect it. Clyde: I think it is hard for the author of a work to know how much promotion they should do in order to help people who would enjoy the work find it without devaluing the work with advertisement. Chrissy: I feel like they aren't talking about themselves, because this game seems intentionally more basic than their other games. It seems like they made a basic game to make the promotion seem ridiculous. Clyde: What is risked by adding a message to a game that they feel especially proud of? Chrissy: It would seem desperate. Clyde: And if the author seems desperate after a work they are particularly proud of, then they may be accused of not actually liking it as much as they do. Which would suck. ////////////////////////////// Stuck Eye /////////////////////////// Clyde:I like the idea of comparing this game to Infinate Illusionary Space and Unknown Planet because of how the obscured cardinal direction-movements differ in each. Chrissy: They all give you the sense of feeling around the environment rather than seeing the paths. In Stuck Eye, you kind of listen your way through. Clyde: The sounds and descriptions let you know that you are (or that you are not) making progress, but the movement still seems more tactile than auditory for me. ---------------- Alternative: Clyde: Playing through all three games from February 18th shows a thorough distrust and skepticism about the medical profession from all three submitters. Chrissy: Everyone resents the fact that we need them because they don't seem to know what they are doing and they charge so much. //////////////////////////// Teeth of Fury //////////////////////////// Chrissy: It's different to take dangerous things seriously when they are not overt. Guns are easy to take seriously, bacteria on your teeth not so much; even though you are more likely to be injured by the latter. Seeing a dentist in the role of an action-hero looks ridiculous, but in reality they are saving lives. But in this case the dentist loses. Clyde: That's because dental-hygiene can't be won by a dentist alone. It also requires self-care. //////////////////////////// //////////////////////// Unknown Planet /////////////////////// Chrissy: This was one of the tactile games where you are feeling around for paths. Clyde: Comparing it to Infinate Illusionary Space is particularly interesting to me. The abstraction of the tiles and the larger spaces makes finding paths feel so much different in this game. I also like the way the music influences the feel of this game. The music gives the extradimensional adventure a daydreamy, hypnagogic feel that complements the appearances of the tiles. The representational figures actually end up taking me away from that dreamy, ambiguity that defines the game for me. /////////////////////////// ------------------------ Sergio ---------------------- /////////////////////////// Russian Cats /////////////////////// Clyde: This is like watching a foreign movie without subtitles while all of your attempts to understand what is going on make the situation worse. //////////////////////////