If you take a step back from the insular culture of video games, the collective construct of what video games are supposed to looks like is actually rather strange. Maybe not so much strange in and of themselves, but strange in how narrow the mental construct conjured at the mention of video games is. Not just ontologically, but historically as well.
I could bring up how we are living in an era where the boundaries of what a video game can be about and how it can function are changing to a much broader spectrum of ideas and design implementation. Instead, I’m going to bring up how it’s not so much a broadening, phrased like this is a new thing, but rather as a return to the freedom of the “anything goes” model of the early life of video games as a medium. The narrow idea of shooting, jumping, and other types of action based conflict being the main harbinger of the medium’s identity is a relatively new phenomenon. With that in mind, here are some games that are definitely outside that scope.
Exposure
Stealth games are nothing new. Hide-and-seek is one of the first games humans came up with. Even in video games, you could argue they’ve been around since the beginning, if you choose to understand Pac-Man as an elaborate game of hide and seek. Then as time has gone on, they’ve become more and more elaborate. From Metal Gear to Metal Gear Solid to Thief to Splinter Cell to whatever the hell Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is supposed to be. Each using a different metric by which you hide from the enemies. Usually line of sight, but sometimes with light and sound as other qualifiers.
Exposure is a simple, top-down 2D game that takes a basic idea that, for some reason, hasn’t been done in games before: it’s a camouflage game. The player is a small creature that can change color to either brown or white. The goal is to hide from the red rhombuses that will charge and strike you if they see you. There’s geometric detritus floating by colored of course white and brown. The screen is always progressing to the right so the player cannot get comfortable hiding in any one spot. The detritus will float right on by and expose the creature if the player isn’t careful.
Interestingly, after a short while of hiding, I started to lose track of where the creature was. I would have to poke out or move around that caused the creature to poke out to reorient where it was. When you’re hiding, you have no indication where the creature is, because the point is the blend in to progress. Success in this case is denying the player the same visual information that it is denying the enemies. Exposure is creating some interesting dynamics of play, especially given that it answers the common problem of stealth games of having the player do so much waiting. Here it is all about constant readjustment.
It’s still a prototype, looking to release later this year. The original was made in a game jam with the theme of evolution. The main concept gained inspiration from the pepper moth. I don’t know if they’re going to expand on that in the full release or try and develop the game in another direction. Either way, the foundation is a solidly intriguing concept.
Höme Improvisåtion
I have no idea how to pronounce this game’s title — not properly, anyway. I’ve just been pretending the umlaut and whatever you call that circle above the “a” just aren’t there.
The best I can describe Höme Improvisåtion is that it’s QWOP-like, a game that takes normally easily mechanical actions and complicates it down to its component parts. QWOP was about running the 100 meters. So instead of pushing forward like in any other game, you had to use the Q,W,O and P keys to move the individuals leg’s calves and thighs to simulate walking. The entertainment value comes of the comedy generated by the complicated and agonizingly difficult method of trying to accomplish the simplest of tasks. In Höme Improvisåtion, if the irregular characters are any indication, the player(s) are tasked with assembling IKEA furniture.
Imagine the scenario: four players all with controllers, all picking up a piece of the table — a leg, the top or maybe some decorative handles — and then trying to co-ordinate all the pieces to enter the correct slots of the other pieces. The player can levitate a piece up and down, rotate it in any direction, and attach one piece to another. It is amazing how any frustrating activity can be alleviated, if not exacerbated, by the participation of others in a virtual environment. Also, nothing can accidentally break, and you have all the pieces — two points in favor of virtual reality.
What became clear as I watched the hapless furniture assemblers laughing their way to finally getting a lamp put together is that depth perception was quite an issue. I’d have sworn the phantom that was in control of this one part had to be drunk with how many attempts were made to get Bar C into Hole D, going right by it over and over. Only after a few minutes of this did the developer decide it might help to inform everyone that they could tilt the camera slightly side to side with the push of the Y button to fix the depth perception issue.
Eventually, they got the lamp assembled and new piles of parts dropped from the heavens, belonging to a chair ready to be assembled.
Assembling IKEA furniture has proven fruitful to comedians for quite a while now. Video games are having a few recent breakthroughs with how to create true comedy games rather than games that have jokes in them with the likes of Octodad, Jazzpunk, and Goat Simulator. Now we have a match made in heaven.
Threshold
I’ll admit this isn’t as different as I would like. Threshold is a puzzle platformer with a gimmick. I know these were supposed to have gone out of style back in 2012, but hear me out. Yes, the developer does admit it is inspired by both Braid and Fez. Yes, the main mechanic is about altering the environment and changing how it is viewed. Yes, the main goal is to collect keys to open magical locked doors. Yes, the player is controlling a child like figure with a abnormally sized head. Prestige Indie Bingo.
If you can look back the prejudices of what had become a stale and overstuffed genre (maybe a little easier now that the new punching bag is survival zombie games), this is a neat little game. The gimmick this time is that the seasons change depending on which direction you are facing — winter in one direction and summer in the other. The practical effect of this is that certain platforms will only exist in one season or the other and certain keys can only be picked up in one season or the other. They haven’t added in being able to change direction in mid-air yet, but it the game is still a work in progress, and they are getting around to coding it.
The screen scrolls around. So when you reach the edge of one side, going off it will bring Hood on to the other side. From these two simple design choices, the developer was able to make some neat puzzles. The demo at IndieCade East only had about half a dozen or so, but the system was intuitive, the backgrounds a neat watercolor painted look and was all around a pleasant play experience.
uChoose
I feel the need to preface this one with a disclaimer: I know little about the autism spectrum. Thankfully, developer InteractAble knows far more than I do. uChoose is their social skills learning game app designed to help kids with autism makes choices through a normal day and acclimate to what is expected of them in the world.
The founders are two women, Allison D’Eugenio and Jane Rapaport. Mrs. Rapaport is a special needs educator. When the two came together, they wanted to create tools to help a subset of Mrs. Rapaport’s students, autistic children that do well in school yet struggle in everyday social situations. uChoose is the result of extensive research and concept testing. It’s also promised to be the first of its kind.
Functionally, it is a choose your own adventure made for the iPad. The gamer plays as a child with autism, who is guided through basic choices by tapping out the associated action. The example situation involves a friend coming over to play. A sample action includes: the player’s character was reading a book; do you continue reading or put it down and say hi? I accidentally made the wrong choice because the touch interface still has a few bugs, sometimes requiring a few hard taps to register. Maybe it was just that the display tablet was really dirty. Either way, the play date continues on.
Now this game is not for me, and frankly I don’t know how I would even judge it. These aren’t challenges for me, but rather the “yes and” part of my day. However, it is a lesson in what those not on the autism spectrum, such as myself, take for granted. We know how to behave in certain social settings, so these aren’t challenges, or even choices. In a way, they can feel a bit condescending, so I’m relying on the fact that an educator and the leader of a lab researching this stuff knows better than I do. The game highlights an experience where these are challenges.
The point that really hit home arrived at the end of this adventure play date, where the app asked me to construct the faces out of different eye and mouth expression to match the described emotion. I had to stop and think about this one to put it all together. One does not often do this as a conscious activity. You don’t look at a person’s face and go, “Ok, the eyes are half closed and one side of the mouth is twitched slightly upward. The nose isn’t crinkled and the face isn’t flushed. Must be bemused.” No, this process is unconscious, and it was slightly mentally disorienting now having to make this a conscious activity.
Everyone, both as game players and game critics, forget that audience matters. Everyone tries to assert this or that is the right way to view or do things, forgetting that some don’t even have the same baseline assumptions. I don’t find uChoose challenging. However, games are a safe space, in that one can fail over and over and it won’t matter in the greater scheme of things. Single player games are a safe space to fail and to learn.
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Next week I come back with even more games I played at IndieCade East. Gameplay may be king over graphics, but next time I’m highlighting games that are visual spectacles of one kind or another.