Tale of Tales just released a new game or rather “experimental play experience” (a phrase surely concocted to appease those who don’t accept their repurposing of the word game). Anyhow, it’s called Fatale and it is awesome.
Starting with The Endless Forest, Tale of Tale’s have consistently created environments that exist for the purpose of being looked at and explored. This may not sound all that unique as most 3D games have environments that are explored, but the difference is that these games exist solely for this purpose. To them, game environments are not containers for gameplay, but rather are the reason for gameplay. By only affording the player navigation controls, the player’s mind is free to embark on a journey of induction and introspection. In their own words, Fatale “offers an experimental play experience that stimulates the imagination and encourages multiple interpretations and personal associations.”
Tale of Tales are not alone in creating games for this purpose. Games that encourage observation and consideration of their environments can be said to form an art movement that I am referring to as the observational immersionist style.
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Rationalization was covered on the Indie Games blog and reviewed on Rock, Paper, Shotgun. It was great to see that people were interested in checking out the game.
Though, on Rock, Paper, Shotgun people did far more than just check it out. There were over 50 comments and many of these were very thoughtful interpretations of the game. It excites and surprises me that the audience of this primarily mainstream game industry focused blog would be interested in dissecting this admittedly strange “proceduralist” game.
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I created a short game called Rationalization to help me think through some ideas.
The game is very abstract and its message is primarily procedural. I look forward to hearing any reactions you may have.
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Posted in Games | Tagged art game, design, indie |
Molleindustria recently created a new game prototype called Kosmosis: “A COMMUNIST SPACE SHOOTER AS AN ARCADE GAME FROM AN ALTERNATE PRESENT WHERE NON-DEGENERATED SOCIALIST VALUES ARE HEGEMONIC.” The game was created as an entry for the Experimental Gameplay Project competition titled “Unexperimental Shooter.” Molleindustria are known for tackling controversial subjects including free culture and religious hatred and are some of the few people who create games from the “message up” (i.e. design with procedural rhetoric in mind).
Interpreting game mechanics is a passion of mine and thus I have strong opinions about the faults and outright failure of most attempts at wrangling procedural rhetoric. Unfortunately, Molleindustria ’s recent attempt at creating a shmup that subverts the war machine ended up with unconvincing and problematic procedural messages that almost completely rely on verbal rhetoric (i.e. skinning as usual).
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