Star Guard is a Flash-developed platformer developed by Vacuum Flowers, and is available from their website.

This game contains excellent design and animation. It is distinctly retro, and the pixelated graphics are a major shift from the 3D models we are now comfortable with. The developer also makes great use of passages of text to describe the story. We are told that an Evil Wizard and his minions have invaded the Hero’s land in his absence, and it is up to him and his fellow soldiers to thwart the Wizard’s scheme. The small passages serve as a stark contrast to the player blasting his way across levels:
“The Last Assault must succeed, or all is lost.”

The simple yet successful sound effects reminds one of the classic sidescrollers of the CGA era, especially Mega Man 3 and 4, right from the offset.

The controls stay true to the game’s simple formula, using Z to jump, X to shoot, and the direction keys to move, like a true 8-bit platformer.
The plethora of checkpoints and the option of unlimited credits make the game one of those rare options for those easily frustrated, and will easily tend to a casual gamer or novices.

The game’s weakness however was the large difficulty spike at the beginning of level eight. The first seven levels seemed to be a breeze, but level eight and nine were quite tricky, and the final boss fight was seemingly impossible. Perhaps a building degree of difficulty, with the final battle being something that requires a fiendish puzzle to solve is something to for the developer to address. It is a shame that the many great ideas introduced earlier on were undone by the moments where it seems that every step requires a near-kamikaze death. Perhaps this was what the developer intended? It is hard to say.

However, despite its flaws it is refreshing to play a free download that harkens back to the days of arcade games, especially in days where video games are designed with mindblowing graphics and incredible visuals.

Some of will play for 5 minutes, and then return to their XBOXs. Others will revisit to try to beat their high score and have a blast. And they’ll be bloody lucky.

Like watching Taniuchi perform, RunMan: Race Around the World (Tom Sennet & Matt Thorson) is also an exploration (and explication) of the joy of solid colors. This must sound like a somewhat underwhelming endorsement, but let me assure that it is not. This game is awesome.

I mean, I haven’t enjoyed a game this much for some time. Its vibrant pallet, addictive gameplay and the (consciously) kindergarten-quality graphics make for an experience that, simply put, oozes a joy that is sorely missing in a lot of independant games. And the music — oh the music! — adds another gleeful dimension. Like in his other projects, Sennet has used a bunch of public-domain music. In this case it’s bluegrass. And in a strange way, it accentuates the childlike whimsy inherent in the work as a whole.

The gameplay isn’t doing anything revolutionary, but it does hark back to a bygone era of PC platformers; nay, an era of childhood video game memories. And this really important. Not only is it in line with the simplicity of the work (overly complex mechanics would be jarring), but it allows you to enjoy the aesthetics which, I think, make it quite special. The gameplay delivers some basic joys, too — you can bounce of walls (which delivers an enjoyable ‘boing’ sound) and run really fast through (yes, through) enemies.

All I can tell you is that I loved RunMan’s simplicity and aesthetics, namely its simple, elegant and unorthodoxly-orthodox use of colors. Additionally, I applaud the employment of public domain music and also marvel at the brilliant choice of bluegrass. But, like with Taniuchi, I can’t really convey the  pleasure of experiencing RunMan: Race Around the World in words. My recommendation: go download it (PC ony). You’ll thank me later.

Above: Ikko Taniuchi’s untitled 2009, crayon on canvas compared with still from RunMan.

It seems appropriate that a game satirizing a long-past style of cinema should also attempt to resurrect the now-dead interactive movie genre (arguably last prominent in the late ’90s — if you could call it prominence). The game’s artwork, title pages and the actual moment of interaction are rendered in stylized pixel-art. I think they were trying to emphasize — in a rather confused way — the ‘old-school’ feel of the game in general.

Experiences like The Deepening live or die on the appeal of their stories. Being so short (it takes about 10 minutes to ‘play’), it essentially lacks said story and fills in the gaps with hammy, barely passable comedy (incredibly subjective at the best of times). The Duncan Brothers deliver an intentionally cheesy piece which may or may not be your cup of tea. That being said, it left this reviewer cold.

In short, it isn’t going to start an interactive movie renaissance, but there are worse ways to spend ten minutes. And maybe you will get a kick out of the frat boy appeal of The Deepening. After all, it’s free but not really SFW.

Play it here.

Duncan Brothers.

Chris Fox is an English Computer Games Design student at Staffordshire Uni, dabbling in games commentary and talking too much on the internet. You can find more of his incoherent ramblings at keysakimbo.blogspot.com.

But as with any compilation–more pertinently, tribute compilations–it’s hit and miss. The obvious artists shine: Anamanaguchi, Bit Shifter, videogame orchestra and . I was particularly enamored by nordloef’s rendition of “Buddy Holly”, but I think that’s largely nostalgia. The rest of the album is never bad, but it’s seldom great. I was a little disappointed with PDF Format’s “You Won’t Get With Me Tonight” and, despite their cool name, Unicorn Dream Attack didn’t amaze me.

I think it works well because it’s a trip down both memory and hipster lane at the same time. One more criticism: it’s called The 8-bit Album; I think it should be called The Beige Album. Bam! Now that’s genius.

It’s free to download under creative commons. Also check out the Weezer 8-bit blog.

I’m talking about Robot and the Cities that Built Him made by Kyle Gabler at 2D Boy. These guys also blew the casual-gaming lobes in our brains with World of Goo. OK, fine. So I’ve come to this game quite late. But Robot is something different; something even more addictive than Goo. It’s a side-scrolling game where you command giant robots who zap passer-by. I mean, come on! The more people you kill, the more of their hearts you get. In turn, you can use their hearts to upgrade your robots and buy better ones. Read: it’s as addictive as f&@^.

While you get the feeling that you’ve played something like it before, it has a freshness and eloquence about it. The balance between straightforwardness, progressiveness of gameplay and replayability is fabulous and kept this reviewer who is generally indifferent to flash-fads coming back for more.

It has been around since early 2008 and hasn’t left its alpha stage, so I’m excited to see its evolution. But please, don’t play it around other people. I don’t want your sister’s meat-axe of a boyfriend comparing it to Transformers. Uh oh, I’m one year too late…

This week a copy of Blueberry Garden by Erik Svedäng landed on my desktop. After playing it for a few hours, I realized that there was something about it that I just couldn’t quite explain; a je ne sais quoi not present in other games. Overtly, it is a very minimal game—the gameplay is simple, the visuals sparse and beautiful, the music is used sparingly. Consequently, it occurred to me that perhaps a minimalist taxonomy could elucidate some of its defining features. You guessed it—it’s time to apply minimalism.

Before considering the game in these terms, let’s take a brief look at what defines a minimalist text. For the purposes of this article we can compress the definition to three key components. I don’t purport they are comprehensive, but they give you a working idea:

• Minimalist texts embrace the core elements of their category; they are stripped to their essentials
• Features of minimalist texts are highly economical. For example, in a lot of minimalist architecture, one component will serve multiple purposes.
• Less is more: much can be expressed by only using simple features. E.g, minimalist writing is defined by an almost complete lack of adjectival phrases, using basic sentence structure and context to convey meaning.

Blueberry Garden arguably embraces these core minimalist values. In the first instance, it is obviously a highly stripped-down game. There is no evident story behind the gameplay and your actions and interactions with the environment are clear-cut (e.g. B will happen if you eat fruit A). Compare it with Braid and And Yet it Moves which incorporate new properties—temporal and spacial transfiguration—into the platformer genre. Blueberry Garden doesn’t do this but instead examines a set of core properties.

And it works beautifully. Like Philip Glass made music by isolating melody and rhythm, Erik Svedäng has made a game by isolating the “explore-find item” component of games. This feature, as you will know, is almost universal. So why is it different here? Well, Blueberry Garden doesn’t cloud the explore-find item condition with narrative and gives it no significance beyond it being a function of gameplay. Likewise, you don’t fight bosses to get items or even travel large distances. In this respect, compare it to most RPGs.

In addition, items are economically used as part of the environment. When you discover an object in the game, you and it are transported to a home location. As you discover more items, they stack on top of each other. You then travel from the top of said stack. The higher the stack, the more you can explore. Items serve a purpose that’s two-fold: 1) as items you must find and 2) as structurally part of the environment.

In music, minimalist compositions often contain repeated patterns and structures. Anyone who’s listened to Philip Glass or Arvo Pärt will be familiar with this. Blueberry Garden forces the player into a set of fixed patterns. But they are good patterns. You explore (fly around, swim, wander), bring items to home, repeat. In fact, the patterns used at the beginning are present at the end. Again, compare to RPGs where you’ll develop new skills, find new items and enter new environments. While most players will recognize patterns in their RPG play that exist throughout but they are varied by said factors; the patterns become buried.

Before concluding, I’d like to briefly address the minimalism in the games audio and visual design. Visually, the game is very minimal. This doesn’t need much explaining, but what is interesting is that there is almost nothing in the environment that isn’t purposeful. This was one of the critical comments made by minimalist art and design: that beauty doesn’t mean complexity; lines and simple colors are enough; less is more.

Music, I find, also plays an interesting role. It is used sparingly and serves to highlight the sparseness and ranging beauty of the visual elements. Compare this with sculptors and architects who, instead of adding elements to the design itself, used lighting to accentuate aspects of it. That is, the music emphasizes not only the experience of playing but the experience of looking at Blueberry Garden.

While none of the analogies drawn in this superficial examination between Blueberry Garden and minimalism are perfect, I do feel that they are useful. Similarly, I understand that it’s meant to be a short, self-contained experimental game, but it works well as an interesting platform for the views put forward here. As such, applying the conclusions of the critique of minimalist work can illuminate some interesting things about this game. But, as always, we are left with some big Qs:

• How might this analysis be compatible with other games?
• Is the analysis useful? If so, what new ideas emerge? If not, where does it falter; should we reconsider “minimalism” when we discuss games?
• In art and design, minimalism arose out of a reaction to abstract expressionism. Perhaps the components that make Blueberry Garden so interesting arose out of a similar reaction to its contemporaries; graphics-motivated games; and the generally high detail of most games?
• How might the ideas of minimalism explain gameplay elements across video games? Could this be a useful tack in explaining things beyond the visual, auditory and text-based?
• What more can be said about the visual elements of Blueberry Garden?

The purpose here is not to impose critique from other fields on video games but to work towards a new taxonomy using this critique as a starting point. I hope to to spur debate about these topics in pursuit of these taxonomies. So, you heard me. Debate!

Which brings me to this post…

I mentioned in my original post that the game seems to be made “without a clear narrative”. I feel the need to clarify this, mostly so I do justice to a well made game. The Path lacks a clear narrative only in so far as you’re not explicitly told what events “mean” and how they relate to each other. Unlike, say, Diablo, where event and quests link directly into a clear narrative that’s explicitly delivered through the gameplay, The Path just gives you the events and you’re expected to string them together yourself. You’re not told why one girl happens upon a TV and another girl a ghostly campsite. You just know they must mean something. And this something must be determined by you; the player.

The inherent polysemy (multiple-meanings) of texts, as you will know from my previous post, is a tennet of postmodernism. The makers of The Path foregrounded this and succesfully used it to create a rich, satisfying and haunting experience. That being said, maybe I only found it haunting because of the way I interpreted the events; maybe I read the events in terms of something in my life; maybe you’ll interpret them differently and find them funny or sad?

It is a deeply psychological game that is ushering in a new type of game; the postmodern game. Soon, I’ll consider the HL 2 mod Dear Esther in similar terms. Stay tuned!

PS. I refer to it as a game only because this is a convenient term for this type of text. I maintain that whether or not it is a game is up to the player and their definitional conclusions.