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.

So what is the answer? If the growing number of ‘old style’ games is anything to go by, it is for some developers to hark back to a simpler age. Over the years a number of oldie first-person shooters have appeared to various levels of success. Serious Sam is an iconic and tongue-in-cheek example where the screen is often filled with screaming  alien mechwalkers, animated skeleton beasts and half a dozen more incongruous enemies which the player is tasked with mowing down using a variety of super-sized weapons. Why? Who cares when you have a man-portable canon! More recently Darkest of Days, the new release from new team 8monkey Labs, lets you play as an American civil war era soldier armed with near-future weaponry in various battles throughout human history with only the thinnest of B-movie explanations as to why or how. Games like these prefer to revel in their own sheer unbridled gameness, with no pretention to rationality. We can certainly expect to see more of this to cater to people’s dulled palates – you might want to live of five-star restaurant cuisine sometimes you just gotta have a burger.

In a similar direction but simpler (and some might argue, ‘purer’) style are the mass of indie and flash games that  are gaining prominence in gamers’ and the general public’s awareness. Flash-games hosts such as Armor Games and MobyGames are more popular than ever and their developers are making money largely through sponsorship money gathered by the hosts from advertising revenue from the people playing the games.

Thanks to the easy availability of direct download services, independent developers can reach enormous numbers of potential customers and they would not be gathering attention if there were not people who wanted to play their simpler (by necessity as much as by design) games. There is no denying it – smaller, more concentrated experiences are what many people want.

This isn’t to say there is not a place for twenty hour FPS-RPG cross-player games with a development budget of $15 million and an equally priced marketing campaign, but it is clear if current trends continue they are going to be sharing a lot more digital shelf space with the likes of Portal, Peggle and GemQuest.

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.