Friday Favorites: Video Games

I am not a person who enjoys acting under pressure–particularly time pressure. Though I don’t *seem* slow, I really am, at least when it comes to reacting physically to things. It’s like my “plan” and “execute” modules are super badly sequenced. This is why I can’t balance on things that move–like skateboards and boats. And, it’s why I’m terrible at video games.

However, I really *like* video games–have ever since we got our ColecoVision gaming console when I was like 12. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I was always drawn to the ones that had more of a story to them: saving the princess or finding the treasure rather than just mindlessly shooting down battalions of aliens or turning all the squares one color before a stupid snake could turn them another color (the sound that Q-Bert snake made was SO ANNOYING).

No surprise then that I gravitated toward puzzle games. These are frequently story-driven, beautiful, and let you take your time to figure them out. And they figure heavily on my list of all-time favorite games, to wit:

• Popeye (ColecoVision): This is just on here for nostalgia’s sake. It’s not a great game. You’re Popeye, and you have to run around and collect all these hearts that float down from Olive Oyl before they hit the ground and expire, while avoiding Bluto, who’s trying to punch you in the noggin. It pretty much contradicts everything I just said above, but I still liked it. We also had a side-scrolling Smurfs game I liked it as well (though the tinny 16-bit version of “Tis a Gift to be Simple” that looped incessantly during gameplay would probably be enough to send me into a berzerker rage now, Clockwork Orange style).
• Zork: Grand Inquisitor (PC). I honestly don’t remember how I got hooked on this game. I was working at a bookstore that had a computer section for a while, and I might have picked it up there on a friend’s recommendation. I had played the old DOS text-based Zork game on my dad’s old Intel 8088, and I mostly found it maddening because my memory is nearly 100% visual, so I could never remember how to get back to some room I had been to based on N/S/E/W directions. Anyhoo, ZQI was one of the first 360 panning games that came out after Myst, and I LOVED it. I played it for hours; I got all my friends to play it. We had to ice down my laptop to keep the poor graphics card from overheating and just spinning the environment around like you had a permanent case of vertigo…. The graphics are great, the puzzles are fun, it has a super-cute sense of humor. I couldn’t even remember what the goal was and had to look it up on Wikipedia: you’re restoring magic to a land that’s been taken over by technocracy. Highly recommended if you can find an emulator (I think the last system it ran on was like Windows 98).
• Myst (PC). Of course. Sometimes I think my sole claim to fame in life is the fact that I went to church with Rand and Robyn Miller, the guys who wrote this game–when they were like 12. It was groundbreaking for its time–spooky, beautiful, definitely a prime ancestor of all the story-puzzle and many of the open-world games we have now (not to mention MeowWolf). The story was compelling, the puzzles just hard and networked enough to keep you engaged. I think it holds up.
• Tiny Thief (iOS). Now we’re into iPad games. This was a little point-and-tap puzzle adventure that was just SO cute and so fun. You’re trying to steal all these items without being seen so you can eventually free a captured princess. There’s a little bonus ferret you can find in each scene, too. I love the heck out of that stuff. 5Ants made it and sold it to Rovio, the people who made Angry Birds, and then they stopped updating it. But if you can run a version on an old iPad, you should. The visual design looks like a 1960s kids’ book in the best possible way.
• Speaking of Rovio, I was completely obsessed with Angry Birds (iOS) for like 3 years. I can’t even say what was so addictive about it, some combination of the adorable birds (Chuck for the win!), deceptively hard physics puzzles, and simple, satisfying mechanics (pull a slingshot!). Imagine how excited I was when they started doing an Advent Calendar every year (including a Lovecraft-themed arctic one)! Alas, they made the game too glitzy, and I stopped playing.
• Two Dots (iOS). I was recently talking to a game designer from Italy, and we were fangirling over this game: super simple mechanics, cool retro design, chill music. You just connect same-colored dots into squares to erase all dots of that color on the screen. And then there are cute, special dots like ladybugs and monsters that wiggle and move around eating other dots. It’s the perfect thing to play while waiting at the DMV. And there are seemingly 1,000,000 levels. It’s like Candy Crush but hipper.
• The Amanita games: Samorost, Machinarium, etc. (iOS). All so beautiful, with fun, involved puzzles and touching, motivating storylines. Plus, music is a huge part of these games, and it’s house-composed and so good. From a Czech design team who basically can’t make a bad game if they tried.
• LuminoCity (iOS): Very similar to the Amanita games in game design, but the scenes are hand-built/animated. Vivid, creative, sweet, and fun. From a British team.
• Gorogoa (iOS): Probably the best game for iPad I’ve played. Really original puzzles that require you to shift comic-book-style frames around the screen to regenerate scenes. The story is haunting, the music lovely, the animation really like nothing else in its genre. If you only ever play one iPad game, play this one.
• Zelda: Twilight Princess and Breath of the Wild (Nintendo) I’m going to do a separate post on BOTW soon, so I’m not going to go into detail here, but there’s just nothing like it. Even if you don’t like video games, I think you would find the experience of playing BOTW absorbing: it feels like nothing so much as moving to a new, wonderful country and making it your home.