56Kmodern » dada

Randy Balma: Municipal Abortionist

56K — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:28:24 +0000

Tiny red cars like countless ladybugs explode into colours because of the constant penetration of the yellow school bus. Randy Balma, Municipal Abortionist is drugged up on drugs and ready to explode things and genre clichés. It looks like GTA 1 alright, with all its conventions. But then come the hallucinogenic lights, the swarms of cars out of nowhere, and the cheap drum samples that go so well with Randy Balma’s MS painted self and the dadaist setting.

Then suddenly things start to change. Do the effects of Randy Balma’s attempted self-abortion wear off? No, certainly not. The school bus becomes a landmark, and yet it moves. Psychedelic colours and motions still going steady, although not yet married.

When it finally comes to aborting clients, Randy Balma is already jumping planets with the mark of death on hands and eyes. Mark Essen has told you a story and made you sick in the head. You have learned your lesson.

I made this. You play this. We are enemies

56K — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:08:33 +0000

Jason Nelson is a poet. His poetry mutates and hides behind interactive media, almost gamelike games and installations that combine such diverse subjects as ancient witchcraft, explosive weapons, breakfast cereal and the weather. Among his efforts is a remarkably playable one named I made this. You play this. We are enemies.

While guiding a little dot through a labyrinth (clearly a reminiscence of the olden days of plain, abstract and for-gaming’s sake gaming) you are made to witness travesties of well-known websites, implemented as ghastly artefact-ridden jpgs and enjoy poetic distraction. Or distractive poetry.

Jason Nelson weaves a semantic net out of empty phrases and bloated marketing jabber that grows tighter and tighter the longer you play. You won’t be able to memorize much, but you’ll get a feeling that you just came a little closer to the core of company-enforced newspeak: By shaping it into a beautifully strange rhythm of grotesque drivel, its true form is revealed: grotesque drivel. Only without the beauty.

Sexy Hiking

56K — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:20:52 +0000

People might argue that enough has been said about Sexy Hiking, but I doubt that. It is the dadaist statement of a Czech game designer, unleashed in 2003 to puzzle art snobs and hardcore platform nerds alike. Remember it has been said that Franz Kafka couldn’t have written such intense novels of nightmarish organizations, of absurd rules and incomprehensible officialdom, hadn’t it been for all his insurance company work which left his sensitive soul deeply impressed and also in need for a creative outlet?

Well, Jazzuo is a guy who is obviously taking seafood cooking classes in Japan and dressing up as a yellow ninja. Now, imagine Sexy Hiking to be the creative outcry of a sensitive soul, caught between seafood and ninja masquerade. You are exposed to a world of wrongness and pain, and despite the salacious name of the game you are chastely equipped with nothing but a 3D hammer, 3D boots and your ability to glitch gravity. The author does little to help or guide you on your quest:

use the humer as if u were really climbing something and ull see

to hang on rope u have to have the left mouse button pressed!

Now all there is left for you is to hike, hike with your hammer, hike over trees, stone walls, waterfalls, and all the while be careful not to violate the boundaries of this hiking universe: The floor is not always what it seems, and the set of rules to be used against you can be stretched ultimately.

To hike all over to my introduction – again: Lots of people have already praised the surrealist potential of this game, while others still fail to see it. In my opinion, if I were to name a single game that is honestly kafkaesque in its game mechanics, graphical presentation and general feel, oppressive in its set of rules, yet still giving the player a deceptive feeling of control, it would have to be Sexy Hiking.