Evolve into all kinds of plants and trees, of course. Unless you know exactly who you are and are told over and over again who you will be, nothing can keep you from evolving into anything you like. And so begins the journey of the little sprout, growing into coconuts, dandelions, fruit trees – overcoming dangerous obstacles and escaping ravenous wildfowl that waits for you in pastel-coloured lands. Nice!

Your actions trigger sampled music by the Boards of Canada. There are three phases, intended to bring you further into the world of Deep Chalk, but what kind of world is this? It is the world of Samorost without the little gnome, and in black and white. It is beautiful to explore until you get stuck. It is the world seen from the non-existant eyes of a little floating diamond that wants to go on but can’t.

Play it for the atmosphere alone.

Ferry Halim’s High Delivery combines explorational aspects with a medieval memento mori message. Its graphics style is really reminiscent of impressionist paintings. You play as a fan. There is a bottle, tied to a balloon, and with your fan you change the direction of the balloon, so the bottle can collect flowers. Your balloon goes higher and higher, your bottle fills with roses by the dozen, and finally you have arrived.

You delivered 66 roses. Try again.

In la pâte à son, rhythm comes naturally. All you have to do is set up your incredible pipe dream on the watercolored chessboard and let things happen. It is almost like an exploration game without moving – you explore how the melodies from your two strange devices concide, how abstract and complex a form you can build and still enjoy, only to hit the mean red button and thrash it all again if you went in the wrong direction.

At this, you could really call it an impressionist sound and game experience – there is no challenge other than to stretch your imagination and create beautiful melodies. If you want to go by the official definition, this is a non-game.

through symbiotic unities of scrap and nature.

This was the first work of Jakub Dvorsky, whose Amanita Design is currently enjoying Indie fame with Machinarium – he expanded his nostalgic scrap-planet-universe and made a full-length puzzle game of it.