56Kmodern » minimalism

Hold Off Red

56K — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 15:54:37 +0000

Trouble, trouble everyday. But worry not, little heart – for in this game you have been equipped with a defense ray and have been given the possibilities to upgrade your stats after each wave of successfully held off woes. Yes, and the woes are of a most fiendish kind. They start off harmless and easy – no need to shed tears, little heart. But soon you have to realize that woes and worries are ever growing, the further you go, the harder it becomes. Now, isn’t that a lovely metaphor for life itself?

Well, basically it is a standard shooting game with a static player character that can buy upgrades and with enemies that are getting stronger each level to raise the challenge. But that static player character is a heart, and it is your task to keep it going, to blow the blues away. And also the mean reds, as in “Hold Off Red“.

Towlr

56K — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:24:39 +0000

Towlr are playable. They are combinations of numbers and shapes, changing sometimes, sometimes not. You can solve them, and if you solved one, you might want to solve another one, too.

They provide minimalistic puzzle design and strip computer gaming down to the core, where it almost coincides with computer programming. Solve that. As you play a towlr, the borders between overcoming programming obstacles and overcoming programmed obstacles start to fade. There is some kind of underlying language, but you have to figure out its rules by yourself.

Towlr designers like to see them as all-round audiovisual experiences. Frustrating ones on top of that. A digital bath in a pool of retro-styled tears.

Cursor x10

56K — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:41:59 +0000

Click stairs and move. The 16th floor is a goal. Cooperate by oneself?

You couldn’t put the message behing Cursor x10 any clearer. You are a cursor, and you must help your fellow cursors, which all become your alter egos within limited time frames, to reach “a goal”. To reach a goal, whatever it may be, you must cooperate with yourself. You must come to terms with yourself. Maybe meditate a bit.

And then find your way up the stairs, all the while collecting points and solving puzzles and triggering minimalist animations. It is an experiment in memory as well as in terms of game mechanics – can you find a fitting strategy in a 3D game world with the third dimension being time, not x, y or z? And what if I told you it was a 4D game world with time restrictions? Can you handle point-and-click dimensional failure?

Ergon/Logos

56K — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:26:36 +0000

Your first decision: jump or run. You can’t do both. You can not Jump&Run. Genre convention #1 deconstructed along the way, 30 years of continuous jumping and running, gone at a single blow. Molleindustria’s Paolo Pedercini manages to break the strongest and most widespread stereotype about video games so easily in his current work Ergon/Logos, you barely notice it at first. But if you notice, a whole avalanche of game stereotypes are waiting to be explored by you, the one who is in control.

Ergon/Logos captures all the conventions, clichés and, quite surprisingly, even some of the game mechanics of one of the oldest genres in video game history in plain text. As the player, you control the direction of the leading character’s stream of thought. Feeling quite the daredevil today? Great, then jump over pitfalls, grab the lovely maid and do not look left or right, for all your possible failures are already lined up in font size 72 at the side of the path to glory.

But if you feel like exploring the poetry within jumping, running and failing, then please fail. You will not regret it.