Reviews

I have bought the Steam Indie Sale 10-pack(no longer in effect) last weekend, which gives me a good excuse to go over some of these games. I'm currently playing Gish and World of Goo, after being turned off by Mr. Robot.

So hopefully, after some preliminary writing, I will be able to give my impressions on some of these games.

I think a Gish/World of Goo/Crayon Physics Deluxe triple review could be good as well, as each of them is a physics based puzzle game, but I'm not sure yet.

I feel I need to play the entire game to be able to review it, so I don't know how long it will take for me to come up with a review.

It's been a while since I posted, but I just thought what the hell and am now going to use this page as an outlet for more of my thoughts in the future.

What games can be

Perhaps I should state more specifically what I look for in games and what I see in them.

I believe that games can be more than simply aiming to be "fun".
There is no clear definition of fun as there is no clear definition of art.
Whenever I read about a game that is fun, I think in my mind that the writer actually meant playful. A game is playful when it is firstly accessible in its premise, no hidden messages to be found, the controls are quick and responsive, little long term consequence. Everything simply reacts instantly, you get immediate and a lot of the time over the top response from, let's say, shooting a combustible barrel. It explodes. Quick and easy.

Ludo Lingo 2

I played I wish I were the moon yesterday and I have to say I didn't see any game in this.
Later that day, I came to think about what then constitutes a(n interesting) game to me, and why 'Moon didn't have it.

This is what I came up with:

A game isn't a game when it has interaction.
If all you do is press a button and a picture appears, that's interaction, but that isn't a game.

A game isn't a game when it has choice.
If you can go left and right, that's a clear choice, hell, you can even stand still. Doesn't make it a game though, moving my cursor isn't playing a game.

A game isn't a game if it has consequence.
This is a tricky one, since this statement would appear at first glance to be untrue. If the consequence is death aka reset it is false consequence.
you should be able to improve your current situation, position, state or abilities by your actions and their consequences.

Why I don't think 'Moon is a game: because you're not changing anything, you simply put the right object in the right place and watch the animation to find the endings.
I see no point in hunting for all the different endings.
I was so dissapointed when I saw a 1 min clip basicly showing the entire game played out before me I didn't need to play it anymore(though I did).

I had the same pondering over the game The Marriage by Rod Humble,  it too being of little consequence. Taking away its title, it would simply be 2 blocks, one pink, one blue, one growing larger when a mouse is put over it, the other being attracted to the first. The title forces the "meaning" onto it, it is not communicating much meaning through the actions or mechanics. You're not improving or progressing, you're just watching the immediate reaction of the 2 blocks to your cursor.

I think that what I keep looking for, is for the game to somehow dare the player to undertake an action, and that action not just having a direct consequence like showing an animation or an object changing direction, but actually have the effects have a more substantial influence over how the rest of the game plays out. 

Tetris comes to mind, as with every piece you position, you evolve the puzzle as you go.

Ludo Lingo

I'll post under this title when I think I've discovered a new piece of game language.
What I mean by that is I think games have a language that makes them understandable the same way movies and comics have.
Take for instance the panoramic establishing shot followed by an in-door shot. You know by seeing these in sequence that the director meant that the first shot was the enviroment in which the second shot took place.
There are all sorts of tricks of this kind, and I think games have them too.

With this explanation, I'll point you to Passage.

In this game, at least the way I played it, I picked up the girl, she followed me around and through the course of this 5 min game, I became more accustomed, more attached, more familiar with this girl following me around. It became the closest thing to a relationship I have seen in a game. Because that is what relationships are, sharing, becoming one, being connected to the other.
And when I lost her, I felt quite shocked, since I didn't have that part of me with me anymore.
I thought this was a great technique to sort of simulate what a relationship meant by simple behaviour.
I thought it was great for that reason.

Kidunaut

Astronaut, Kosmonaut, Gastronaut, and other nauts.

Kidunaut being a conglomoration of naut, derived from a greek word meaning sailor, according to wikipedia, and the line "I kid you not", meaning I'm not lying or simply 'really'.

So with this knowledge, a Kidunaut could be seen as a truthsailor, zigzagging the seas of lies and deceit but also truth and trust.