Arthouse Games

Critique: Stars Over Half Moon Bay

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 11:10:12 EDT

Shall I project a world? If not project then at least flash some arrow on the dome to skitter among constellations and trace out your Dragon, Whale, Southern Cross. Anything might help.
--Mrs Oedipa Mass from Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49

On its face, Rod Humble's latest artgame, Stars Over Half Moon Bay, is a simple game about stargazing. This departs substantially from The Marriage, which on its face was about nothing at all, save the motions and transformations of geometric primitives. Of course, with that game, we had the title to guide us.

In the case of Stars, neither the title nor the sub-title ("the gentle bite of ouroboros") helps us drill down past the surface interpretation. We must look to the artist's background statement to learn that this is a work concerning "the relationship between observation, symbolism, exactitude and the creative process."

Interview: Phil Fish

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 20:36:46 EST

Phil Fish is lead designer for the forthcoming 3D-pixel game Fez, which was recently previewed on Arthouse Games. Fez is also a contender in this year's IGF. Phil has been making games since he was two years old. After attending both art school and game school, he got his industry start at Ubisoft Montreal, and he currently works in the industry as a level designer. He also makes up one fourth of the Montreal-based game-art collective Kokoromi, and these days he's busy organizing their second annual GAMMA event (which doubles as the closing party for the Montreal International Games Summit).

The following interview was conducted by email on November 21, 2007.

Exclusive Preview: Fez

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 13:50:08 EDT

I, like many of you, have watched the Fez teaser video several times over since it was released by Kokoromi a few days ago. What we saw was a 3D world compressed down to one of four 2D projections, where only the 2D versions of the world could be navigated. My imagination sprang into the realm of puzzles that would be possible with such a system, though the video showed no puzzles at all. In other words, it gave us a glimpse of the technology itself without showing us what can be done with that technology, without giving us any idea of what it is like to play Fez.

Recently, Phil Fish, lead designer for the project, was nice enough to send me the one-level Fez demo for preview purposes. This, as I understand it, is the same build that was recently submitted to the IGF.

It took me a while to find a graphics card that could actually run Fez (it sounds like it's eventually destined for the XBox 360, alas), but I finally got the game up on a screen yesterday. Let me sum it up the experience with four words: IGF Design Innovation Award. Have I played the other 172 entries? No, but I don't need to. This little gem is neck-and-neck with Braid as one of the most interesting and innovative games I have ever played.

News: Slamdance Games leaves Park City, UT

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 07:46:51 EDT

Apparently in the wake of the Super Columbine Massacre RPG controversy at the 2007 festival (coverage here), Slamdance has announced that it will not hold it's 2008 games festival in Park City. The film component of the festival, now in its 14th year, will still be held according to tradition (simultaneously with Sundance, and in the same town---Park City, Utah).

During the discussion at last year's festival, I recall Slamdance President Peter Baxter saying that the Park City community was simply not ready to have a public display of a game like SCMRPG, and that perhaps LA would be a better venue for such things. Come to think of it, there was a group of pre-teens that seemed to be hanging out in the 2007 game lounge quite a lot (I also saw the same group in the promotional retro arcade for Sundance's Chasing Ghosts doc a few blocks down). If these kids had been playing SCMRPG instead of Pac-Man.... my oh my, what would the parents think?

According to the announcement, Slamdance is planning to hold a separate games event in LA later on in 2008. The 2008 game lounge in Park City will showcase the best games from previous festivals.

I wonder if SCMRPG will be part of that showcase.

Debate: Arthouse Games vs. Ebert

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 02:47:15 EDT

Can games be art?

It all started back in October of 2005, when Ebert reviewed the film Doom and gave it one star. A few days later, a gamer wrote to Ebert and insisted that he had missed the point---Doom wasn't supposed to be a good, watchable film; it was supposed to be a tribute to a seminal video game. The Kurosawa film Rashomon was mentioned as comparable in terms of---shall we say---seminality to the game Doom. In response, Ebert planted the seed that would eventually grow into the vine that we are all still climbing. He wrote, "As long as there is a great movie unseen or a great book unread, I will continue to be unable to find the time to play video games."

A few weeks later, Ebert expanded on that point, claiming that books and films are better mediums than games. A few weeks after that, Ebert dropped his first explicit "games can't be art" bombshell, citing the lack of authorial control, due to player choice, as the hurdle that would forever keep games from catching up with art-capable mediums like literature and film.

Ebert kept quiet about games for a year or so after that. Then along came Mr. Clive Barker, who, somewhat clumsily, claimed that games can be art (a video of his full keynote would be nice---anyone got it?). Just last week, Ebert responded to Barker in mock-dialog style, somewhat revising his former position: games can be art, but not high art, as he understands it. Kotaku just posted a worthwhile feature that responds to Ebert's latest.

It's time for me to chime in here, and I'm going to continue the mock-dialog style. I don't know Ebert, but I feel like I do, because I've been reading his reviews for years. This man knows film, and I respect him deeply. Okay, let's get started.

Review: Paradroid

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 08:54:25 EDT

Paradroid is a game by Andrew Braybrook that was originally released for the Commodore 64 in 1985.

Yes, I am writing a review of a 22-year-old game. Yes, this retro-review deviates a bit from standard Arthouse Games practice. I justify this deviation with the following two excuses: 1. I never played the game when I was a kid, so it's new to me (and probably new to many of you, too); and 2. there's very little modern grist for the Arthouse Games mill (art games are few and far between). That said, I'm not sure that Paradroid is an art game---more like an interesting landmark in the art of game design.

Okay, first things first: how can you play it? Paradroid was re-released as Paradroid 90 on the Atari and some other platforms. It has a few modern remakes for PCs (see http://paradroid.sf.net, http://paradroid.ovine.net/, and http://freedroid.sourceforge.net/). All of these remakes differ slightly from the original in graphics or gameplay, but they're probably the easiest way to get a taste of Paradroid on a modern computer.

This review covers the original 1985 version for the C64---you can download a disk image of that here: paradroid.zip. I played it on the VICE emulator, and I had to download C64 system ROMS separately (from this package), since they no longer ship with VICE for legal reasons. I unzipped the paradroi.d64 disk image, mounted it as a disk in VICE, and auto-started the program on the disk. I had a bit of trouble here and there along the way (Paradroid is looking for a joystick---or emulated joystick---on port 2), but I was able to get Paradroid running smoothly with a bit of perseverance. If this process sounds too involved, try one of the remakes linked above.

Interview: Rod Humble

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 08:19:09 EDT

Rod Humble is the creator of the recently-released artgame The Marriage, which was featured at EGW this year. Rod has been employed in the game industry since 1990. He has worked on over 200 different games, including The Humans, Brutal, and EverQuest. He currently works for Electronic Arts as Head of Sims Studio. Rod paints in his spare time (see below for a sample).

The following interview was conducted by email on March 25, 2007.

Artgame: The Marriage

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 11:04:47 EDT

Rod Humble just released his experimental artgame The Marriage for public consumption. With no sound, no music, and barely-there graphics, this game is clearly not meant to dazzle your senses, but instead meant to intrigue your mind (and its low-fi nature is not a cop-out---Rod Humble's day job is at EA, so he has plenty of experience making high-fi games). The core question: What does the game mean? Rod answers that question somewhat on the download page, but I suggest you play the game before reading his explanation.

I have played The Marriage quite a bit, and so has my spouse. We've spent some time talking about what it might mean. The game, and my experience discussing it, have reminded me of experiences at galleries of modern art---for each piece, I stare at it, scratch my head a bit, and try to mine the piece for meaning of some kind. I'm also reminded of watching a David Lynch movie with friends---we'd spend the rest of the evening discussing what the movie might mean.

With The Marriage, we don't start that meaning-search empty handed. We've got the title, and we've also got Rod's one-liner: "The game is my expression of how a marriage feels."

I'm not sure if I will ever write a review of this one, because the game's success or failure depends so much on the player's personal temperament and taste. I'm posting it here as a point of discussion. Please add your thoughts in the comment roll.

Updates:

Joystiq just picked up on this release (followed shortly by everyone else---but you read it first on AG).

Tales of Tales has an interesting perspective.

Man Byes Blog responds.

Interview: Jonathan Blow

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 10:50:43 EST

Jonathan Blow is the programmer and designer of the forthcoming time manipulation game Braid, which was recently previewed on Arthouse Games. Though not yet released for public consumption, Braid has already made it into festivals and won a major award. Jonathan has been working in the games industry since 1995. His mainstream industry work has included a port of Doom 2 as well as contract work on the Oddworld, Deus Ex, and Thief franchises. Along the way, he also co-founded a company to create the online sci-fi action/strategy game Wulfram, which still has players to this day. In 2002, Jonathan started the Experimental Gameplay Workshop at the Game Developers Conference, and he has been running it yearly ever since.

The following interview was conducted by email on February 9, 2007.

Exclusive Preview: Braid

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 15:29:55 EST

Jonathan Blow's game Braid has been much talked about but little played, since he has been keeping the game under very tight wraps. Braid won the award for Innovation in Game Design at the 2006 IGF, but no demo was posted. Braid was discussed at the 2006 Experimental Gameplay Workshop, but no demo was posted. Braid was entered into the 2007 IGF and Slamdance festivals, and still no demo was posted.

Braid was selected as a Slamdance finalist, and I was heading to Slamdance too, so it seemed like I was finally going to get to play this elusive game. Alas, controversy erupted (when SCMRPG was pulled from the finalist list), and Jon pulled his game from the festival in protest. I wasn't going to play-test Braid at Slamdance after all.

However, somewhere along the way, Jon was nice enough to send me a snapshot build for review purposes. That build, version 0.847, is the subject of this preview. The build is a little rough around the edges, with place-holder graphics still lurking in the later levels and some performance issues in the early levels that were nearly complete (on a 1.9 GHz machine with a GeForce4 graphics card, this 2D platform game saw major slow-down when played at it's ideal resolution). Even with this rough build, I was able to draw one simple conclusion without doubts or reservations: Braid is the most innovative and interesting game I have ever played.

Braid has the potential to change the way you think about reality. It will certainly change the way you think about video games. In this preview, I will explain why it has this power, using detailed examples from the game. However, part of the game's interest lies in it's surprise factor: there is great joy to be had in discovering just how clever this game is for yourself. In fact, I am glad that I never read a preview of this game before I was lucky enough to play it myself. All I knew, and all you should know if you want the full experience, is that Braid is a 2D platform game in which the player manipulates the flow of time. If you're willing to wait for an official release, you should stop reading here.