Welcome to Indie-spection, The Galleon’s new monthly column taking a plunge into the diverse and richly creative world of independent games development.
Each month I will be taking a close look at some of the most interesting Indie titles to have come out and beyond merely giving you my overall first impressions examining those experiences from a particular angle and sharing my thoughts on a specific aspect, be it mechanically or narratively, that made them unique.
This month we venture into the intricacies of Jonathan Blow’s merciless puzzle orgy, look at a refreshing coming-of-age tale, size up a new contestant in the rogue-like survival space and get all sad and depressed at the heart-wrenching memoir of a family losing their infant son to cancer.
Witness the Metroidvania of the Mind
“It’s the Dark Souls of puzzle games,” they say. And they’re not wrong. Long has it been since Jonathan Blow set the Indie scene on fire with his smash hit Braid back in 2008, a 2D platformer that was as much about puzzle-solving as it was about philosophical quandaries. His much anticipated follow-up, The Witness, is no less mystifying. Hidden across the stunningly beautiful island are a collection of audio and video longs containing musings about every if, maybe and why that holds the universe together by notable philosophers, scientists and thinkers across millennia. Even after more than 40 hours of playtime, the meaning behind these cryptic messages in the context of the island continues to elude me.
But it is the mechanical wonders of The Witness I want to explore here. Because The Witness is first and foremost a puzzle game. And not in the three-dimensional, environmental sense of Portal or, more recently, The Talos Principle. No, these are straight-up 2D puzzle panels you walk up to and draw on.
You might wonder, why the island then? Why isn’t this a simple mobile app? And what you’ll quickly uncover is probably the most cleverly designed puzzle game ever made. The island absolutely matters. Because the different mechanics that feed into the diverse variety of different puzzles are explained on different parts of the island. And when I say explained, I mean visually of course. The Witness does not hold your hand. It does not bother introducing you to its inner workings. When you first start the game you immediately find yourself in its world. No menu, no loading screen, just pure, raw presentation.
A puzzle mechanic will explain itself to you through variations on a theme. A first puzzle might be incredibly simple, but a second will expand upon that idea in an effort to impart the larger ruleset on to you. Through trial and error your brain will begin to decode the enigmatic symbols, lines and squares, colored tiles and stars and come to a profound understanding. Now you suddenly realize what those strange yellow blocks at the beginning meant and you are able to go back and solve that
puzzle.
In a ‘Metroidvania’ game players acquire keys or specific gear and equipment in order to access certain areas, inviting them to backtrack to earlier parts of the game they can now access. The Witness functions in the same manner, except that the keys are knowledge. You unlock doors in your mind.
Pen and paper are an absolute requirement here.
Olly Olly Sorrow-Free
We’ve all experienced, or suffered, the Gone Homes and Life is Stranges of this world, depending on how much this particular brand of narrative suits your tastes. Coming-of-age stories are a new trend that story-driven games relish exploring. Most often these tales deal with some heavy subjects like the search for identity, anxiety, depression, judgement and hate. A bit of love is usually thrown in the mix for good measure, but it does strike me how often games paint the life of teenagers in an all too morose and gloomy light.
In comes Oxenfree, an engaging mystery thriller set on a mysterious island the main characters
have chosen for their weekend getaway. The plot is champion here. Truly wonderful dialogue between charming characters merely weaves its way through an engrossing and suspenseful ghost story, rather than dominating it. You come to connect with these kids in an organic way, as you witness them talk, laugh and cry in a way that feels incredibly authentic and genuine.
Oxenfree is not about rummaging through dozens of mundane items, pondering the deeper meaning of rubber ducks and feeling wistful at memories gone by. What makes the interactions here so deeply refreshing is that these characters for once aren’t obnoxious. They aren’t overly pensive or glum all the time, they enjoy life. And while life certainly has its trials and tribulations, perhaps a lot more so in adolescence, it doesn’t take mean that these have to be at the forefront of every narrative about growing up.
It is all the more unfortunate that the game’s ending seems to betray that desire for lightheartedness somewhat, shifting tone once more to the melancholic and cerebral.
Crashlands vs. Don’t Starve
It seems a lifetime ago when Minecraft ushered in a new era and thirst for the survival genre, combining it with rogue-like elements and a focus on crafting for a most compelling mix. Terraria quickly followed suit, adapting the formula to a 2D platformer and a few years later Klei jumped on board, presenting Don’t Starve’s top down isometric variant. That latter seems to have found an inspired fan in this month’s Crashlands by developer Butterscotch Shenanigans. At first glance, the games seem similar in concept, if not in setting. Crashlands’ sci-fi aesthetic fails to captivate the way Don’t Starve’s Tim Burton-esque art style did, but that is not the starkest discrepancy by any stretch. Crashlands has a much greater focus on story. Whereas Starve segregated its story mode from the main experience, that’s all there is to Crashlands. From the very beginning the game holds players’ hands in an extensive tutorial accompanied by mildly entertaining dialogue between the player protagonist and her robot sidekick.
This is perhaps the biggest change. Don’t Starve was ruthless, dropping you into a world with no guidance whatsoever. But what I’ve come to realize is that it had a quality Crashlands lacks. It was intuitive! The ultimate irony is that despite its charming efforts to teach itself to me, I felt more confused during my first hours with Crashlands. Everything from the UI to crafting system and inventory management try hard to be more convenient, yet felt oddly confusing to me at first, perhaps in large part due to my being accustomed to the very conventions it tries to break.
The game also does way with punishing hunger, night-time and perma-death, which might make it more appealing to those who found Don’t Starve’s murderous attitude towards the player a bit too much.
At the same time, the limited tension stemming from a lack of risk/reward and the linear nature of the game’s progression might turn off others.
(A review copy was provided courtesy of Butterscotch Shenanigans)
That Dragon, Cancer, and his Enemy, Faith
As the medium grows, games are starting to dig into more serious subject matters. On the spectrum of difficult to play and even more difficult to talk about, That, Dragon, Cancer sits firmly at the far end.
This title, created by the two parents of a young boy named Joel Green, who lost his battle with cancer at the tender age of 5, serves as both a memoir of the precious time the family shared with their son, as well as a means of coping, of coming to terms through the process of making a the game itself.
Ryan and Amy Green are also devout Christians, so naturally themes of faith, grace and the afterlife are deeply woven into Dragon’s narrative. Ultimately I have found it hard, despite the emotional weight of the experience, to turn off the cynical part of my brain. As Joel’s condition worsens, Amy and Ryan naturally begin to wrestle with their faith. What God would allow such suffering? Why would God even choose to answer their prayers asking him to save Joel’s life? Are they significant enough in God’s eyes? Questions like these, however, are not ones the game is interested in answering. Throughout the ordeal the Greens’ desperately try to justify God’s actions down the reasoning behind giving their son cancer in the first place, clamoring to their faith and believing right until the end in an eventual miracle. Whether Joel’s ultimate death led them to question these matters further is not revealed as the game comes to an abrupt close. Arguments over the role of art and its mandate to merely stimulate the audience to develop their own responses could be made here, but it feels as though That Dragon, Cancer could have taken its thought-provoking ideas further.
(A review copy has been provided courtesy of Numinous Games)
