clyde

50 Short Games by thecatamites (Game Club)

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I didn’t read Happy Astronaut City with the same political bent when I played, but I’m definitely seeing some of that now.  The prison comparison is interesting. There is definitely something strange going on with the perspective here. I think, in my initial experience of the game, I separated the narrator's voice from the visual rendition of the nauts, the cheery drawings and animations. Since we can’t trust the narrator (you’re right, it sounds very Fox News), then we can’t necessarily trust our visual perceptions of the astronaut city. There’s a little too much insisting, both verbal and visual, that the astronauts are happy. I guess I didn’t note the politics too much at first because it feels like satire of such a widespread generally hateful sentiment. Suspicion of paying people, especially when they’re not producing something that can be sold somewhere. Suspicion that other people are more happy than they have any right to be. Grass is greener, except we would prefer to poison their grass rather than move there. Suspicion of wasting money on anyone's comfort who doesn't "deserve" it, or by paying for something to exist that provides a distant rather than immediate gratification. A moral justification for something to exist, rather than a corporate justification of the same. Just general resentment at the government spending money on anything, really.

 

This game feels very storybook to me. Wandering around in the margins, between the pictures, creeping over the text. I love the sense of separation from the walled off spaces. It makes the environment feel bigger and more mysterious than if you were allowed to explore it. We might look at the never-ending, impersonal terrain in Cowboy Living as a point of contrast. I can’t really figure out the cursor/avatar. It seems to be alternating between a sign and an igloo? The text mentions ex-nauts like the astronauts are retired—like they are simply allowed to enjoy themselves in a retirement community after working as real astronauts, and this is what pisses the narrator off the most. But then you learn that this place is a sort of theme park. A simulacrum of space filled with smiley spacemen. Kind of like Disney World or something? Or maybe a more generous analogy would be a museum. I’m sort of perplexing myself a little in thinking about this.

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That Stephen Murphy article in Arcade Review #3 was so interesting. I really enjoyed finding out that there was a subculture loading hobbyist JRPGs into an editor and just playing the interesting bits. 

Not only playing, but stealing! That was my favorite part. It is (or was?) a culture that exists to keep reproducing and iterating. A culture that is entirely about creating, rather than consuming, even though everyone feels this inexplicable sense of guilt that they actually should be consuming tedious long-form RPGs, but instead they just wanna steal some good monster graphics and make their own.

 

On a semi-related note, I just played an RPGM game called Dooms 2 that is deeply strange in a very elaborate, RPGMaker way.

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Cigar Afficionado immediately reminded me of The September Issue and its main focus, Anna Wintour. The word "exhultant" is used so many times in the game that I think of it as an inside-joke of which I can appreciate, but never really be a part of. I think its use largely has to do with this idea of looking good; not just looking good, but looking better than everyone else. "Busters" are treated as fashion items in the narrative of the game, but are more of a tool or special ability in the game's mechanics. Honestly, this inconsistent treatment of "Busters" dilutes the attractive theme of competitive beauty and glamourous spite. I think the theme would have had more potency if the smoke of "Busters" couldn't knock out guards and was nothing more than a symbol of status. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_-pDpLVVNc

 

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I really enjoy the theme. The fantasy of two glamorous and powerful women having an intimate ongoing war between them whose main front is the attainment of high-status icons and ensuring scarcity of them, is really fun. Personally, there is something particularly enjoyable about the main actors being women rather than men. I'm used to the stories of arbitrary wagers between wealthy gentlemen such as the one in 80 Days or Trading Places, but I find a rivalry between influential ladies to be somewhat exotic. I have little idea of why the gender of the characters has such an appeal for me. I tend not to enjoy male byronic heroes while I seek out female ones. I find this a bit problematic, but it is true of my current tastes. 

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It occurs to me after playing Cigar Afficionado that many of these games are about glamorization. Perhaps glamorization and alienation (the other thing these games are about) are two sides of the same coin. Maybe this is why many of these games could be read as advertisements for abstract, intangible placeholders for human desire. The Buster animation is incredible.

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Also, just in case anyone wants to take a crack at it, the author's note for this game offers a parenthetical discussion question, free of charge. Though I guess including it here could be construed as an act of discussion question piracy. (?)

 

(interesting sidenote: RPG Maker has a small yet thriving subculture of homebrewed tickling fetishism RPGs which are weirdly more "straight" genre exercises of the squaresoft rpg mold than many of the non-pornographic titles. What does this say about ( a ) RPGs ( b ) human sexuality ( c ) homebrew video games? You have ten minutes)

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Perhaps it suggests all three have the potential for fetishism, and that this typically involves adhering rigidly to some nebulous group of rules? Or maybe that people are more focused and less likely to grow bored of development and go on unusual tangents when working on a game about their fetishes than a more general/traditional RPG? I don't know, ten minutes isn't a very long time!

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Or maybe that people are more focused and less likely to grow bored of development and go on unusual tangents when working on a game about their fetishes than a more general/traditional RPG?

This gets my vote.

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It's been a few weeks since I've mentioned that theCatamites is incredibly skilled in choice of subject matter for these games. I'd like to know how it is done. These games are short and cannot develop concepts and rhetorics of length, but there is so much low-hanging fruit when it comes to subject matter and perspective that there is no need to do so. TheCatamites makes it look so easy.

 

Garlo's Gambit brought to mind the survivorship-bias of many wealthy individuals who live in a society fueled by faith in the just-world hypothesis (often cited as "meritocracy"). With rare exception, when a wealthy individual tells their rags-to-riches story (or their grandfather's) it involves a moment of betrayal and exclusion and always a unreplicable bout of luck. Monetary wealth is inherently exclusionary because the imbalance is what motivates the labor paid for. Garlo doesn't drive the trash-truck any more, why would he? He can fly now and has a magic castle. I don't blame Garlo. I would quit my job if I didn't have any needs to fill, regardless of how destitute my former co-workers remain. Maybe George wouldn't be so envious of Garlo if George had pulled up his boot-straps and walked around town rather than going to a bar. Then he would have been able to take the opportunity to grey-market some eggs before they made it illegal. Back then, regulation was light. Nowadays they have GPS installed in the work-trucks watching your every move and sorcerors can't buy eggs without an accompanying invoice from the Forbidden City. That's because Garlo got his break by being inconsiderate, betraying George, stealing from the Forbidden City and from Garlo's employer; it's not replicable and therefore exclusive and shameful. And here Garlo is bragging about his crimes as if they'll legitimize themselves if repeated enough times while smiling and laughing. 

 

This video is somewhat related and I enjoy it. It's not super related though so I'll spoiler-tag it.

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I've actually been aware of this game club before I joined the forums (Hi Alex!). It's a neat idea, though I'm always a little too distracted and disorganized to stick with something like this. The reason I'm finally writing something in here, except to tell you how cool I think this is, is because a fellow critic wrote something about 50 Short Games on a blog I'm also on. Unfortunately, it's German. But sitll, discussion is happening. You are not alone!

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I've actually been aware of this game club before I joined the forums (Hi Alex!). It's a neat idea, though I'm always a little too distracted and disorganized to stick with something like this. The reason I'm finally writing something in here, except to tell you how cool I think this is, is because a fellow critic wrote something about 50 Short Games on a blog I'm also on. Unfortunately, it's German. But sitll, discussion is happening. You are not alone!

 

Thank you for this link and thank you for saying hi. Please tell your friend and anyone else that they are welcome to join discussion in this here forum. I wish I could read German. Since I can't, I ran this seemingly excellent piece of German criticsm through the notoriously inaccurate Google translate and got some real gems:

 

David Sherman sang , programmatically wrong, in one of the most memorable song-lines of the 90s ". All my favorite singers Could not sing" Memorable idea: all best game designers do not play games.

 

And here:

 

thecatamites is one of the few people who are actually an island. On the Internet, there may be no, but still: rampant wild life.

 

And this one's good:

 

And the reason why actually have all those young and older human rights, who want to sit on the lap of thecatamites, as if he were Santa Claus and the world a cheap department store photo booth: nobody gets paid for it, and the photos like distorted grin be disfigured, but all is well, well, well, if I may just warm up to a unbeirrsamen righteousness and an unfailing sense of humor.

 

And my favorite:

 

50 short games are dispatches from a world in which the letters AAA is wiped off the auto-correction, a world beyond the gap who tried to tear the last few months, although the bridges only the weight less bodies from snapping "Päng" were in reality there is always away, by tearing the ropes of the suspension bridge and throw themselves and their load in the schism.

 

Glorious. Beautiful.

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Garlo's Gambit (belated): Had to look up "gambit" again, which I'm pretty sure I've had to do each time I've played this game. Gambit is an X-men, and also an opening chess move, and also a way to start a conversation. Garlo's Gambit is another nonsense alliterative video game character name (My guess is this is how thecatamites arrived at the subject matter of the game--a kind of video game avatar madlib. Whoops, actually I just checked the notes, and I was wrong.). For the first time, we play as a garbage truck. Outstanding. Love the garrish city, but those are the most confusing looking garbage bags ever. Actually, those are your avatars (both of them). Those are the most confusing looking avatars ever. I like the balance of prose and exploration in this one. In terms of volume, the writing feels more restrained, deliberate, well-placed.

 

Edit: Clyde, your thoughts helped me appreciate the sinister element here. I think this is probably the most interesting aspect of the tone, and it's pretty subtle. Like a parable with a twinge of darkness.

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Ok, so for Which Way, I'm gonna try starting us off with a discussion question, a prompt of sorts.

 

In thecatamites's Which Way, which do you think is more crucial to the game's thesis: 1) the element of choice OR 2) the player's sense of perspective? You have ten minutes. You may not stop typing for anything. If you can't think of what to type next, then you have to type "I can't think of it" over and over. Or you can type the last word you just typed over and over again until you think of something to say.

 

Start now. Or whenever.

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Ok, so for Which Way, I'm gonna try starting us off with a discussion question, a prompt of sorts.

 

In thecatamites's Which Way, which do you think is more crucial to the game's thesis: 1) the element of choice OR 2) the player's sense of perspective? You have ten minutes. You may not stop typing for anything. If you can't think of what to type next, then you have to type "I can't think of it" over and over. Or you can type the last word you just typed over and over again until you think of something to say.

 

Start now. Or whenever.

 

Which is more crucial to the game's thesis: 1) the element of choice or 2) the player's sense of perspective is an interesting question. First let us consider what each of these aspects look like in Which Way. I can't think of it. The element of choice is the first we will consider. Rooms tend to have either one or two clickable objects. Asd the game progresses you get a sense that these clickable objects (the ones you should be looking for) are symbolic portals to other rooms where you may have to make another decision. This creates a sense of a labryinth or more of a maze actually. I can't think of it. At one point you are presented with what may be interpreted as secret-knowledges that give the player the sense that the choices they had been executing upon earlier were I can't think of it . The choices that were being executed upon were I can't think of it. The choices which were being executed upon were actually not all of the available choices I can't think of it. I can't think of it. The choices that the player was executing upon was actually not a set of effectual choices. the choices that the player was executing were not effective choices and all along the relevant choices were to be made with the use of the secret knowledges which are presented after many rooms have been navigated, this creates a desire or even an imagined scenario where the player then retrospectively considers all of the places where they could have used the secret tool. In my playthrough, this secret-knowledge turned out to be completely unreliable because at no point could I get anything to happen by pressing the ctrl+alt+ arrow keys. I can't think of it. This makes me consider that this particular secret knowledge is actually a red-herring which is similar to the implied role of "Prince Mogey has a magical Key" but then you start considering the relationship between the two detectives and the tropes which inform them. In old movies and pulp stories are the detectives wise? Is it the young noob or the old veteran that knows what it takes to solve the case. I think that it tends to be the old veteran who can't see past the mistakes they have made in the past and how this will always send them into a loop of missing vital clues. But in series such as the X-files, there is a tendency for the author to suggest that both parties have something to bring to each case and so they will both be required to listen to each other in order to solve the case. I don't see the two characters having oppositional views in this game though. It would be kinda interesting if they did. If the young detective said that they think it's the yellow door and the old one said that it is definately the red one, then I would get to choose who I think knows what they are talking about. 

Perspective is also important. I think I probably ended up talking about perspective (not necessarily graphical camera-perspective,  but contextual perspective) I can't think of it. I think I talked about perspective more while I was tryiong to talk about execution of choices so that makes me think that perspective is more important.

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My impression was that the focus was on perspective, and more specifically how a persons can change over time? The two detectives are drawn identically, and at one point the older one says that his first case was him paired with a younger detective, running through a building, asking lots of questions. The implication to me is that both voices are the same character, which I think is more heavily hinted at in the "I am large, I contain multitudes" line (which I knew sounded familiar, so I looked it up, and discovered it's a reference to a Walt Whitman poem). There's a similar phenomenon in the form of the stage; the backdrop (the blue outline) is the same in every scene, but changes drastically over the course of the game and seems to contain a store, house, theater, etc.

 

The thing that's stuck with me is the small house they see, that then turns out to be a 'crude billboard affair.' I think it's sticking with me because I recently watched Stop Making Sense and starting thinking about the lyrics of

. That song is (I think) about a midlife crisis where someone realizes they've been living passively, and tries to figure out how they arrived where they are and why, and this frame reminded me of that idea. If they are in fact supposed to be the same person, then is this frame the Chief realizing that he actually always wanted a peaceful life but never admitted it to himself? It seems like entering the house puts the characters back into their bizarre pursuit, so maybe the 'crude billboard' is the game itself, a crudely drawn 2D box. I can't think of it.

 

This has been my intro to thecatamites and this thread. I enjoyed playing and thinking about Which Way, and I'm curious to see how playing more of these will affect my reading of them. Also I cheated by both editing this post and stopping typing to play through the game again.

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Since I can't, I ran this seemingly excellent piece of German criticsm through the notoriously inaccurate Google translate and got some real gems.

 

It's all less inaccurate than you might think.

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In thecatamites's Which Way, which do you think is more crucial to the game's thesis: 1) the element of choice OR 2) the player's sense of perspective?

 

This discussion question is hopelessly flawed. Of course, choice only matters as it relates to perspective. It doesn’t matter whether or not choices have “real” consequences. The only thing that matters is how the player/audience perceives the choice. It doesn’t matter how the player experiences consequences. What matters is how the player experiences the choice itself. All you need is a small window, where the player can wonder “what would this have been like otherwise, if I chose differently.” In a game of this scope, this window is very small because what we’ll end up doing is simply play through the game a few times and explore every branch for the purposes of discussing it in this here forum. Nevertheless, you get that small window of wonder, where you’re like “I wonder what’s going on in that other room?” So it’s about both choice and perspective, but choice only matters as it relates to player perspective.

 

Everything is set up like a stage or diorama. It’s as if you + your double detective avatars + are like an audience, but the unwelcome kind. Every room contains some kind of performance, but it’s as if you have stumbled back stage and are intruding on the closed off dress rehearsals rehearsals rehearsals rehearsals rehearsals rehearsals rehearsals

 

I forget how this works exactly, but in the Walking Dead game you make choices that don’t have real consequences beyond text that appears on screen such as “She will remember that you said that.” This is basically all the player requires to be convinced that choices are meaningful. Just some indication that the machine recognizes the choice as such. This is enough to manipulate player perspective, and what’s under the hood in the Walking Dead game is hidden so deftly that the player never really questions that text on the screen. Of course they’ll remember, I said that. Why wouldn’t they.

 

I’m either running out of things to say or I’ve gotten so scattered I forgot where I was going with this. I guess I should consider what the game’s thesis is, since that’s part of the question. I think the game is trying to present a space that is stripped down to these two essential elements (perspective & choice) and the actual contents of these containers are meaningless, like a Beckett play or something. There’s no narrative progression or development of characters, it’s all shifting player perspective, both manipulated by the player and evaded by the game. The game must acknowledge the presence of the player because it is the player’s perspective that governs it, but here the game acts as if we are intruding. This is how we are acknowledged, so our choices always feel like a combination of meaningless and wrong.

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It seems like entering the house puts the characters back into their bizarre pursuit, so maybe the 'crude billboard' is the game itself, a crudely drawn 2D box. I can't think of it.

 

I really like this idea! These games seem hyperaware of themselves as potentially arbitrary (?) containers for fun marker drawings, consistent sensibility, and an always elusive author's perspective. And I think what the author probably finds most interesting about games in general is a sense of them as arbitrary containers rather than holistic, coherent, intentional, or fully realized forms.

 

This has been my intro to thecatamites and this thread. I enjoyed playing and thinking about Which Way, and I'm curious to see how playing more of these will affect my reading of them. Also I cheated by both editing this post and stopping typing to play through the game again.

 

Cheating is allowed and probably even encouraged in this forum. Great post, thanks for writing!

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At one point you are presented with what may be interpreted as secret-knowledges that give the player the sense that the choices they had been executing upon earlier were I can't think of it . The choices that were being executed upon were I can't think of it. The choices which were being executed upon were actually not all of the available choices I can't think of it. I can't think of it. The choices that the player was executing upon was actually not a set of effectual choices. the choices that the player was executing were not effective choices and all along the relevant choices were to be made with the use of the secret knowledges which are presented after many rooms have been navigated, this creates a desire or even an imagined scenario where the player then retrospectively considers all of the places where they could have used the secret tool. In my playthrough, this secret-knowledge turned out to be completely unreliable because at no point could I get anything to happen by pressing the ctrl+alt+ arrow keys. I can't think of it. This makes me consider that this particular secret knowledge is actually a red-herring which is similar to the implied role of "Prince Mogey has a magical Key" but then you start considering the relationship between the two detectives and the tropes which inform them.

 

Just want to point to this as a good example of working yourself up into an interesting thought. And it's cool to be able to see this cognitive process play out on the page. Thanks for indulging the rules of the game.

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Which Way starts out with two characters looking at two doors, one with a large arrow pointing at it. One character asks "Which Way?" and the other declares "The answer must be obvious!" Here I will examine and interpret the beginnings of these two divergent paths.

 

If the player chooses the non-obvious door, then the player becomes the portion of the detective pair who is skeptical of instruction. 

Going through the door that is not pointed to, the player finds themselves in a room with a tiny door. One detective (I assume the one who thought the obvious way would be best) exclaims that there is no way they can fit through it. This is the obvious, initial observation. But the skeptical detective (the player) points out that it is an illusion. I found the path through the non-obvious door to continue this theme of initial observations being incorrect and skepticism being instructive. 

The next room brings us to a citizen who is basically a living arrow. They instruct the player to go through the door on the left (this makes the left door the obvious one). Here's what happens if you go through the door on the left, you encounter a bomb and then escape to find yourself in a shop. But if you take the path of the skeptic, you find yourself in an empty room where the two detectives state that they are experiencing a moment of success. The skeptical path continues to lead us towards the perp. 

After leaving the shop we end up on the plain looking at a townhouse whose reality is masked again by initial, obvious appearance. It's just another illusion. Playing off of Dinosaursssssss previous observation, I think that this is the disapointment expressed by the Chief about how living on the plain in a nice townhouse is just an illusion in order to distract them from finding the perp. It's like those stories where the protagonist is  tempted with an illusion of a fantastical ideal, lands of lotus-eaters. That fantastical ideal doesn't exist though, our protagonists must continue on because they aren't oblivious optimists, they are skeptics on the path towards the truth hidden by these illusions. 

This brings us to the first room where now the arrows are flipped. The obvious way is the path they just took, because now they know that their skepticism proved helpful. 

If the player picks the obvious choice (now made obvious more by our previous success than an arbitrary arrow), the player finds themself fooled.  The skeptic knows that just because it was true before, does not mean that it remains true now. 

 

So what happens when you chose the obvious choices?

Going through the obvious door brings you into something common and expected. It appears to be a storage room full of crates, nothing about it is inordinary. The next room brings you into someone's house. One detective is concerned that the two of them are stepping on the very rights they are swarn to protect, but the confident detective (the player who choses the obvious or more direct route) isn't interested in this perp's feigned innocence. The no-nonsense detective points out that this is just a play being put on to misdirect them from teh obvious truth, that this person in front of them is the perpetrator. Now that the player refuses to be fooled by their playing dumb, they appear mousey and guilty. The novice detective doesn't feel comfortable about all of the assumptions being made and so the case continues to be investigated. 

[i don't have complete confidence in these interpretations, but I think they are interesting enough to follow through with.]

 

 

At this point in the branching, the two paths come back together. The player who is skeptical about what they see and the player who sees no need for doubting the most direct conclusions end up in the same place. 

 

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I can't find any videos of wacky chase scenes. Maybe this is a false memory, but I think that they happened in the Monkees Television show all the time and I know they happened in cartoons where they would go through various surrealist funhouses.

TheCatamites continues to remind me of tropes from the media of my youth that I am unable to find on Youtube.

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I can't find any videos of wacky chase scenes. Maybe this is a false memory, but I think that they happened in the Monkees Television show all the time and I know they happened in cartoons where they would go through various surrealist funhouses.

TheCatamites continues to remind me of tropes from the media of my youth that I am unable to find on Youtube.

 

Is this sort of thing what you mean?

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Is this sort of thing what you mean?

Yeah, that mixed with snake-charmers pointing that way to the pursuers, then taking off the turban, ripping off the beard, dropping the recorder and running the opposite way.

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I find most of TheCatamites games to be inspirational as a game-maker, but YardDoggz especially so. If I was to say to myself "I'll make a game about playing fetch with my dog in the yard." I would conclude "Naugh, it wouldn't be fun our interesting." But YardDoggz makes me think that it would be interesting just because I would see the manifestation of a few design-decisions and if I'm lucky it'll evoke a seasonal circumstance. Again, I'm tempted to make the haiku-comparison.

The yard dog fetches.

Autumn cold has settled in.

Everything is brown.

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