clyde

50 Short Games by thecatamites (Game Club)

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Many of the games in this collection seem to be motivated by the fantasy of role-playing a perspective within a ritual of fiction. Cowboy Living allows us to be the child watching or a host producing some cowboy-themed children's show. Creamerz allows us to role-play the naive, blissed-out dessert-treat as they exist in the world extrapolated from the anthropomorphisation their marketing-campaign designed. Glory Days Of The Free Press allow us to be the early 20th century newspaper-editor imagined by mid-century American films. Which Way allows us to be the apprentice/mentor relationship between two detectives during a fun-house chase. And The Quiet Man allows us to perform the role of an austere icon of western-films for movie-goers. Seeing these particular fantasies within a context more full than their fictional world (they are often presented in the additional context of their typical media) highlights the associated framing as part of the fantasy. It's more true that I want to star as a cowboy than be an actual cowboy. I didn't think about that until I played The Quiet Man.

 

The screen's composition is like an animated infographic in its simplistic and powerful structure. A stack of the audience, their reactions, and the imposing screen, centered in darkness makes the ritual feel monolithic. The stylization of the characters and props on the screen are simplified, and script-like. This logographic quality gives the subjects on the screen an amplified sense of symbolism compared to the rough sketches of the audience themselves. Everything on the screen seems more intentional. That contrast adds to the glamor as you control the silent protagonist. The musical track is composed of a dramatic beats, serrated chimes for the protagonist to encounter, and the reverb puts it all in the majesty of the theatre.

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It's more true that I want to star as a cowboy than be an actual cowboy. I didn't think about that until I played The Quiet Man.

 

I think this is an important way to understand how we have been responding to these games, and I think this is true of most things, in the sense that most of our fantasies, even when we have some kind of real world analogue, are about these preconceived, competing sets of generic conventions. Genres are how we arrange and sanction, perhaps even understand, desire. I've been thinking about the way people talk about "realism" (whether or not a fiction passes as "realistic") after playing Her Story and following some of the conversations around that game, and I think it mostly has to do with genre conventions. Like with your example of the cowboy - people would talk about whether or not the cowboy was behaving realistically based on how they would expect him to act in their sort of Platonic Ideal of whatever form of media cowboys are supposed to exist in. And anyone who's not into those genre conventions in the first place just doesn't care; they have zero stake in whether or not the cowboy seems realistic because there's no generic grounds for realism. I think it's pretty easy to underestimate the extent that these conventions in turn shape the way we act, create us even. They feed on the reality we cook up with the ingredients they provide.

 

Quiet Man is, like, really aesthetically coherent. The gyrating screen simulates that whirring, blinky motion of an old black and white film reel, but in a way that dramatizes it. Similarly, the music helps abstract this feeling into something we can grasp, the excitement of witnessing a technology bound by a specific moment in time. The score is a steady 4-4, pounding and echoing, as opposed to something perhaps more "historically accurate," like some shambling ragtime keys or whatever else would be appropriate. These references are clearly filmic, but the technology is reimagined as live performance. The audience treats it as such - chatting amongst themselves, shushing each other but never hushing up, failing to contain their anticipation, their suspension of disbelief, their utter reverence for the leading man - as does the player, their every move and non-move sharply scrutinized and wondered at. It's really quite effective and beautiful.

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lions-2.gif

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skykid-3.png

 

Congrat to everyone involved in this perversely monumental piece of critique!!!!  :)

 

 

 

How have you all been finding the HTML versions? I was never sure how smoothly they ran / weird tech problems. I don't know abt putting them into the loader, especially now that chrome has discontinued unity webplayer support, but if they all work ok i can update the glorioustrainwrecks links at least.

 

..............

 

well......................................

 

until next time.............................................

 

garg2-12.gif   :kiss:

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The only issue I ran into with the html-versions was that some of the games close themselves and that doesn't happen in a browser-version.

I didn't go back and play many of the html-versions of the games that we discussed before the html-versions were available though. I'm thinking of editing the older posts to link them in case anyone ever goes through this from the beginning.

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perfect vidgame message. truly blessed to be alive on this internet

Are HTML versions different from the browser links you've been providin clyde?

No, I may be using the terminology wrong, but I'm referring to the same thing.

Edit: Oh I think you may be asking thecatamites.

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Haven't quite said farewell to Mogey yet, but I've been trying to draft some thoughts for a piece I'm working on - about pinning down a sensibility of games made wt the Klick N Play software. Part of what’s interesting about playing Glorious Trainwrecks games is exploring the range of gamefeel this clunky little engine is capable of. Something as innocuous as liberal collision detection, avatars or objects getting stuck in walls or ignoring them entirely, can nourish a sensibility that becomes a shorthand, a discourse community. In Unity games it often feels like you’re wading across vast, abstract spaces, feeling small in comparison to the architecture around you. There's an emphasis on floating around, studying the rough edges and implied history of the space. Klick N Play games are more about performing a role. They feel more present (tense), which lends well to quick punchlines, sharp poignant reflections, weird insights, open questions. 50SG is a study in how an engine along with an author can shape familiar tropes, make them strange again, similar to the author’s experience of importing another country’s pop culture, consuming it a few years later, digesting it with their own literary culture, then regurgitating it as something else. Digested kitsch. The author calls it “oscillating kitsch.” 

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I've been banging my head against Construct 2 on a few evenings and when I was looking over this thread, this phrasing from comments on page one of the thread helped me figure out what was wrong with my approach.

 

 They were made using a program called Multimedia Fusion 2, which is basically an upgrade of Klick N Play, a tool designed in the 90s to help kids learn to make games in school. These games aren't being programmed from scratch, but arranged around the constraints of a particular program that is conducive to a quick work flow. It's not really a question of skill, but of toolset and mentality involved. But to me this isn't what is most interesting about the games....

 

Construct 2's system seems to be based on having assignable, pre-made behaviors that you can attach to sprites. Then it's a matter of choosing conditions from a menu of them. I like the idea of getting familiar with the constraints of default behaviors in the engine and then focusing on writing messages in the dialect that default-use of Construct 2 tends towards. 

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Auf Wiedersehen Mogey: I like the idea of an unassuming goodbye, one that acknowledges, but doesn't try to draw too much attention to the spectacle. One that doesn't keep trying to put it off. The "waves crashing" sound extends here from the launcher, like we were always drawn towards this place. This rainbow quilt tiles feel like the brightest we've seen. The clouds are kinda sad, but this is to be expected. 

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EXCLUSIVE BONUS CONTENT (Launcher screens analysis): 

  1. On the first page, we see Mogey standing triumphantly on the moon with rocketship, planet earth rotating in the background. This leads us to believe that 50 short games were just an elaborate prequel?!! Was Cynderblock on the same planet the whole time?????? [Edit, this is clearly Meepo, not Mogey. Rewriting fanfictions.......]
  2. Page 2 is the obligatory "underwater level." Ghastly. 
  3. On page 3 we get cameo appearance from TV's Cynderrblock!! (undercover, shhh) So strong, so stoic. Our last hope......all other Operative Assailants have been gruesomely slaughtered.
  4. On page 4 is pictured Pamela either in or nearby Dreamland. Pamela finally seems content to be haunted by horrible spiders (in 3D even!!) both IRL and unconsciously forever.
  5. Page 5 is Rainbow Quilt shore where Mogey blasts off. The horizon seems endless. The flora wraps around the trees, dressing them with melancholy faces.

Thanks for doing this, clyde. 

 

Thanks for makin games, stephen.

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To make up for my lack of criticism, here are some painstakingly made GIFs of the aforementioned launcher screens.

 

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P.S. The 51st game I was referring to is accessed via the EXIT button seen above. Maybe referring to it as the 51st game was unclear, or maybe it really is a secret to everyone.

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My favorite GIF is of Synderrblok. Beautiful animation.

 

I DID NOT KNOW about the 51st game!! Did I really never click exit? I guess we can never leave..............

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"Auf Wiedersehen" means "until we see again" according to Wikipedia. The phrase seems like a nonconclusive, conclusion. When there is an acquiescence that making efforts to sustain will eventually transform this into something completely different, "Auf Wiedersehen" is something that can be said without hurt feelings or needs for explanation. Auf Wiedersehen, Mogey seems like a attempt to demarcate 50 Short Games from future efforts. There is a sense that it is necessary to leave the worlds behind without admitting to them that they are not able to sustain us.

One of my favorite things about Auf Wiedersehen, Mogey is the mix of the sinister elementals with the charm of wandering upon a musician atop a landscape of saturated color patch-work. Mogey is a fool (in a Major Arcana sense), weaving through dangers he/she is unaware of entirely. The innocence of Mogey's motivation (to find the source of a playful tune) seems to protect us from harm. Upon finding the source, it transforms into the organ of expression and ingestion. I don't have a particular, metaphor with which to understand that chronology of surreal artifacts and events, but it maintains the balance between severity and amusement for me that keeps me nervous throughout this fantastical anecdote.

Auf Wiedersehen, Mogey doesn't leave me with the platitude that good things don't last forever. Instead it contextualizes the quilt of lands previous with the wonder and anxiety of the imaginarium from which the tiny fables have bubbled. Leaving the space doesn't exclude the chance that it will be revisited, but blindly wandering back in isn't an option now that so much has been realized during the initial journey. I picture thecatamites dressed like a 1940's noir character, waving to or from a departing train after saying to 50 Short Games "If we do see each other again, we will be different people."

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