clyde Posted February 2, 2015 The fading into and out of blackness, and the slow rising and descending remind me of fading in and out of sleep. It's like sitting in bed in the morning knowing that you have to get up soon, but not wanting to fully wake up. But in this metaphor, I'm not sure if waking up corresponds to rising out of the abyss or falling into it. That's a cool interpretation. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
sergiocornaga Posted February 3, 2015 I spent way too long trying to work out what the item next to Moppy is. I figure it's probably a mop. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
clyde Posted February 4, 2015 I think Moppy Returns shows a representation of moments of self-doubt and possibly overwhelming depression. Moppy Returns feels like an rethinking of Pete's scene from Operative Assailants. Instead of depicting the appearance that an action is going to be futile before necessitating an attempt (like in Pete's scene), Moppy Returns shows a protagonist that is trying to pretend that self-doubt (or possibly depression) will not be a factor in their performance so that they can push forward. This idea that everything is just a matter of will is shown to be absurd when Dark Moppy repeatitively knocks the character into a cutscene depicting a monologue about their resulting inability to get the key. The pacing of Dark Moppy's descents upon Moppy and the omnipresent (minor-chord?) tone reinforce the oppressiveness of the inevitability that the task will not be completed (in contrast to the seeming ease of having all the necessary elements on one screen). Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Dinosaursssssss Posted February 4, 2015 I accidentally played Employee Report instead of Moppy Returns. I think the web version was sort of broken, though it's sort of hard to tell with these games. I fell through the bottom of the map and the text stopped updating. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
clyde Posted February 4, 2015 I accidentally played Employee Report instead of Moppy Returns. I think the web version was sort of broken, though it's sort of hard to tell with these games. I fell through the bottom of the map and the text stopped updating. Now I wonder how to do this. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
clyde Posted February 9, 2015 For the week of February 9th, 2015 we will be playing: Creamerz by thecatamites You can play the game in your browser here. You can download the single game from here for free Or you can buy the entire collection of 50 games from here. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
clyde Posted February 16, 2015 Creamerz feels like an off-brand version of an American Greetings property (Strawberry Shortcake and the Care Bears were created by a greeting card company). But while those narratives include personified opposition that positivity can conquer, Creamerz shows us a saccharine, intentional optimism with no explicit opposition which leads us to assume that the optimism itself may be a flaw. Self-care seems like a low priority in the beach-scene where the creamerz is melting away. It's possible that the dogmatic positive-thinking is blinding the sweet treats from their actual needs of survival. And once I see this, it occurs to me that maybe Dipped In Chocolate isn't actually shy, that's just the protagonists rose-colored version of getting a cold. shoulder. The reasons for non-interaction with the other creamerz in the downtown-scene is possibly an excuse to escape the hurtful realization of the protagonist's inability to socialize with them. Throughout the game I sense that whether or not the reality of the situation is non-ideal, the hopeful thinking distorts the protagonist's perception enough to maintain their isolation and non-interaction. There is the exception of the friend at the store who in encouraging this attitude. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
clyde Posted February 16, 2015 For the week of February 16th, 2015 we will be playing: UFO Panic Attack by thecatamites You can play the game in your browser here. You can download the single game from here for free Or you can buy the entire collection of 50 games from here. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Dinosaursssssss Posted February 16, 2015 I suggest turning your volume down before loading this game. That awful beeping noise sounded to me like an alarm clock or a dial tone or ? I'm not positive why, but it made me think of some kind of high frequency short burst radio signal (Note: I don't know anything about radios!). It also synced up with the fire rate of the little tank for me; it seems like it gets out of sync depending on how quickly you click through the dialog, but the timing definitely felt intentional. That suggested to me that the tank is attempting to communicate with the UFOs, not destroy them. Combined with the mention of UFO iconography, it made me wonder if part of the idea of this game is pointing out how the default portrayal of aliens is that they're aggressors to be fought rather than other beings to communicate with. Also worth pointing out, I think, is that it's impossible to stem the tide of oncoming UFOs; the fire rate is such that you can only destroy 1/2 at most. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
clyde Posted February 18, 2015 I've been think a lot about computer-games that have minimal interaction and are kinda like interactive picture-books. UFO Panic Attacks is a good example of one. Adding or subtracting layered elements with mouse-clicks and giving us an animation that we can control slightly, what does this do for the story? When the "Space aliens were climbing through the window" layer pops in, I get the sense that the frightful fantasy is developing on top of the room. UFO Panic Attacks reminds me a lot of Night Thoughts, Some Bee Ess and maybe Anxiety World; all of these games have hypnagogic themes. Black backgrounds with light-colored lines (with the exception of Some Bee Ess) give me the impression of not only night-time, but of the way a dark wall can become a screen for my hypnagogic visual projections as I lay in bed before I'm tired, not wanting to be exhausted the next day at work or school. In my own life, I tend to associate these occurences with lucid-dreaming ( by category, not by synchronicity). Because of this I'm actually surprised that I don't see any games about lucid-dreaming; I see the interests being so close to each other. As far as the specificity of the subject matter goes, I can identify. The fate powers of extraterrestials in Close Encounters of the Third Kind was involuntarily paired with tabloid photos of grey aliens and that television show that was my first experience of a disingenious documentary series. What was it called? It had the guy talking and renactments. Ah yes, Unsolved Mysteries. For some reason, that show managed to blend X-Files style fictions with 60 Minutes news shows to encourage my desire to give supernatural occurences more suspension of disbelief. I suppose I was christian at the time too, so I had all sorts of faith-based understandings of reality developing in me. Extraterrestial humanoids seemed to be all over night-time network television when I was a kid. I kind of doubt that the same saturation exists for people now. You really have to look for an alien-thread rather than stew in an alien-fad these days. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
clyde Posted February 23, 2015 For the week of February 23rd, 2015 we will be playing: Mashkin Sees It Through by thecatamites You can play the game in your browser here. Or you can buy the entire collection of 50 games from here. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
clyde Posted February 27, 2015 Just in case anyone plays with the idea that "To Eat Hen Young" is an anagram, I did a little bit of research on it and I'm never going to consider anagrams as potentially applicable to interpretation again. 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NoNeath Toe Guy OnNeath Yet Goo NuNeath Ye Gnu TooNeath Ye Gun TooNeath Ye Go UntoNeath Ye Goo NutNeath Ye Goo TunNeath Ye Togo NuNeath Ye Gout NoNeath Ye Gout OnThane Ego Nut YoThane Ego Tun YoThane Ego Nu ToyThane Get No YouThane Get On YouThane En Got YouThane En Tog YouThane En Gout YoThane En Guy TooThane One Gut YoThane One Tug YoThane One Guy ToThane Eon Gut YoThane Eon Tug YoThane Eon Guy ToThane Net Go YouThane Ten Go YouThane Tune Go YoThane Yen Go OutThane Toe Gnu YoThane Toe Gun YoThane Toe Guy NoThane Toe Guy OnThane Yet Goo NuThane Ye Gnu TooThane Ye Gun TooThane Ye Go UntoThane Ye Goo NutThane Ye Goo TunThane Ye Togo NuThane Ye Gout NoThane Ye Gout OnHyena Ego No TutHyena Ego On TutHyena Ego Nut To In the notes that you get if you buy 50 Short Games, thecatamites mentions that Daniil Kharms is an influence for Maskin See It Through. Reading some of his micro-fiction and seeing the voice he tends to use greatly increases my appreciation of this game. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Deadpan Posted February 28, 2015 Those are anagrams for you. For every ETHICS FARM and MR SHITFACE, there's about a hundred FA CHIT REMs. That was a pretty interesting, weird game, but the most substantial thing I took out of it beyond various references to 20th century Russia was a mediation on the relationship between player and game. It makes this point, I think, through a narrator that asserts itself opposite prose (or what has the makings of prose) as strongly as we are used to games making their influence felt. That's a bit far reaching of course, but the two nodes in the game that lead me on that trajectory are: - You being unable to alter anything in the first half of the game without the narrator yanking you back on track, quite violently even. - A fight scene that has absolutely no bearing on how the game continues. It allows you a minimal bit of self-expression in choosing how to perform the fight itself, but the canonical end result is always the same and the ultimately just shrugs that scene off and goes "now we resume the plot." There's maybe a bit more in there, even, about how that relationship and storytelling conventions shape our perspective, like the way the letter is being set up as significant by us being told how significant it is reads like it's flipping the usual script of games starting with just an ordinary day in the life of the protagonist, while we already know that it's obviously not going to be ordinary because the game won't actually make us play through one normal day and have the weird thing happen on the second day. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
clyde Posted March 1, 2015 That was a pretty interesting, weird game, but the most substantial thing I took out of it beyond various references to 20th century Russia was a mediation on the relationship between player and game. It makes this point, I think, through a narrator that asserts itself opposite prose (or what has the makings of prose) as strongly as we are used to games making their influence felt. That's a bit far reaching of course, but the two nodes in the game that lead me on that trajectory are: - You being unable to alter anything in the first half of the game without the narrator yanking you back on track, quite violently even. The way I see this is as a channeling of Daniil Kharms's peculiar narration-voice into an interactive text. Kharms has a way of making you feel foolish for listening to his story while putting the shame on the reader rather than self-deprecating, as exemplified by this micro-fiction. The way Maskin Sees It Through chastises the reader for making a choice implying that it is such an absurd choice that no one could possibly chose it in good faith seems like a similar voice to me. There is a really great instance of this that I didn't get in my first play-through by chosing - It's obvious! (this is you speaking) Mashkin took his case to the police. the role of the player and the narrator is completely inverted for multiple pages for the purpose of letting the player dig a deeper hole for themselves so that the narrator can then say "Well now that you have told your story, we can return to to one I was telling in the first place." This authority which offers you choice just so it can patronize you for daring to consider something vaguely different than full faith in the inevitability of the narrator's version of events, is also expressed with the rescue by helicopter. Kharms doesn't have the option to provide actual written multiple-choice events, but he has a technique that I think is similar where he leads the reader into being desensitized from wackiness, violence, or nudity by continuing on without comment after listing it in a series of events only to seemingly bring up a polite concern in order to embarrass ourselves for not having that reaction on our own (because that reaction has been disassociated from their typical triggers by lacking any comment and getting us to expect the described situation to perpetually exacerbate). I think this story is a good example of the technique I describe. I know it's a pretty loose comparison, but it has a big effect on how I read Mashkin Sees It Through. I wonder if this page is a reference to that technique. - A fight scene that has absolutely no bearing on how the game continues. It allows you a minimal bit of self-expression in choosing how to perform the fight itself, but the canonical end result is always the same and the ultimately just shrugs that scene off and goes "now we resume the plot." Though the fight scene was just choosing a few sound-bites from a clownish brawl, I think of it as being an attempt to put us in a comedic scene similar to this Daniil Kharms story. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
clyde Posted March 1, 2015 So I enjoyed researching Daniil Kharms (and by association Alexander Pushkin) for the intentional purpose of letting those subjects color my perspective on playing Maskin Sees It Through. I find myself making a lot of connections, but none of them are foundational premises for any sort of argument so I don't really want to focus on extrapolating about them as I provide my impressions for this particular game. At the same time, the decision to expose myself to these subjects for a few hours was really rewarding in the context of how it affected my play-through so I want kinda summarize some points from the psuedo-research. -The notes that come with 50 Short Games mentions that "The prose is a kind of pastiche of some of Daniil Kharm's writing although not nearly as good" -One of Kharms's stories is titled Anecdotes from the life of Pushkin -Articles about both Daniil Kharms and Alexander Pushkin include tales of state-persecution of writers. Interestingly, Pushkin was apparently actually writing politically charged stuff (though later it seems that his complicity was determined by revolutionaries having his poems on them) while Kharms was just writing weird stories for children. -Historical accounts of Pushkin make him into a bit of a byronic hero; he was in 29 duels and seems to have been considered as some sort of lovable enemy of the State. -The stories of Daniil Kharms often have a condescending narrator voice from which a lot of the humor comes. Again, I don't want to focus too much on corroborating this material with Mashkin Sees It Through, but it's great supplemental reading for consideration. --------------------------------------------------- I love the voice of the narrator. They seem to be in a situation where they are obligated to provide choices, but they resent having to do so. Most of the choices feel more like pledges of faith in the narrator, or traps that put the reader in a position of foolishness so that the authority of the narrator can be re-established. I feel like Fred Savage as Peter Falk reads to me. This voice evolves into a homogenous historical canon of events which is interesting to me especially as Mashkin's character becomes larger than life. It's with this authority that Mashkin is presented to me as some sort of master pensman in the advent of gunpowder. But at the same time, the narrator's tactics seem to show a lack of confidence that makes me doubt the entire idea that Mashkin was influential at all. I end up in this odd depiction of a world where a writer busts into a conference on horse-back and slaughters those in power gleefully and righteously from the voice of a narrator who seems too gain authority from the historical character's cult of personality. It's pretty cool really. I feel that the dramatic stakes of the story are sincerely felt (by the narrator in a fictional world) though not necessarily realistic; this is largely due to reading about the lives of Alexander Pushkin and Daniil Kharms so it's a weird hybrid of actual historical events and the historical events of a fictional world from the perspective of an unreliable fictional character. It's complex. I may be completely wrong about this, but I don't think this complexity was premeditated, I think it's a result of freely moving between history, imagination, summation of actual voices, and whimsical divergence from any of these. That has fascinating implications to me. I see it as being more constrained than absurdism or surrealism, but evokative on all the described literary planes. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
clyde Posted March 2, 2015 For the week of March 2nd, 2015 we will be playing: Pamela's Adventures in DreamLand by thecatamites You can play the game in your browser here. You can download the single game from here for free Or you can buy the entire collection of 50 games from here. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gamesthatexist Posted March 6, 2015 Hello friends! FF35 ruined me! When we got to that one, I had the idea of connecting my interpretation of that game with poking around in the Final Fantasy 7 debug room. The pursuit was a black hole that produced the following: http://gamesthatexist.tumblr.com/post/112908593851/a-review-of-the-debug-room-in-final-fantasy-7. Earlier, sergiocornaga said: FF35 condenses Final Fantasy elements into a fast-paced playable trailer, cutting to the next humorous take on some RPG trope before I have time to be bored. This approach definitely wouldn't work for a longer RPG. Basically, I'm saying he cheated. This is pretty much the interpretive approach I pursue at length in the link above. Here is the relevant bit about FF35: There is a short trainwreck game by thecatamites called FF35. For me the initial part of this game is much more interesting than the half-facetious appeal towards the end that renders the whole thing as parody, a text prompt that reads, “PLEASE LET ME MAKE THE NEXT FINAL FANTASY GAME.” I read the part at the end as the place where the author sort of gives up on the original idea (Final Fantasy flash fiction as told through jump cuts) because it was too much work for a game made in one day, and it just wasn’t worth it. In FF35, you begin with a gnarled formula, a metanarrative in which OLD MAN tells you about something that happened LONG AGO. Then, there’s a screen that describes an even more formulaic Evil Spirt + Crystals narrative. Then a merry band in a grassy field, unpunctuated dialogue presumably spoken by a ghost, describing a mandate to plunder a temple. Except…there’s a boulder in the way. On the next screen you meet CHOOKCHOOK the yellow bird. Next a battle screen and a vaguely cute LV8 monster. An upgrade menu featuring “powerbeads.” Melodrama at a remote Inn. Skelly uses the “Pattyjar” attack. A dialogue “choice” that only encourages an NPC to repeat what was just said. Contemplative reflection from wizard without face. You don’t know that all of this is happening in the specific way I described above because the game transitions to the next screen way too fast, about a second or two before you are ready to comprehend what you just saw. What’s interesting here are not so much the scenes themselves, but the way the game doesn’t allow you to linger on any of them long enough to develop much of a response; despite the farce, it all remains pleasantly mysterious and allusive. This is pretty much exactly how I remember my favorite entries in the Final Fantasy series, as memory that eats itself; the memory becomes frustrated when I actually try to go back and play one of these games and face hours upon hours of grind. The scenes in FF35 are cute and allusive, but thecatamites is not being facetious in presenting this idealized version of a Final Fantasy universe. The game betrays a desire to warp around without really doing much, float around without paying attention to any of it for too long. It’s a collage of hollow genre signifiers. Not much after all that! But at least now I can catch up with the other games. Much thanks to ihavefivehat for the screenshots. Very helpful. Stay in school everyone. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gamesthatexist Posted March 7, 2015 Employee Report: I think this is a nice point of contrast to FF35. ER lingers on the text long enough for the phrases to resonate with multiple layers of connotation, as opposed to the screens in FF35 that shift before you can process them. I am having some trouble with the octopus metaphor. I get the basic gist, but am having trouble picturing it, maybe because I don't know that much about marine life. But I like how the metaphor is only half-realized visually. The central figure appears as human, not as octopus, and the unmoving boat is appropriately impotent. It floats, holds itself up above the depths, but without reason. It can keep you from plunging down, relinquishing consciousness, but it can't do anything else but remain in stasis. And if you plunge down, you are simply thrust back up by some unseen force. The tone here is irreverent, as usual, but not really playful at all. This one is almost solemn. The fading into and out of blackness, and the slow rising and descending remind me of fading in and out of sleep. It's like sitting in bed in the morning knowing that you have to get up soon, but not wanting to fully wake up. But in this metaphor, I'm not sure if waking up corresponds to rising out of the abyss or falling into it. This is my reading of it too, and I like how clyde extends the metaphor to also apply to a more generalized state of labor. I think that the metaphor of weighted bouyancy is pretty great for the wakeful sleep that irregularly scheduled part-timers (or anyone on call) can exist within for years at a time. It's such a waste of mental focus. Bouyancy also describes my undulating wavelengths of enthusiasm between the ages of 19 and 25. I would find a shitty restaurant job, work overtime for a few months, turn in my two weeks notice when I had three months for bills, starches, eggs, icecream, coffee and wine, and live a reasonable life for a while. I love this description. And it's pretty wild that your personal experience reflects this state of half-awake constant anticipation, but on a more macro level. The way you describe working months at a time, it's like hibernation, except the opposite, without the implied relaxed, rehabilitating stasis. Actually, now that I've written it down, it doesn't sound that uncommon. It's generally how teachers work as well, and also students. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gamesthatexist Posted March 7, 2015 Moppy Returns: thematically similar to Space Mouse and Employee Report. Alienated labor. Strong points here are the brooding earth tones and Dark Moppy's sinister sound effect. I am impressed with how confusing the tone is. It is genuinely unsettling when Dark Moppy comes for you. But I would find myself, alone in my room, laughing out loud at the same time I was really creeped out. Especially at the final stage, where it's just the one claustrophobic hallway, only key and door. Grab the key, and it's like you've been cartoonishly hooked off stage. I spent way too long trying to work out what the item next to Moppy is. I figure it's probably a mop. It is totally a mop. Dark Moppy is bad because they carry no mop. Moppy Returns shows a protagonist that is trying to pretend that self-doubt (or possibly depression) will not be a factor in their performance so that they can push forward. I think the character is also trying to pretend that the labor is meaningful instead of trying to deal with the notion that maybe it isn't by trying to find meaning in life elsewhere, which contributes to this cycle of nebulous resistance. I think that's part of the joke(?) here. That the protagonist keeps blaming some internal ineptitude or mental state, and doesn't consider the possibility that the problem is external, systemic exploitation. Everyone else seems to be living their lives or whatever, so I must be the problem. ...and the omnipresent (minor-chord?) tone I think maybe a minor 7th or 9th or something. Something weird. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gamesthatexist Posted March 8, 2015 Creamerz: From the author's notes: Similar to "Fashion World" it started out being a joke about guilelessly chirpy commercial products but I ended up being charmed by just that quality (which is probably just as well, since it's kind of a curmudgeonly thing to pick at). I love the Creamerz. This is an interesting effect to try and trace in each individual game because I feel like it happens a lot. Just because of the accelerated production of these things and because its a common defense mechanism there is often a sense in these games of not taking the original idea seriously. But then there is a moment where the game slips into genuine enthusiasm for what it is, and then usually slips back out into a more distant register by the end. It's kind of amazing that this transition can take place over such a short time. In Creamerz, I think we can locate this in seemingly minor choices in diction: I'm just so happy that we're all together. I don't want to make a big deal out of anything but I'm just really happy. The pulling back from straight parody or hyperbole here is jarring for me. That "I don't want to make a big deal out of anything but..." Sure, it's a performed reluctance, but it's still awkward. It's especially jarring since it shares the screen with a line that is much more straightforward, a second-person direct address to the audience imagined as consumer: You too can join the Creamerz. 9 amazing flavours available now in stores around the country. I wouldn't call the first quote sincere. More like unsettled. The effect of this juxtaposition for me is reminiscent of when I find myself accidentally moved by an advertisement, and I feel kind of dirty afterwards because I've been emotionally manipulated. There is this voice or tone that the author is trying to emulate, but can't play it straight, can't play it without being sucked in to some extent. "I love the Creamerz." Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
clyde Posted March 9, 2015 Hello friends! FF35 ruined me! When we got to that one, I had the idea of connecting my interpretation of that game with poking around in the Final Fantasy 7 debug room. The pursuit was a black hole that produced the following: http://gamesthatexist.tumblr.com/post/112908593851/a-review-of-the-debug-room-in-final-fantasy-7. This was a neat article. I enjoy the idea that creating an automated narrative requires modularized memories that can be abstracted from their narrative context creating a story that resembles dream-logic. It makes me think that the way our minds put events together necessitates a lot of strange side-effects when the tools our minds use (space, anthropomorphic actors, and chronology) are applied to symbols and then rearranged for unusual purposes. I think surrealists are very much interested in these tendencies. I'd consider myself a surrealist. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- With Pamela Adventures In Dreamland we get another examination of how weird dream-mechanics are. The author seems to be fascinated by how events in the physical world can affect the contents, or possibly the emotion of a dream-state while the dreamer remains unaware that they are observing a hallucination. The visual set-up is rather expressive in itself and inspires a lot of neat potential; having half of the screen depict the dream and the other half that of the physical state of the dreamer is a fantastical premise that I find myself excited by as a player. At first it wasn't apparent to me that the spider would only affect the dreamer in the physical world because it had not be established that the spider was physical itself. And once that did become apparent with some playful poking, I experimented to find out if the spider-body existed in both the physical world and in the dream-world. Having a narrative occur in one space that you can only affect in another tends to be intriguing for me. I'm attracted to remote robotics that send back a camera-feed, magical effigy fantasies, and computer-games with player-controlled avatars. The spacial lay-out in Pamela Adventures In Dreamland inspires play in me. The subject matter is also something I have been experimental with throughout my life. My first memory of this type of thing was my older sister claiming that by resting a sleeper's hand in warm water (assumably without their consent), they would likely wet the bed. This claim really opened up a lot of questions for me. First of all, the idea that we require a restful, unconscious state on the regular is pretty weird especially for those of us who strongly identify with our conscious state. Then the possibility that a non-conscious awareness (still assumably us to some extent) makes decisions and wanders around an environment and logic composed entirely of its own priorities, heaviliy influenced and borrowed from the experiences of our conscious-selves, is just wacky and a bit concerning. The suggestion that we could poke at a sleeper to get any sort of feedback that would imply a real-time bridge between these two worlds which want to ignore each other tickles a deep urge for mischieviousness in me. And here we have a game that appeals to that very fantasy. Some things I wanted to mention: -When Pamela finds DVDs that she has been trying to find for a long time and she mentions that she feels a lot of success, I'm reminded of some of the dreams I had when I was collecting comic-books in waking life, or the period of my life where I spent a lot of energy aquiring Smashing Pumpkins bootlegs. I really enjoyed the feeling I had in those dreams being part of this narrative, I don't know that I've ever considered that type of dream as a thing; now I do. -The change between controlling the spider in the physical world to controlling an avatar inside of the dream which the spider was affecting was interesting to me. The severity of the physical-world/dream-world framework is established by relying on the way players prioritize the tools and contexts of the elements over which they have agency. Then when I am hanging with Wuffles, I'm reminded of that severity and now I'm in a position of suffering from that severity, no longer in control of it. I thought that was interesting in a game that I didn't really find scary, moralistic, or intense. -Another thing about the Wuffles scene I enjoyed was that the nightmare scenario is triggered by the protagonist recognizing the non-sequitur aspect of what was going on. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
clyde Posted March 9, 2015 For the week of March 9th, 2015 we will be playing: Town by thecatamites You can play the game in your browser here. You can download the single game from here for free Or you can buy the entire collection of 50 games from here. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gamesthatexist Posted March 10, 2015 UFO Panic Attack: More dreams huh? Or at least dream logic? Or weird blurring of conscious and unconscious states. I like that the game literally overloads the screen with alien iconography in order to enforce its X-files-esque alien abduction, and then adds in the arbitrary Space Invaders clone where it's impossible to shoot down all the aliens. Space Invaders always was an apt metaphor for overload or saturation, on the level of both theme and hardware. I think UFO Panic ends up making the point that we are so saturated with certain iconography that it's not all that surprising that we have "believers" for anything, no matter how unlikely. The comparison "like being chased through the forest by an animate cannabis leaf" drives this point home. It's just so ubiquitous, how could we not imagine ourselves abducted? And maybe that's enough to make it real. For most of Western society, advertising + pulp archetypes = reality. I think there's also an allusion to the idea that conspiracy theories are actually a way of avoiding the most sinister aspects of ideology. Think 911-truthers who think they need dramatic intrigue to explain "terrorists" because the cold everyday logic of American imperialism won't suffice. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gamesthatexist Posted March 11, 2015 Mashkin Sees it Through: When I wrote about thecatamites' work for Arcade Review, I compared Mashkin's writing style to that of a Freshman Composition paper. Unfortunately, I don't think this is a metaphor that really works because it sounds to most people like I'm just saying it's shitty writing. What I'm talking about is when students first enter into the university, the institutional weight of the academy plus the alien and mythological quality of its "standard discourse" combine to force students into a particular mode of writing that is unique to composition courses. Ironically, by trying to teach students to sound more like "real academics," composition courses end up producing a type of writing that you wouldn't find anywhere else outside of those courses. Which is kind of what happens in any writing class anyway, even though institutions supposedly want students to be working towards some even, objective standard. So what I was trying to refer to in making the comparison was how the prose in Mashkin deftly evades specific detail in order to play up to, and focus exclusively on, the formal qualities the narrator seems to think the audience expects. Mashkin is pretty exhausting to read! The way the writing evades meaning and runs the reader around in circles reminds me of something from A1 reviews that I posted earlier. Here is thecatamites describing a passage from Robert Walser: Grinding, chattering, circling, the rote words, hastily modified, the string of declaratives, overshadowed by adjectives that seem to stand apart from the text as a whole, that have to be juxtaposed and reiterated and taken back and put forward again in order to express anything at all, like a binary chain of tiny, exhausting affirmations and negations trying to approximate something more complex, squirming, like on a hook. Walser’s short stories are for the most part entirely lacking in characters, dramatic situations, or discernible structure - there are exceptions but the form I associate most with him is that of the brief, essayistic nothing, in which a trivial fragment of anecdote, argument or narrative is brought up only to be nearly immediately overwhelmed by digressions, doubts, elaborate description, self-mockery and excuses before being quietly dropped again after maybe a page. Bold statements are hurled down, tactfully modified, drawn out while the author acknowledges the respectable possibility of contrary sentiments being held by the intelligent and unredoubtable reader, and finally retracted. Sentences, paragraphs, pages that seem to exist only to politely extinguish themselves, silently imploding, every trace of meaning hunted down and graciously annihilated. I still can't get over this passage. What a performance. The Daniil Kharms stories that clyde linked are wonderful. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
