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This is a good example of what excites me about games these days. There's nothing especially innovative about it; I feel like I get a pleasant, complete experience in ten minutes; I like knowing that this little simulated space exists; there appears to be some amount  of care put into it, but there's also a distinct lack of obsessive labor. I just find these modular experiences so satisfying. 
http://svblm.itch.io/the-bends

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Chris Priestman wrote a piece about Secret Habitat that I like.

http://killscreendaily.com/articles/secret-habitat/

The imagery at the beginning of the article and the propositions about frames of context in a procedurally generated world are my favorite parts. I have some things I'd like to say about Secret Habitat too regarding what it says about value, permanence, and preservation that slots in well with Priestman's observations about galleries, frames, and screens. I guess I should just go ahead and do so now.

When I spend time in Secret Habitat I start to develop some hypothesis about the algorithmic artists and create imaginary narratives about their experiences. In reality, these artists do have identifiable and somewhat consistent technique and subjects; that part is really there. What I bring to the game is the story I develop for the artist. I was wandering one gallery and the artist named multiple paintings using the word "prison" and there seemed to be a chronology that went from minimal color to monotone. How could I not start to have an opinion about that bot's bio. Sometimes the tapes compliment the tone of the pieces so that the title, the image, and the audio create some rather distinct and amusing apophenia.

There's another tendency I notice after about 20 minutes inside the world. First I'm looking at paintings, then I'm examining wall-paper, then I'm noticing the procedurally generated architecture of the buildings. In some of the physical-space museums I've visited, there tends to be an architectural influence that can add a curator's perspective to the piece based on placement and order. A simple example of this would be that a sculpture in the entryway can influence the museum-goer's baseline as they approach and expose themselves to the collection which often has a chronology or pacing determined by their order. This occurs in Secret Habitat as well. An extreme example in the game was that I was walking through a gallery and studied an image for a bit, then continued on a path that spiraled inward to a small, outdoor courtyard with a single window that framed that same image in a different way and with a new tint.

I can understand why my observations might seem a bit pretentious and foolishly hallucinatory, largely based on the fact that the art is procedurally generated. But think of it this way, how often do we have an opportunity to compare the experience of walking through a gallery of art contexted by commerce or perceived social canon with the experience of walking through galleries of procedurally generated art that has never existed and will never exist again. This is where Secret Habitat has a lot to say about permanance and value (I'll get back to that). I could speedrun a roll of Secret Habitat and value nothing but the spacial layout of the buildings and interiors. But I could do the same in the National Museum of Art. Actually I think this is the appeal of zombie-games that take place in shopping-malls and movies like The Breakfast Club and Diehard; architecture and space that has a strong, ingrained, context for us is being repurposed. First-person shooter maps and action movies do this all the time by using strongly themed places that have nothing to do with combat as playgrounds for marksmanship, flanking, and cover. My point here is that it's not actually pretentious to walk around procedural galleries, taking your time to examine pieces and make associations, it's just unfamiliar as gameplay.

So regarding permanance and value, there are infinite ways to value anything. Some methods are more pragmatic and/or common. Most of the well known methods of valuing art are dependent on both percieved permanance and shared experience. Van Gogh isn't objectively one of the top 100 artists in all of history, but his paintings and narrative is a shared experience for us. What if all of Van Gogh's oeuvre had been procedurally generated in less than a second and destroyed when the executable was closed? The value of examining use of color, brush-stroke, and subject-matter would still be available, but what happens to narrative of the mad genius that cuts off his ear in a fit of passion that we often assume is reflected in those saturated colors and heavy oils? Even if that narrative was procedurally generated along with the paintings, the experience would be neither widely shared or canonical. I'm not saying that the procedurally generated art in Secret Habitat has the visual depth or could have the history of Starry Night; what I'm saying is that Secret Habitat provides us with an interesting comparison. This is not only because the art is procedurally generated and placed in a context representative of the circumstances that we typically experience Art, but also because each roll is impermanent and the only multiplayer support is collecting and publishing asunder screenshots. I think it's really interesting.

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snip

 

Cool article.

 

I think if you make a hyper-objective comparison between the procedurally generated art in this game and intentionally made human art then there is really no difference between the two. The difference is more perceptual; human art is presumed to somehow be an expression of our greater culture, and our existence as humans. When there is no human behind a work of art, then we're unable to find that narrative hook and we have to create our own. So I think it's totally normal to imagine an artist behind the pieces in the game. I think the game lets you learn about yourself by giving you all these randomly generated signifiers to string together and create meaning from.

 

When I played the game though, I felt very aware that this was a land totally dedicated to art, but with no need for actual artists, and no real need for an audience. It felt sort of dystopian world to me, like a society that had realized the dark side of 'art for art's sake'. But at the same time there was a lot of beauty to be found in the galleries and in the world around them. It left me with a bittersweet feeling.

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The best part of Punch A Monet is that the damage from the first punch looks just like the damage from the real one.

So much more can be done with this, but it makes for a pretty good proof-of-concept.

 

Punched-Monet.jpg

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I really quite enjoyed that Coristmas game. Reminds me of that PS game that was based on the developers dreams/drug hallucinations

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I really quite enjoyed that Coristmas game. Reminds me of that PS game that was based on the developers dreams/drug hallucinations

 

This is by the same person. It may be even more of what you are looking for. 

 

100 Free Assets

 

100freeassets%20pic2%20640x.png

 

 

When I first played it, I was like "It's so simple, why didn't I think of making games where you just fall past 3d-models arranged in space?" 

I still want to to try making one or two, but I just haven't. After playing Merry Coristmas, Sergio I think I'll go for the hand-drawn patterns/paper aesthetic in my attempt to clone one of Rylie James Thomas's games. I want to see what I could do with the template. The falls feel like these slow-motion, temporal vantages that I want to take in fully. It's much different than standing still in a game to appreciate the landscape; it's kinda similar to appreciating a computer-game's sun-set though because you don't control how long it lasts.

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Dog of Dracula 2

It's a comedic visual novel with an absurd cyberpunk setting. The writing is parodying noir, they lay on the metaphors pretty thick, but for the most part it's well done. The visuals are bad, but in a charming way. Give it a go.

dogdracula7.jpg

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Dog of Dracula 2

It's a comedic visual novel with an absurd cyberpunk setting. The writing is parodying noir, they lay on the metaphors pretty thick, but for the most part it's well done. The visuals are bad, but in a charming way. Give it a go.

 

A lot of the lines in here are sharp. I find myself wishing that it wasn't absurd in its details because the campy noir is what I find most enjoyable. Thanks for the recommendation. TeamBatsu gets cyberpunk/noir for sure.

 

(Playtime was about an hour for me, I consider myself a slow reader.)

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I'm gonna go through and try some of the games here, but for now here's another recommendation:

34229-shot0.png-eq-900-500.jpg

I don't think there's a download link for it so you'll need the Unity browser plugin. You can play it here. It's a point and click game, there's not much to it (read the instructions). I found it endearing though.

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Night Tune by Pol Clarissou.

 

du9hsv.png

 

Rockpapershotgun article and video here, with Alice O'Connor.

 

I haven't downloaded it yet, but this looks and sounds similar to a game idea I had a few years ago - a 'walking/sitting-on-public-transport simulator' of a 50 minute trip home at night with a music player.

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Way To Go was a neat, pleasant, surprising experience. 

The first screen seems to be an intereactive loading screen, so the real stuff doesn't start until that number reaches 100. 

 

way_to_go_2_big.png

 

via Warpdoor

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This is by the same person. It may be even more of what you are looking for. 

 

100 Free Assets

 

100freeassets%20pic2%20640x.png

 

 

When I first played it, I was like "It's so simple, why didn't I think of making games where you just fall past 3d-models arranged in space?" 

I still want to to try making one or two, but I just haven't. After playing Merry Coristmas, Sergio I think I'll go for the hand-drawn patterns/paper aesthetic in my attempt to clone one of Rylie James Thomas's games. I want to see what I could do with the template. The falls feel like these slow-motion, temporal vantages that I want to take in fully. It's much different than standing still in a game to appreciate the landscape; it's kinda similar to appreciating a computer-game's sun-set though because you don't control how long it lasts.

 

Thanks for the recommendation. 

I do prefer Merry Coristmas, Sergio as it is a slightly more directed experience. The extra interaction of having to find the exit of each area makes the space you explore feel like a world which has some unknown rules you need to figure out, however trivial it is in reality.

 

100 Free assets didn't hook me in quite the same way. In the beginning it felt quite interesting, but after realizing that the route I had started following didn't actually lead anywhere but a fall into the 3d void my engagement with the game broke.

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Thanks for the recommendation.

I do prefer Merry Coristmas, Sergio as it is a slightly more directed experience. The extra interaction of having to find the exit of each area makes the space you explore feel like a world which has some unknown rules you need to figure out, however trivial it is in reality.

100 Free assets didn't hook me in quite the same way. In the beginning it felt quite interesting, but after realizing that the route I had started following didn't actually lead anywhere but a fall into the 3d void my engagement with the game broke.

This is a helpful perspective for a conversation I've been having with my wife about some of these objective-lacking games. She loved Wilbler Park but didn't feel engaged with No Fun House (with the exception of finding prompts to other areas). Your comment suggests that she may have similar methods of engagement. In Wilbler Park you quickly go from one area into another through portals and all the scenes feel like individual segments with beginnings and ends. In No Fun House the player wanders through a labryinth, finds one of three types of portals that take you to one of three places and then spits you back to the beginning of the hub world. Once the prompts started repeating, she had no interest in playing more. In contrast, I'll just walk around a scene looking at all the paintings and trying to figure out why the game exists.

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