Text Games As Philosophical Epiphanies
I have recently fallen in love with what many people are doing in the game arena with raw text. So much so that it has changed the way I look at game development. And I’m not talking about choose your own adventure stories… no, this is entirely different. Blackbar on the iOS appstore is the single best example I am seeing right now. But there are other think outside the box ideas. I’m pretty about a new game coming out called Parallax that is a mindjob of a video game it seems. I’ve been chatting with Zi Ye, the lead developer, and I can’t wait to bring that interview to you. Should be a fun one. Here’s a quick preview of that particular game:
But the game that really turned my brain inside out was called Drowning. The game was written by Notch during the Ludum Dare yearly competition. The competition lasts 48 hours and the competitors are given a theme. This year, Notch had just gotten a divorce a month before. And 4 hours into the competition he came up with the game called drowning and was done.
When I was in college I thrived in the Philosophy department because we could all sit around for hours and get seriously metaphysical about life. I was pretty good at turning other’s arguments inside out and against them. Had a blast with it. But this little game by Notch is brilliant. Completely undermines most people’s perception of reality and purpose to life. The most amazing thing? The game was written in something like 300 lines of javascript. So it was a startling revelation to realize that all my clever pontificating could be be dismantled in just a few lines of code. I’ve included the game below… only glitch? Your inventory isn’t showing out on the right. But, you can still play it, and get the idea of what I’m talking about here.