Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Alt gaming
If you think gaming is nothing but shooters, sims, and fantasy RPGs, you’ve had your head in the sand. Turns out there’s a wealth of little games (most of them free) that defy categorization. Take Gravity Head, for example. Your head has a powerful gravitational field which you can reverse at will. You use this power to spray seeds with water, thus growing flowers; that’s the easy part. The tough part is delivering those flowers to your girl.
Some of these games are pointless. In the all black-and-white “game” The Graveyard, you guide an old lady through a graveyard. Take her to the bench, let her sit down, then guide her out again. That’s the whole thing. Oh — for $5.00, they’ll unlock the full game for you. In that version, the old lady has a chance of dying in the graveyard every time you play.
Remember Kafkamesto? I wrote about it ages ago, so perhaps this one’s new to you. If you like Franz Kafka and if you’re familiar with his work, you’ll dig this game. Just be sure you check your desire to win at the door.
And then there’s Rod Humble’s The Marriage. I’ve played it, I’ve read his explanation, and I’m still scratching my head. This is what happens when artists learn to program, I guess (or when programmers fancy themselves artists?)
Ah, well. Sometimes it’s fun to play a head-scratcher, sometimes it’s better to play a game with hobos and fruit-f*ckers. Should I feel guilty that I’m assaulting street people with a rake? I would so not do well with Grand Theft Auto III.
D.
my oldest is spending his summer playing WoW. he gave it up for a while and then signed on again right after graduation. What a time sucker that thing is. Whole real lives pass right into it. He told me that are now WoW sweatshops in third world countries. Kids play it to earn the WoWmoney then their employers sell off the fake money to players who don’t want to bother earning it. A whole real economy based on a fake one. (No, really. He read about it in Lapham Quarterly, not wikipedia)
I hate to think how many hours I logged on WoW. (Actually, I can look that info up if I care to. I don’t.) The funny thing is, I have memories of many of those places as if they truly existed, and the “graphics” of my memories is usually better than the real thing.
I’ve known about the WoW sweatshops for a long time now, Kate. You can even buy level 70 (are they up to 80) characters loaded down with whatever swag you care to specify. That’s for folks who are bored by leveling and only want to stomp around with their kickass characters, or take to their flying mounts and soar above the rest of us poor shmoes.
I’m still waiting for Spore.
I’ve recently discovered EVE Online; what I like about it is that you can easily walk away from it for a while and pick it back up again… You can start a task that’s going to take a while (like build a spaceship) and leave to cook dinner or do laundry or whatever, knowing you won’t be attacked in the meantime.
I’ve only been playing it for a couple of weeks (my 14-day trial just ran out), but I think I’m going to spring for the subscription; I like how free-form it can be.
Have you tried the Spore Creature Creator, yet?