"Let's Play" It: Little Nightmares

As a Gentle Gamer, there are some games I'll just never play. My nerves just can't deal with the stress, or I know it will give me nasty dreams for months, or whatever other thing might affect a soft soft buddy like me.

But that doesn't mean less-gentle games don't intrigue me. So, I found my loophole: watching Let's Play videos on Youtube. Watching other people play games doesn't fill me with the same sort of anxiety that playing first-hand does. With this little bit of distance, I can see what mechanics games are toying with, without having to deal with subsequent anxiety dreams.

This week, I watched a play-through of Little Nightmares, a beautiful game that falls into some icky tropes. We ask instead: how can we use the familiar language of horror to expand our world instead of contracting it? 

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A Brief Ode to "Hey Ash"

I'm certain that it was my brother that introduced me to Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin'? a video series that started on Destructoid and then branched out to Youtube and beyond.

He definitely tried to get me to watch Red vs. Blue on Roosterteeth, and that just wasn't my jam. But Hey Ash, he promised, was a little different. For one, it featured a woman, Ashly Burch, who served as the manic id to her brother Anthony's calmer superego. Moreover, she wasn't a supporting character; the show was named after her, after all.

At the time, it was the early late aughts there was a huge internet video hole in my heart (Homestar Runner was on what seemed like a permanent hiatus), and I was looking for anything to fill that spot.

And, at the time, Hey Ash suited me just fine.

Truth be told, I've stayed pretty caught up with Hey Ash over the years; they've continued to put out videos pretty regularly. However, I sometimes wonder if I'm looking at them through a hazy nostalgic love: a lot of the early videos featured jokes that were 100% not-in-best-taste and reflective of some of the grosser sides of gaming culture (misogyny, homophobia, racism... the usual players).

But, while keeping that in mind and keeping accountability in tact, I'm trying to keep in mind that they were literal kids who were making videos for the internet in a time when that was still new. It doesn't excuse everything, but it gives it context. 

We all made some comments on Livejournal that our adult selves regret. (By "we all" I obviously mean "me.") (Jesus.) (I wish I could burn my Livejournal.) 

Since then, it's apparent that Ashly and Anthony's hearts are certainly in the right place. For example, they went back and put trigger warnings/retractions on their videos.

But they've also gone on to larger things, professionally. Anthony writes for video games, most notably for Borderlands 2. Ashly worked on a number of smaller projects, has gone on to create quite an impressive voice acting resume, and has given a number of talks about the social aspects of gaming (for example: "Curiosity, Courage and Camouflage: Revealing the Gaming Habits of Teen Girls"). 

But why does Hey Ash hold such a place in my heart to this day? Is it that Ashly plays the right sort of off-the-wall maniac? Is it that Anthony sets her up perfectly?They obviously are having fun with it. They both so deeply love gaming and also each other. It's dumb. It's (sometimes) thoughtful. It's two people who aren't white dudes doing a thing that usually is centrally controlled by white dudes.

But WHO AM I KIDDING. I hope that I know better than to try to make this into a thinkpiece:

These make me laugh. Hazy nostalgic love or not.

Portal & "Feminist Games"

Why talk about a game that was made ten years ago? Why talk about a game that has been talked about to death?

Because I played Portal again for the first time in a long time, and I think it's an exemplary example for women in games, but not for the reasons I used to think it was.

It's a game about and for women, but not entirely for the reasons that male game reviewers seem to think it is.

Portal speaks to something darker, more private, and deeply intimate. 

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Long Live Broderbund

There are some moments of absolute nostalgic clarity: I remember the first time I sat on the swing set my parents built for me in the backyard; I remember the first time my partner and I met in our hometown's public library; I remember the first time I thought, "Dear God, I hate Bob Boilen" (I was in Montreal, putting my coat into my closet outside of my college bedroom).

I know that remembering a memory just FEELS like it's being relived. I know that it's actually more like a game of telephone, where the more a memory is recalled, the more it degrades in your mind.

However, I'm still a sucker for it. In quiet moments or on long drives, I can sink into these memories and recall small somatosensory details.

As a ~*~millennial~*~ it seems common sense that I'd have similar feelings about video games. I mean, I was one of the first generations (if not THE first) to regularly use video games at home in daily life. However, I wasn't really prepared for the level of GENUINE EXCITEMENT I'd feel when I stumbled across some Let's Play videos of Broderbund titles. Seems that some things seeped deep into my long-term memory. 

Games like Reading Galaxy, The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis, and Gizmos and Gadgets were brought in my childhood home by my mom in what I'm almost certain was an attempt to diversify our educational opportunities. I was a nerdy kid. I loved going to the teacher supply store ("There a whole room full of WORKBOOKS??"). I cried when my second-grade teacher told me I wasn't going to get homework until later in the year. Being able to solve puzzles at home from the comfort of my desktop computer was a godsend.

Of all of them, The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis was my favorite. It involved leading little blue creatures from a life of slavery to a new world of freedom. In order to escape, they had to navigate a world increasingly difficult logic puzzles.

Watching a play-through of Zoombinis, I quickly realized that I could deliver almost word-for-word readings of any of the lines spoken by the characters. I remembered the rules of every puzzle. I remember the level of sadness I felt whenever I "lost" one of the Zoombinis due to incorrectly completing a puzzle. I felt Real Human Emotions about this game that literally was just trying to teach kids logic.

I can't remember who I sat next to in my second-grade classroom, but I remember so many minute details about The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis with absolute clarity.

Maybe other folks don't feel the same level of nostalgic compassion for these early games as I do. However, I might guess otherwise, based simply on the fact that when I mention Mavis Beacon to any of my peers, their eyes usually immediately light up with the memory of her many typing exercises.

If my guess is correct, one fine day in the future, I look forward to all of us sitting around in our old age on some porch or another, waxing poetic about our adventures with Carmen Sandiego, or reminiscing about our trials and tribulations on the Oregon Trail, or how lost we got in Myst.

And who knows, maybe we'll install some computers into these Old Folks Homes of the future, and maybe we'll convince the people who work there to load Logical Journey of the Zoombinis on it for one last break for freedom.

That Look

Sometimes, you're re-playing Portal to write about the relation of that game to female anxiety, and your partner takes some candid photos of the face you make when you're really feeling that final fight with GLaDOS.

"And behold," I said, "Behold the power of an immersive experience."

(P.S.In case it was unclear: piece about Portal and female anxiety coming soon.)

I'm only asking for "EVERYTHING"

There are some things I just waaaant. I waaaaaaaaaaaaant them. And one of those things is David OReilly's new game, Everything.

I first saw OReilly's work in his short animated film, Please Say Something. I think it was part of a night of short films hosted by the truly superb little movie theater Upstate Films in Rhinebeck, NY. (I was working at an outdoor adventure camp for special needs kids down the way, and, though it was maybe the best job I ever had, spending a couple of hours sitting alone in the dark was a true blessing.)

On that particular evening, some Upstate Film employee pulled out a literal Blu-Ray disk they had burned at home and popped it in to the projector. I don't remember any of the other films from that night, but I remember Please Say Something.

It's a beautiful short film, hyper-stylized and leaning into the aesthetics of glitch culture, while also tackling some major themes on abuse and sadness. It's gorgeous and heart-breaking. I was immediately in love.

You can watch it yourself:

His work has popped up now and again in the cultural landscape. OReilly directed & animated an episode of Adventure Time: the gloriously non-cannon A Glitch is a Glitch. I've watched his other short films (which never quite jumped the bar set by Please Say Something). I said literally out loud, "OH, IT'S THAT GUY," when his name scrolled by on the credits for Her (OReilly designed and animated the game that whats-his-name plays at some point or another).

However, in the video game world, he's probably most known for developing Mountain.

In Mountain, the player watches a singular floating mountain. Trees grow. Seasons change. The sun rises and sets. There are no controls. There is really nothing. You are the mountain. Things happen. Time passes. Nothing is in your control. Play-through is about 50 hours.

Mountain was one of those games where everyone asks, "IS THIS A GAME, THOUGH?" and frets about it until they can fret no more.

OReilly chooses a singular quote to feature on Mountain's website:

"It's fucking nothing" — Total Biscuit

Oreilly's newest game, Everything, was released on PS4 earlier this month, and it has kicked up the same sort of "WHAT IS THIS" hand-wringing.

Everything promises the player just that: to play as anything in the known universe. From zooplankton to galaxies, the player transfers control from object to object, sometimes building up little parades of otherwise disparate items into a pseduo-Katamari collection. By all accounts, Everything runs wide and meandering, artful and contemplative.

There are some games that elicit striking similar responses in reviews, and (generally speaking), the response to Everything is, "It's not a game! Wait, we mean it is a game! Wait, we mean: do we even care what 'games' are anymore? Wait, we mean: Please, just let us be because we're trying our best and just want to play games. Wait, this isn't a game..." and so on.

Everything comes to PC and Mac on April 21, and I absolutely cannot wait. Anything that makes people question the arbitrary titles we foist upon media (or objects, or people) is A-OK in my book.

Stardew Valley

In 1999, I got Pokemon Red for Christmas for my gray brick Game Boy (which, at the time, seemed like an appliance that ran due to a sustained act of magic). I dug down into the corner of a couch and started playing. I kept playing. I took a brief break for dinner and then went back to playing. I played for hours and hours and hours. I played for so long that, when I turned off the Game Boy, I could still hear the music playing. "That can't be right," I thought. Even after I double-checked that the Game Boy was off, I could still hear the music. It wasn't coming from the game; it was playing inside my head.

Being eleven years old and never having experienced an auditory hallucination before, I quickly panicked, tears welling up as I realized that the cheery loop of the Pokemon battle theme was something only I could hear. After pacing around the room for a few minutes, I composed myself as much as I could and ran to find my mom. Sobbing, I yelled, “I CAN STILL HEAR THE MUSIC.”

My mom thought it was hilarious.

You would have thought this would be a lesson for me, a reminder that my personality leans towards the obsessive. I would like to believe that I've learned moderation over the decades since that Christmas evening. But I know that's not true; I'm a sucker for a good game cycle.

So, when a friend recommended Stardew Valley--the farming simulator developed by Eric Barone that took Steam by storm last year and is purportedly the gentlest of games--what she didn't know was that it has been on my Steam wishlist for months. I avoided buying it (instead sticking with games that promised a tight 10-hour play-through at the very most), sensing that doing so would toss me in the middle of a time-suck that I wouldn't be able to crawl out of. "I can't go through what I went through with The Sims again," I told myself, like a weathered sailor who has promised never to return to the sea. Squinting into the middle distance, I mumbled, "I can't go back."

But my friend's off-hand suggestion came when my partner just happened to be bored, and that was all I needed to shrug off my gut instinct.

It's been two weeks since I downloaded Stardew Valley. I've played about 60 hours, which averages to about 4 hours a day. Old habits die hard.

And here's the thing: though about 30 of those hours were spent making friends with villagers, figuring out crop price points, and plotting out time management strategies, the other 30 hours were spent in genuine bewilderment about whether or not I like the game. There's almost nothing to it, but I feel continually compelled to play it during any down moment. I think it might just be the most perfect construction of the addicting game loop that I've tried to avoid all my life. And in that way, I think the game might be a critique of itself.

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Thank God for Autostraddle

I mean, thank god for Autostraddle for many reasons, but today I am thanking the gods of the internet and my friend Ary (who is not only a beautiful person, but also a beautiful writer) for pointing me towards Autostraddle's "10 Tap Games for iPhone, Rated By Their Inevitably Fleeting Relief of My Low-Grade Depression."

If that's not a bait title for this Gentle Gamer, I don't know what is.

You can see it in full here, but I especially recommend Tap Tap Fish (which Ary has already downloaded and is playing probably right now):

AbyssRium (aka “Tap Tap Fish”)

A very aesthetically satisfying game, the gameplay seems designed to be pleasing and relaxing; it’s a nice break from all the frenzied hyperspeed apps. You are the proprieter of a lump of coral in the middle of the ocean, and are tapping to raise enough energy to support adding various sea life to the ecosystem of the coral. You’re also literally in an abyss, if that’s thematically appealing to you. The music is pretty soothing, so even if you never want to click or tap on anything, you can put headphones on and watch your tiny digitally rendered fish swim about in their preprogrammed paths that sometimes take them directly through rocks or coral in an engagingly glitchy way, that’s fine too. Maybe the only downside of this game is how badly it wants you to take screenshots of your fish and send them in to the app designers to be posted on their instagram. What do you want with my imaginary fish, Big Data? Get your own fish. These are mine.

It was rated five out of five upside-down smiley emojis.

God bless Autostraddle.

On the farm. Brb.

I made a mistake. After promises from friends that it's really not that addicting, I purchased Stardew Valley for myself.

Boy, oh, boy. I should have known better. This is just The Sims all over again.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm taking this week off to work on a digital farm. I'm sorry, but I have lobster to trap and villagers to befriend.

See y'all on the other side.

Undertale

It's the truism of our time: the internet will find a way to ruin everything you like. This has the same steadfast reliability to it as Rule 34 (the invented--but nonetheless utterly true--idea that, if something exists, there is smut dedicated to it). And it makes sense: the internet is vast and deep and, ultimately, if you stare into the void, something unpleasant will come bubbling to the surface. Or sometimes it's less subtle than that. (See: your fave is problematic)

For example, you: 1) play Portal; 2) think: "Oh man, this game is awesome;" and 3) decide to do a quick Google search about the game and BLAM, suddenly you're neck deep in "The Cake is a Lie" jokes that go on forever and ever. Inundated with so much garbage, it becomes easy to forgot why you liked the game in the first place. The subtleties are replaced with one joke repeated ad nauseum until the words don't even seem like words anymore.

I'd argue that the same thing happened to Undertale, a 2015 game put out by Toby Fox and lovingly styled after Japanese role-playing games ("JRPGs") like Earthbound. If you were curious about the game and decided to do a quick search on Tumblr, I'd guess that your reaction would be, "How did an 8-bit skeleton in slippers become a sex symbol?"

But, despite all the grey noise that now exists about it on the internet, there's a reason Undertale reached Portal levels of internet adoration: they're both unexpected things of beauty in the simplest of wrappings.

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TWO DOTS & "REAL GAMES"

I've always loved fantasy. In middle school, I worked my way through Dragonlance, Dealing with Dragons, and Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern. (There was a definite uniting trend to all of these. See if you can guess what it was.) I gobbled up books by Philip Pullman and Garth Nix and Tamora Pierce. I wrote my own fantasy series, and handed it in to my poor fourth-grade teacher to read. I think she gave me a gold star sticker, which I assumed meant that she wanted to read more. So sorry, Mrs. Brock.

So, when my brother started playing World of Warcraft when I was in high school, I thought it would be a natural continuation, an exploration further into the wilds of one of my preferred genres, And it was! Right up until the moment that I left the land of computer-controlled non-playable characters ("NPCs") and had to interact with other players.

It was just a different side of the same internet-world I encountered during my foray onto music fan forums: when I signed up for the Dandy Warhols board, I made the requisite introductory post, and was immediately greeted by a "Tits or GTFO" reply. Since my screen name was "BlueCanary," I posted a picture of a blue bird, with a big red arrow pointing to the bird's chest. Then I never logged in again.

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THE WITNESS

First things first, a confession: I have not finished The Witness. I don't know if I'm even an eighth of the way through. Heck: I don't know if I'm ever going to finish it, the way things are going. (I might tear out all my hair first, and I don't really have that much hair to spare, to be honest.)

The Witness was put out in 2016 by a development team headed by Jonathan Blow, creator of the beloved indie platformer/puzzler Braid. I was planning to skip The Witness. Something about the Cult of Jonathan Blow doesn't appeal to me: there's a dude centricity to it that feels alien and like I'm not welcome. It's a mostly baseless feeling, though perhaps fueled a little by Indie Game: The Movie, which was such a boy's club that I almost shrugged myself out of existence while watching it.

But a couple of friends I trust recommended it to me. Maybe I have retroactively imagined it, but didn't they had a certain desperate gleam in their eye? Wasn't their bag brimming over with graph paper, scrawled with lines and notes? Didn't I ask, "Isn't it just a bunch of puzzles?" And didn't they respond, "OH, YES, IT ABSOLUTELY IS."

And goddamn if I've suddenly found myself in the same boat. Goddamn if it's not me buying up graph paper like it's going out of style and thinking about puzzles literally all the time. Even if I never finish it, I feel confident in saying that The Witness is infuriating, beautiful, surprising, stupid, and genuinely smart. In short: it's excellent.

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PAPERS, PLEASE

March 8 was International Women's Day. I went to the San Francisco Gender Strike, a feminist march against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE"). Speakers went up, one by one, each with their own personal way of encouraging our community to take a stand against mass deportation, xenophobia, and policies that threaten and affect members of our community.

One speaker came up and, in the middle of their speech, directly challenged law enforcement, ICE agents, congresspeople, etc. to stop following orders. It was a clear directive: stop enforcing policies that are hurting real people.

It seemed such a simple thing when it was stated like that.

 It's easy to imagine what I would do if I were one of the people being addressed by that plea: I imagine myself standing up to some boss, quietly stating, "No, absolutely not. This policy is wrong." I imagine the accompanying swell of music & the shift into a more technicolor world. I imagine the resulting biopic where I am played by some Hollywood up-and-comer hoping for an Oscar nomination.

Like I said: so simple.

But I've played Papers, Please, a 2013 "dystopian document thriller" game put out by Lucas Pope, and I'm afraid that I know something a little darker about myself: how easy it is for me (and you, and all of us) to follow rules. And how that choice isn't extraordinary or even intentionally malicious, it's the most mundane thing in the world.

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NIGHT IN THE WOODS

I, like many, was waiting on Infinite Fall's Night in the Woods for a while.

In the reliable pang of Kickstarter-backed-game patience, I watched delay notification after delay notification come from Infinite Fall headquarters. But I'm used to playing the waiting game. I'm not gonna gripe if a game coming from a three-person development team takes a while to come out. The fact that such a small team can make something at all seems like a blessing.

So, I played (and fell head-over-heels for) the mini game Infinite Fall put out in the interim. I kept my ear to the ground. And, about a month ago, Night in the Woods finally came out into the sun.

It wasn't what I expected at all. Or it was. And I loved it. Or I didn't.

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LOST CONSTELLATION

A few years ago, Infinite Fall ran a (very, very successful) Kickstarter campaign for a game called Night In The Woods. Like many Kickstarter games, it took much longer to come out than they first promised.

In an attempt to allay some frustration, Infinite Fall put out a few short auxiliary games to let folks know that, yes, they were working on something and that, yes, it would be worth the wait.

Since then, Night in the Woods has come out (and it's good! I think! I'm going to write more about it later!), but it's one of those short auxiliary games--Lost Constellation--that stands up completely on its own.

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