[conspire] Dept. of Fsck It, Ship It: Cyberpunk 2077

[Deirdre Saoirse Moen]

> On Dec 20, 2020, at 05:17, Nick Moffitt <nick at zork.net> wrote:
> 
> Personally, I remain unattracted to "AAA" games.  When the late Roger Ebert publicly doubted the medium's capacity to produce art, furious nerdboys loudly dunked his head in the proverbial toilet and hailed their favourite big-budget monstrosities as proof that it could.  I think this was a mistake, and the smaller independent games are where the real artistry can be found.

I like puzzle games. These tend to be played alone. Some that I think are particularly interesting:

* The Last Campfire - https://thelastcampfiregame.com <https://thelastcampfiregame.com/>

This sounds trite to say, but it’s about solving puzzles that restore hope to people who’ve lost it. Each of the game’s three main areas has a different theme.

* The Room series - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Room_(video_game) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Room_(video_game)> http://www.fireproofgames.com/games/the-room <http://www.fireproofgames.com/games/the-room>

It’s so obvious that these guys have trudged through decaying British mansions of various sorts. Every room has just fantastic detail. Human body models with fake hearts and voice boxes needing repair, check.

The first couple are of the escape-room variety: once you’ve solved a room, you don’t go back. In the third and fourth, they added interrelationships between the rooms. My personal favorite is the fourth (Old Sins), which is based around a doll house where you have to restore function to the items in the dollhouse. There’s even a submarine.

* Gorogoa - progress through the game by combining various images, manipulated in different ways. Hand-illustrated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorogoa <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorogoa>

> Games tend to have several main drives: exploration, accumulation, and destruction are the three big ones I see.  AAA games tend to focus on the accumulation and destruction, while I find the pure unalloyed exploration of old Infocom games or something like Knytt Stories far more to my liking.  That's what I love most about roguelikes, such as Brogue: the map unfolds and you wonder what's around the corner and what new landscape is possible with the primitives that the level generator has.

Most of the accumulation games (at least the non-console ones) tend to be of the “gacha” sort: free-to-play, but with an incentive to spend money.

For me, the appeal of the one I play isn’t so much the game, but the people. I suspect that’s what keeps people involved in a lot of games.

Deirdre
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