Video game
Okay, maybe I'm getting into a trap of just reposting too much from PSFK, but here they lead me to another lovely project, site & maker...
Esquire wrote about this guy's video game work. It's the loveliest gaming I've ever run across. I'm so not into video games, but my dad was an engineer and we had lots of computer access in the early years and loads of hacked video games. The one I loved best was called Haunted House where the screen was all black and you were represented by a pair of eyes. You could pick up only one item at a time and you must avoid monsters and ghosts. The items can only be seen when the player uses the 'fire' button on the joystick to light a match, illuminating a small radius directly around his character; this can be done an infinite number of times, although the match only lasts for a limited amount of time before being snuffed out. I think now I loved that so much of the game was not visible on the screen but happened in your own mind, sort of a conceptual blindness....
ANYWAY, back to Jason Rohrer's games. They have low tech graphics, but complex emotional components. Here's a description from Esquire:
Another lovely hi tech/low tech intersection.....
Esquire wrote about this guy's video game work. It's the loveliest gaming I've ever run across. I'm so not into video games, but my dad was an engineer and we had lots of computer access in the early years and loads of hacked video games. The one I loved best was called Haunted House where the screen was all black and you were represented by a pair of eyes. You could pick up only one item at a time and you must avoid monsters and ghosts. The items can only be seen when the player uses the 'fire' button on the joystick to light a match, illuminating a small radius directly around his character; this can be done an infinite number of times, although the match only lasts for a limited amount of time before being snuffed out. I think now I loved that so much of the game was not visible on the screen but happened in your own mind, sort of a conceptual blindness....
ANYWAY, back to Jason Rohrer's games. They have low tech graphics, but complex emotional components. Here's a description from Esquire:
In Passage, you’re this little pixelated guy. You live in the stripe of color. The stripe is twelve pixels tall. It’s green. All else is blackness. Your job is to move up and down and left and right through the stripe — the “forest” — in search of treasure chests, sort of like in the Legend of Zelda....But soon you have to make a choice: share the world or keep it to yourself. You meet a girl. Your fat-pixeled soul mate. Link up with her and a heart explodes. You’re in love. Now she sticks to you as you move through the forest, less easily than before. It’s a trade-off: You can get more treasure by staying single, but bond with your “wife” and you earn double the points for every step you take. If you’re like most people, you’ll choose the comforts of companionship. Only, as you trudge across the stripe, something happens. Your pixels begin to fade, gray out. Your hair recedes by degrees. Your wife slurs into a matronly shape. It hits you: This is going to happen to me. Age, decrepitude, ugliness.
Another lovely hi tech/low tech intersection.....