20 games that will make you
think about life
2. Immortall
Do you
ever get that feeling, when playing games, that you really should be doing
something more edifying with your life. It is a sad fact that most the computer
games I play are about as intellectually stimulating as a fart. But,
thankfully, not all. Here, I present five games I've found that force you to
think a little - in some cases even get a bit philosophical.
1.
Elude
Developed by Singapore-MIT
Gambit Game Lab, Elude is a dark, atmospheric game that aims
to shed light on the nature of depression. You play a little guy exploring a
beautiful yet forbidding world. The world has three distinct levels, each a
metaphor for a different mental state.
The forest that you
start the game in represents a normal mood. You can ascend to a higher plane -
happiness - by climbing the trees in the forest. From, here you can leap
joyously up into the sky by jumping on floating flowers and leaves. The leaves
and flowers disappear after you have touched them and eventually none are left
to keep you aloft and you plunge down into the third game area: depression.
The game
starts with you crash landing on a planet. It soon becomes clear that you are
an alien and the planet is Earth. Exactly where and when on Earth is never
spelt out. After pulling yourself out of your space craft, you start to explore
the planet. Soon you come across a native - a little girl. She seems excited to
meet you and calls on you to follow her. She takes you to her brother, who is
picking apples from a tree. He throws one to you. You eat it. You seem to like
it. And you let the little boy sit on your shoulders. Thus begins one of the
most emotionally-charged games I have ever played. You can play Immortall here.
3. Loved
Take a
cursory look at Alexander Ocias's Loved, and you could mistake
it for a pretty basic platformer. Look a little deeper and you realise that
this unusual game is actually a meditation on the nature of authority and
obedience. At least, that was my take on it. Like most cool art, Loved can be interpreted
in a multitude of ways, and no doubt you will see it in a completely different
light to me. What is not open to debate however is that Loved is one of
the most innovative and thought-provoking Flash games around. Loved can be
played here.
4. I Can Hold My Breath Forever
In this
brilliant exploration game by Jake Elliott,
you play the part of a little creature who is searching for its friend in an
impenetrable network of underwater caves. You can only hold your breath for ten
seconds so must find air pockets in the water, before you can dive deeper. As
you progress down into the depths, you come across letters dropped by your
friend. The letters are beautifully written and imbue your search with an
urgency and emotional resonance that are rarely found in gaming. I Can Hold My
Breath Forever can be played here.
5. The Company of Myself
Bend time
in this sad, philosophical platformer to solve the puzzles. The game play is
tricky and challenging but it is the story and introspective ambience that
really make this game. Play The Company of Myself here.
6. Coma
Coma is not only one of the
best looking Flash games around - Thomas Brush having given it a uniquely
mysterious and melancholic ambience - but also one of the cleverest. Your task
is to help Pete find his way through his mysterious, subconscious world, along
the way solving puzzles and marvelling at the dream-like quality of the game.
You can play Coma here.
7. Loondon
Just like
most of us, Jonah - the hunch-back hero of this game - is on a quest to find
happiness. Your job is to help him in this timeless aim by solving point and
click-style puzzles. It is highly unlikely that Loondon sheds any
radical new philosophical light on how to achieve happiness but the game's
beautiful design, atmospheric music and fun puzzles certainly gave me a feeling
that came close to happiness. Play Loondon by clicking here.
8. One Chance
Here's
something to think about - every decision we ever make, no matter how seemingly
inconsequential it may be at the time, has the potential to fundamentally
change our lives forever. A simple 'Should I go down the boozer?' on an idle
Tuesday evening could set off a chain of events that leads to you meeting your
partner, getting married, having kids, the whole shebang. Or you could end up
with liver disease.
Of
course, the thing about decisions is you normally only get one chance to make
them and, once they're made, you can't go back. This frankly rather depressing
little segue brings us to One
Chance.
You are
the super-smart scientist whose discovery appears to have conquered one of the
most devastating diseases known to humankind. Unfortunately - oh hubris, thy
name is scientist guy! - your discovery has also gone ape and will kill every
living cell on Earth within the week. What you might call a mixed day at the
office. Over the next few days, the decisions you make will determine the fate
of, well, everything, everywhere. A good time, perhaps, to invest in a bigger
executive stress ball.
Even with
the cartoony retro graphics, developer AwkwardSilenceGames has delivered
a game that, like a good thriller, builds a creeping sense of unease into its
early stages that gradually accelerates to blind panic as the clock ticks down
to doomsday. Will you find a cure? Will you top yourself? Will you retire to
the boozer and hope for the best from the bottom of a bottle? The clever thing
is, you really will only get One Chance to find out. Play One Chance here.
9. A Mother in Festerwood
Kids, eh?
It seems like one minute, they're little pixels wandering around your woodland
home, the next they're on their way into the big, wide world, where they must
find their own treasure and kill their own trolls. At least, that's how life is
like in Festerwood.
As a
mother, it's your job to keep your little tyke in the safety of the homestead
until they have enough experience to survive the monster-infested woods. Don't
expect any gratitude, though. The brat will continually try to give you the
slip and escape into the wild. After a while, like many a parent, you may well
be tempted to say sod it and let the know-it-alls find out the hard way what
the world's really like. Let them just see!
Oh,
they'll be back when they want feeding. Well, they better bring some treasure.
We aren't made of money, you know. And will there be a word of thanks? And look
at the state of your room? This isn't a hotel. And another thing... Ahem. Play
A Mother in Festerwood here.
10. American Dream
Crude,
materialistic, morally bankrupt, downright filthy...you've got to love the
wonderful world of the free market. And it's captured in all it's terrible,
rapacious glory in American
Dream, a frankly bizarre celebration of consumerism and greed that pitches
itself somewhere in between American Psycho and Fight Club.
The aim
of the game is to make a million buckaroos by trading the "stock" of
a eclectic collection of long-forgotten celebs (Max Headroom, Rick
Astley...er...Madonna) and Blondie (everyone loves Blondie, right?). Yes,
really.
Buy low,
sell high and kit out your pad with all the latest furniture and gadgets to
hide the emptiness inside. Once you have, of course, it'll all be out of
fashion and you must start all over again. Oh and then there's the
parties...which you can find out about yourself. Perhaps best not to play this
one with your gran. Play American Dream here.
11. As I Lay Dying
Of
course, a big part of life is sharing it with another person. Unless you
subscribe to the view that hell is other people, I suppose. But anyway, let's
say you don't. You like at least one person enough to share your life with them.
Right.
As I Lay Dying makes
you think about how far you'd go to get that person back home - even if they're
dead. The dialogue might sound like it's been recorded in a phone box, but this
retro-style platform adventure offers plenty of little puzzles and pesky
enemies to test your initiative and throwing arm. Leave no man behind. Play As
I Lay Dying here.
12. Prior
Another
thing about life is that you can sometimes wake up in a strange place without a
clue about what's going on. This isn't always a bad thing; there was that time
in San Francisco when I came to and there was this girl...erm...I digress. In
the case of Prior,
however, waking up in a strange place without a clue about what's going on is
most definitely not a good thing. It's up to you to find out just what the
flippin' 'eck is going on and where your family have gone.
Prior is
a classic platform that, like 1980s classics like Treasure Island
Dizzy, put the emphasis on you picking up clues and solving little puzzles
to crack the maze and save the day. Cool music, too. Play Prior here.
13.The End of Us
Life can,
of course, bring very sad moments. People come and go. Friends drift away.
Sometimes they crash into planets. Erm, well in this case they do. This
strangely touching little game sets you up as a purple comet whizzing through
the cosmos, who is joined by a spirited orange comet. You spin and swirl
through the vastness of space, chasing stars for no particular reason and
slowly fading as you grow older.
All
things must pass, though, and you eventually come upon a asteroid belt that
knocks the wind out of you. In the end, all that's left is to decide who's
going to take the big fall and who's going to carry on alone? Although this
game is set to a music track, I'd suggest playing it while listening to Do You Realize??
by The Flaming Lips.
Pass the hanky. Sniff. You can play The End of Us here.
14. Pipedreamz
Meat can
change your life, apparently. I honestly couldn't tell you. I also honestly
couldn't tell you what you could learn about life from Pipedreamz,
but then perhaps it's a bit too intellectual for me. It's a series of weird
mini-games in which you have to flip burgers, surf and trough meat without
others seeing. I just don't know. I really don't. Maybe you can work it out.
Let me know if you crack it. Play Pipedreamz here.
15. Flight
The
beautifully animated Flight
is all about hope. The hope of a little girl to see her mum at Christmas. Aww.
Little Sandy has written down her only wish on a paper aeroplane and it's up to
you to make sure that the message gets all the way to London, 1,000 miles away.
This
highly addictive little physics game is all about picking up and chucking said
plane as far as you possibly can. Getting altitude and distance will help you
pick up money to buy some pretty nifty extras - I wish my paper planes at
school had an afterburner. Ooh and you can personalise your plane too! And what
kind of monster wouldn't want to help a little girl at Christmas? Even when
it's April? Play Flight here.
16. Passage
It is
very rare - nay, impossible - for a game to reduce me to tears. And this one didn't. But, I
can tell you, it was damn close. A more poignant and profound game you are
unlikely to find. On the surface, the point of Passage is to open as many
treasure chests within the allotted time. But that's not what Jason Rohrer's award
winning game is really about. What it is really about is love, the passing of
time, saying goodbye to youth and freedom, grief - ultimately life itself.
Passage
can be played on Mac OSX, Windows and Linux and can be downloaded here. Make sure you have
some tissues handy before you start playing.
17. The Majesty of Colors
"Last
night I had a dream". So begins The Majesty of Colors - a
sparklingly innovative Flash game by Gregory
Weir. But this is no ordinary dream, And "I" - you - is no
ordinary person. You are a terrifyingly ugly sea monster - basically a giant
squid with one enormous spiked tentacle with which you interact with the world.
Despite your fearsome appearance, you start the game as an innocent creature,
curious about the world. But your interactions with humanity threaten to
corrupt you. Feeling rejected and persecuted, do you turn bad and use your
considerable powers for evil purposes, or do you strive to do good? The choice
is yours.
The
Majesty of Colors is a game that can be played multiple times - the decisions
you make during the game determine between the many different endings. Play it here. Read an interview with the
game's creator here.
18. The Game
The Game starts by telling us
that there are no rules, just play. But what does it mean by that. Is it
lavishing praise on anarchy or is it saying that life's just a game. The truth
is nothing so trite. The Game takes you on a voyage of philosophical
exploration like none you will have experienced before. You will find yourself
committing suicide beneath clouds bearing Einstein's legendary equation, suffering
under the totalitarianism of communisim, getting your heart shot to bits by a
lover - all the time accompanied by the wittiest commentary I've seen in a
game. And the more you progress into The Game, the deeper - and funnier - it
gets.
Trust me,
The Game will change your perception of what games are about. Play it here but not for too long
because it might blow your mind.
19. Gray
Gray is a riot - quite
literally. In this cerebral, experimental game, you play the part of a lone
dissenter, trying desperately to win a seemingly never ending horde of rioters
over to your cause. It seems like a helpless task but one by one you manage to
woo the rioters until eventually you have the majority following you. But what
does any self-respecting rebel do when they are a member of the majority, well
in this game, they switch to the other side of course, and repeat the whole
process again but from the opposite direction.
Gray
raises some interesting questions about the individual and the possibility of
one person changing the course of history. It is also great fun to play. Play
it here
20. Super Karoshi
This supreme reinvention of
the platform genre forces you to dwell on the nature of life, the utter
futility and pointlessness of it, that is. But rather than getting depressed
about this fact, Super Karoshi wants us to celebrate the worthlessness of
existence, by splattering ourselves into oblivion in a variety of highly
imaginative and blood spurting ways. Ironically, given that the point is to
die, I feel more alive playing this game than virtually any other platformer.
The brilliant music (by Jake Almond)
and devilishly clever puzzles probably have something to do with that.
Image source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/13665
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