I’m well aware of the love it or hate it reaction to ambiguous, exploration-driven indie games. For every rave about a Journey, there’s an equally passionate pan. The pros and cons are sometimes even the same on both sides of the review spectrum.
Get your copy of Limbo
The crux of Limbo is the maddening build of suspense. Your character, a young boy shown in silhouette alone, races through forests, rooftops, caves, and factories to achieve something. For a while, the motivation is staying alive. Other children lay traps and even attack him directly. Then a young girl enters the picture and the game changes tone entirely.
Throughout the exploration of the world, you come to distrust every element put in your way. Is that footswitch a bane or a boon? Will pulling that lever flood the forest or just the chamber you need to pass? And why are so many of the settings so familiar again and again and again?
About 2/3s of the way through the game, the truth of the design is revealed. The world seems to repeat itself because the environments of the game are recycled and revisited in unexpected ways. The neon signs you passed over long before are now your escape ladder from the murderous factory before. Signs you saw in the distance are shoved to the foreground, introducing new gameplay mechanics that make you realize anything is possible in Limbo.
The game creates a terrible sense of foreboding from the start. You learn quickly that not even light is your friend. Everything is an act of misdirection that can lead you right to a pit of spikes or murderous spider. The game begins to take on a rhythm of introducing a trap, then adding more and more encounters with the trap until the next big threat is revealed. For example, a puddle of water you drown in becomes a chasm becomes a lake becomes a spring at the bottom of a hill you have to go down to advance. The stakes are spun higher and higher until the new style of enemy–be it brain parasite, flooding structure, or spinning gears–steps up for its own set of rotations.
The traps and enemies do overlap in pretty challenging ways as the game progresses, but the prevalence of the trap stays true to the circular nature of the trap design and pacing. The technique forces you to question every move and really hone in on the environmental factors. Everything you will encounter in the game is foreshadowed in the first few minutes of play with the blurred shadows in the distance. Likewise, everything you play in the first few minutes swings around to the distant background as you explore the world. It’s an inventive way to establish a cohesive world when the structures and environments look very similar but play in totally unexpected ways.
Whether or not Limbo physically begins and ends in the exact same place is one of the ambiguous elements of the story. My gut instinct says yes, but a bizarre almost-cutscene in the middle of the game might suggest otherwise. The important thing to realize is that the game repeats structural and design elements again and again as a way to increase the challenge level and suspense. Not knowing what exactly will come next but presenting it in a familiar way is a very cool way to build suspense and interest in the outcome of the game.
Thoughts on the structure and story of Limbo? Share them below.
Defiance, the MMOshooter inspired by the SyFy series of the same name, is available in two different forms. The regular edition is on sale for $49.99, down from the regular price of $59.99. The deluxe edition is on sale for $59.99 down from $69.99. The deluxe edition includes an additional costume, an extra weapon, an extra shield, extra storage for in-game items, and a 30 day boost in xp and script. The interesting part about Defiance is that SyFy claims the actions of the online community will have an impact on the TV story. I’m curious to see how that plays out in the long-run.
Last week, I had the opportunity to write a lot about 
Here’s how the site works. You click through to the Sketchy Details GameFanShop and browse for downloads. You register your account when you check out for the first time and I get a very fair commission rate for sending you to the site. My commission does not impact your price point and I take the hit on any coupon codes I offer. Once the order is processed, you’re e-mailed your Steam code and can download the game immediately. GameFanShop has exclusive deals so it’s worth checking out to see if you can get a better price on the game you want.
Anita Sarkeesian’s new series of Feminist Frequency videos debuted on YouTube yesterday. Tropes vs. Women in Video Games is the Kickstarter project that 
Marvel: Avengers Alliance is a Facebook turn-based RPG inspired by The Avengers, both the film and the comics. You play as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent tasked with leading the superheroes into battle. You start with a small arsenal of characters battling Marvel enemies from all eras and quickly earn points to recruit seemingly any character that ever joined The Avengers.
There are two really exciting elements to this story that are being glossed over in a lot of write-ups. The first is the presentation of the games. These are going to be original copies of the games displayed on the original consoles. That means computer games shown on computers, arcade games shown in arcade cabinets, and home console games shown on their home consoles. This collection is as much about celebrating the artistic design in video games as it is about preserving video games themselves.
Video games pose a number of challenges. For starters, no one expected them to become as popular as they did. These were not machines designed for the ages. Console generations last anywhere from five to ten years, with overlap in between. Developers have to compete for a larger portion of the market share, so better versions of old consoles are constantly in development.
This is huge. MoMA is actively preserving the history of video games and making the attempt to elevate them to art. Considering people still fight about whether or not video installations and performance art really belong in traditional galleries, the video games as art debate is not going away anytime soon. What helps the case is prestigious art galleries inviting in curated exhibitions of games and adding titles to their actual displays and archives.
Quantum Conundrum has multiple learning curves happening at the same time. The game hinges on the manipulation of physics in a mad scientist’s world. You have very little time to master the intricacies of each of four variables before solving a puzzle demands precision control of various random elements.
The challenge of designing a good puzzle game is deciding where to draw the line between challenge and innovation. Portal, the previous release from Kim Swift (former lead designer at Valve, now with Airtight Games), does a remarkable job of balancing this out.
Puzzle games rarely allow for that level of variance. The entire point of the puzzle genre is to solve puzzles. You might couch it in a larger narrative like the Professor Layton series or put in a clear singular throughline like Braid. You can also just make it a series of individual challenges held together by style or character like Tetris or Lumines. You can blend in other gaming elements (music puzzle games like Amplitude or RPG-based puzzle games like Puzzle Quest), but the driving force is clearly the puzzle solving element.
In many ways, these full-length, fully-featured console/PC puzzle games are still an emerging genre. The tricks that worked before–point and click mechanics, especially–don’t necessarily grab interest anymore. Experimental games with puzzle elements (like Journey or Limbo) tend to work best as adventure/platform games with some light puzzle elements rather than puzzle games with some light platforming to get to the next puzzle.
If the gameplay was the same in each stage, I would get bored and walk away. If it changed radically in style, I would get frustrated and walk away.
In anticipation of Pokemon Black/White 2, PETA put out a strong satire of the game series to argue their perspective on Pokemon as exploitation. You play as Pikachu escaping from his trainer’s house. You are covered in bandages and not in great shape. Half of your moves are traditional physical attacks; the other half are methods of fighting against animal abuse.
It’s not an irrelevant or absurd notion, either. The goal of the game is capturing wild creatures for combat. The only way to catch them is to stalk them in their natural environment and beat them until they’re about to fall over from damage. Your game only stops momentarily when all the Pokemon on your active team can no longer fight.
Adding to the complication is the online multiplayer. You can be running a perfect stealth game, slowly descending upon your target without notice. Out of nowhere, another player comes running by and gives away your location. Or, you can be minding your own business when another player decides to shoot you without even communicating to find out if you’re alive.