GG: Gambit

Greetings, Salutations,

Today I give you a dearth of games, some good, some bad, but I'll tell you what I can. Gambit is a research initiative between Singapore and MIT focusing on problems game developers face and works on designing games for difficult and uncomfortable concepts. These include such themes as distrust, depression, loneliness, addiction, etc. and while they are fairly accurate to a degree, it is only a picture into these feelings.

Yet One Word is a typing platformer game. You type the words shown on each platform and if your character is in range then you jump to them. As you go through, there are special platforms that you must answer questions when you get to. I think the first question is: "what would you consider to be your biggest failure." It cannot check to see if you are right, it deletes your answers when you leave, and nobody ever sees anything, so you could potentially just breeze through the game typing nothing in particular. But these are thought provoking and sometimes really uncomfortable questions and it really can help to just sit and think, one minute per question. Is what I just wrote true? Do I? Is there more? [Play Here]

The Bridge is described as being both obvious and very open to interpretation. There are meanings everywhere, and it's up to you to see them and understand them.... in your own specific way. It's a very simple game, as far as I've discovered, and perhaps I'm missing something, but even the way I played it has gotten me to interpret things, without even going anywhere. It causes you to look at the way you are living your life, and once you finish playing it, if you want you can read the artistic statement Here. [Play Here]

The Snowfield is a very.... interesting.... game. It's a game not designed by developers, but designed by the audience. The developers simply asked them what they liked best, FPS? Check. Snow terrain? Check. Few weapons? Check. Then they built what they were asked to and kept giving it to an audience who informed them of what they wanted changed. Until this. You play a soldier in the aftermath of a battle. The temperature is so cold that if you wander too far away from the fire you'll freeze to death. Etc. Play it for a bit, fiddle around. See what you can do. Come back and share with me your own stories. (may require Unity plug-in to play) [Play Here]

Elude is a game I play fairly often, not because it's particularly fun, but because it helps me understand to a degree what some of my friends have been through. It's a game about depression, a hard subject to deal with, especially in a game, which are supposed to be all about fun, right? (wrong!) You control a person jumping through the trees to get to the sunlight, and then getting to the eventual plummet to earth. (give it a bit of time to load, it takes a while and has no loading bar) [Play Here]

GumBeat Gold is a fairly simple game. It's nice and fun, gather followers who like blowing bubbles and avoid those that don't like bubbles. Until you consider that the people who don't like them are under orders from the state to assault any breakers of what is apparently marshal law. And blowing bubbles? Yes, that's against the law. So instead of being the nice game you thought it was, and that it looks like, it's actually a game about political oppression, marshal law, and the fight against unfairness of those above us. [Play Here]

Many of the other games are download only, and I have not checked them personally, if you would like to see more but are afraid they'll be bad, or that you'll get a virus, please let me know and I'll check them for you. I hope some of you give these a try, despite their not sounding that "fun", but remember: if you're willing to go see the Schindler's List then you should be willing to play a game with differentiating emotions.

Farewells and Valedictions,
Eoin Anndra Davis