My Top Twenty Games of 2011: Part Four

So continues the countdown of my personal favourite twenty games of 2011. This is the fourth post in the series, leading on from parts One, Two, and Three.


8. Where Is My Heart? (Die Gute Fabrik)

I first played Where Is My Heart? at the Kill Screen warehouse party during GDC. I was slightly intoxicated and incredibly tired and was not entirely sure what was happening, but it had a distinctive charm that hooked me instantly. But it wasn’t until its eventual release on PSN in November that I could finally sit down and give it the time and appreciation it not only deserves but demands.

A seemingly simple little platformer, Where Is My Heart? is most unique in how it leaves you feeling utterly mentally and physically exhausted when you play it. It hurts your head. The sliced up and scrambled tiles that you are required to view the world through require you to rearrange and make sense of the world in your head, and then hold onto that as you solve the otherwise-simple puzzle of each stage. Some levels are night impossible to conceptualise and to actually imagine how they ‘really’ look and this is all part of the theme: a blurred perception can make the most straightforward challenges seem nearly impossible.

It is a beautiful and disarming game well worth the low price asked for it on PSN, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

I wrote a review of Where Is My Heart? for Edge that I was really happy with. Also, if you happen to have an old copy of Kill Screen Issue Zero around somewhere, I highly recommend reading Ryan Kuo’s interview with developer Bernie Schulenburg.


7. Forget Me Not (Nyarlu Labs)

Most iPhone games are a blast to play for a few days or weeks and then never played again. Nintendo might (and often do) complain that this means they are “disposable” or unworthy games, but I see no issue with a game that gives me a quality experience for only an hour for 0.99c. It’s not disposable, it’s short. But I digress. The point of that was meant to be that Forget Me Not has withstood the test of time on my iPhone, being played consistently for the many months since I first stumbled across it.

Forget Me Not is best described as a roguelike pacman shooter, which only sounds odd until you play it. You control this little square creature through what I think are procedurally generated mazes (at the least, there is a lot of them) collecting flowers and shooting enemies. Movement and shooting are both automatic, leaving the player to only have to worry about steering. Enemies are greatly varied and often end up fighting each other, too, while explosions can destry who segments of the world itself.
It is a deceptively deep and intrinsic game with systems, abilities, and scoring perhaps best discovered than described. In your first few games you will probably end up shooting yourself in the back or being telefragged by appearing enemies until you finally begin to understand how it all fits together. It’s a game easily learned but rarely mastered. I still regularly topple my own high score as I continue to improve at the game despite the many hours already spent with it.

Most interesting, though, is Forget Me Not’s noises. It has no music, per se, but a cacophony of unique, droning noises creates an ever-changing and organic backing tape to each level.

Sadly, I didn’t write anything about Forget Me Not this year, but James Dilks offers a pretty decent review of it at Kill Screen. Gems like Forget Me Not are precisely why I love iOS gaming. I want you to play this game.


6. Gears of War 3 (Epic)

Gears of War 3 was one of those games that was exactly what I hoped it would be—nothing more, nothing less, just exactly what I wanted and expected. More specifically, “what I hoped for” from the third Gears of War was the focus and intensity of Gears of War 2’s Horde mode without the floaty, gimicky bits of Gears of War 2’s campaign. Gears 2’s campaign was lost in rail segments, flying segments, and a terrible worm segment completely lacking in any kind of enemy worth shooting.

Gears of War’s strength is in taking cover, being pinned down by a swarm of enemies, and slowly-but-surely progressing against them, fighting for every inch of land as you scamper from cover to cover. Every time Gears 2 found this focus, it lost it again, almost as though Epic were afraid players would get bored without some gimmick. Kind of like Mario players get bored of jumping (i.e. they don’t).

So Gears of War 3’s campaign fixed this up dramatically, as I hoped it would. Nearly the entire campaign is the fundamental take-cover-and-shoot-things play with just a few novelty segments mixing it up without completely destroying the pacing. Ultimately, Gears 3 finds the rhythm that Gears 2 completely lacked.

That said, it does have some generic boss battles (and a terribly boring and frustrating final boss), and while I found the story and thematic content compelling enough, I seem to be in the minority on that one.

Horde Mode 2.0 is also an interesting upgrade. I was initially wary of its pseudo tower defence features, but I grew to love them with the many, many hours I’ve spent in both private and public matches. Once I catch up with all the other releases of late 2011 I’m yet to get to, Horde 2.0 is what I’m most excited about returning to.

I wrote a sprawling review of Gears of War 3 for Pixel Hunt with more thoughts that wouldn’t fit inside a blog post. Ryan Kuo wrote an interesting piece at the Wall Street Journal blog about what Gears of War 3 ‘really’ means, and Maddy Myers successfully takes on the unenviable task in analysing Gears of War 3’s inclusion of female characters (finally).


5. Minecraft (Mojang)

Minecraft is going to miss out on a lot of GOTY lists this year as many will argue that it was already out last year. Meanwhile, it missed out on a lot of GOTY lists last year because many argued it wasn’t technically out yet. For me, I have no qualms putting it on a GOTY list for each year. The updates to Minecraft in 2011—up to and including the eventual 1.0 release—have revolutionised the game we were all playing last year. Each new and refined feature such as the hunger bar, tuned biome algorithms, endermen, underwater caverns, powered rails, etc. have highlighted and focused Mojang’s game. It has remained resolutely Minecraft throughout its development, even as it changes what Minecraft is.

I still spend more time playing Minecraft than any other game (except perhaps Skyrim) and the vast majority of that time I am just exploring. Though, this year my girlfriend and I started our own private server, and I have finally begun to appreciate the pleasures of building. We have our home, a farm, another home, and just recently built an extensive railway between the two.

Minecraft is one of the most important games of the current day, and one of the greatest games of all times. The day I stop having unique experiences in Minecraft is the day I stop playing, and I can not foresee that day ever arising.

I wrote a lot about Minecraft this year. In Hyper 220 I wrote a feature about the phenomenon of the Minecraft community making “suggestions” as to what Notch and Mojang should add to Minecraft. In the same issue I wrote a review of Minecraft, and it is the first perfect score I have ever given out. I also wrote about the Beta 1.8 update for Games On Net (easily the most significant of all the Minecraft updates) and Towards Dawn, my nomadic adventure, is still going after taking a many-month hiatus through the middle of this year. I’m not sure of much else written about Minecraft this year, but Kris Ligman does have an essay at Dire Critic called “The Map and the Territory” that is both interesting and somewhat related to Minecraft.


And so ends Part Four. Tomorrow we wrap things up with my top four games of 2011.

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The Inevitable Exploitation of Chain World

Today (or possibly yesterday; I am a bit behind on Internet News), Jason Rohrer's entry into this year's GDC's Game Design Contest, Chain World, went up on eBay.

Some quick background information: The theme for this year's contest was 'religion'. That is, the contestants were not to make a game about religion, but a game that could be a religion. Returning champion Jenova Chen created the most disappointing concept, essentially sticking TED talk videos on YouTube with a little bit of gameification. John Romero had an interesting idea for a live-action game that he was able to perform in the room. It was a very western-centric idea of religion, but it worked and was fairly interesting. If I ever get the chance to write up about the actual session, I would like to cover Romero's concept in more detail.

The winning concept, and my personal favourite, however, was Jason Rohrer's. Rohrer's concept was based on his personal feelings of what religion is. In an over-simplified nutshell: religion is the myths we tell ourselves about those that came before us. He used examples such as things his family always say his grandfather used to say (though none of them are actually sure) and the stories and beliefs we form around artifacts such as Stonehenge. Essentially, we craft narratives and reasons around the things we don't know the actual history for.

Rohrer conceptualised this with a modification of Minecraft. One player has one life, and when they die they pass the game on to someone else on a USB stick. Once you play the game, you may never play it again. It was an interesting and inspired concept, and the most grounded in an actual interesting idea of religion. At the talk, Rohrer passed the USB stick onto the second player (himself being the first), and from there the game would continue as player passed it on to player.

Except now, player number two is exploiting it. He is selling the USB on eBay to the highest bidder. I could write a huge rant about how pathetic and despicable I think this is, but as my opinions seem to mirror Darius Kazemi's, I'll just link to his brief thoughts on it. You should read it before carrying on with this piece, just so you know where I stand on the matter.

So yes, the fact that this is happening made me angry. However, unlike several people I have been debating with on Twitter, I don't believe this necessarily implies the game was poorly designed to begin with. On the contrary, I think this exploitation crowns the game an absolute success. Chain World didn't fail. It is we, humans, that failed.

The reasons why others seem to think this exploitation of Chain World implies poor design (and I am not naming these 'others' on the high possibility that I am misquoting them and deforming their arguments, as Twitter is prone to do) can be boiled down to two things: firstly, the game fundamentally relied on players passing the game on, which was a tenuous hope at best; secondly, Rohrer never anticipated the game to be played this way and thus the game fails at achieving the thematic goals intended by its creator.

I agree with both of these statements completely, and I absolutely hate what the current player is doing with the game, yet I still do not believe Chain World failed. Why? Because Chain World is currently being used in the same way religion is used: exploited by the few to obtain money and fame from the many.

No religion starts as an institution. Religion start as faith and belief. It is only when they gather enough popularity that those in charge start exploiting and cashing in on the faith of the many. This isn't a particularly shocking thing to say. You only have to look at the wealth piled up in the Vatican while the preachers of Christianity insist we should give everything to the poor to see it is true. Does this mean religion is essentially 'bad'? No, of course not. Everyone is free to believe in whatever they desire, and nearly all religions are founded on noble, commendable goals. It's the institutionalisation of this faith and the exploitation of the faith of the many by a few that is bad--but also, I would argue, inevitable.

Those who founded Christianity did not do so to gather a huge pile of gold and tell others what to do. They founded it because they thought it was a pretty decent way to live your life and they thought everyone else would gain something from it, too. And then comes the inevitable stage where those in charge find themselves in a position of power over the faith of the many. Sure, it's greedy, but it's human. And I don't mean to pick on Christianity; the same happens in all the world's major religions at some point in history or another.

Now back to Chain World. It started with a belief of Rohrer of what religion 'is' and how that should be conveyed as a game. This belief tapped into similar beliefs of many others, either because he gave a really good presentation (which he did); or because most of those people love Minecraft, or Rohrer's previous work, or both.

And now, those shared beliefs of the many are being exploited by a few. Just like the most popular religions, Chain World is being institutionalised. Chain World is being treated just like a religion.

So was Chain World poorly designed because a) it is no longer conveying the themes Rohrer intended (or arguably it never conveyed those themes as the very first player after Rohrer exploited it), and b) because there was no fail-safe in the game design to prevent this from happening? No. Chain World was exquisitely designed, perhaps even better than Rohrer intended, because it has been able to evolve in the same way major religions tend to evolve: from personal beliefs into the exploitation of many, far beyond the control of the religion's founder.

So while I think what the current player is doing is pathetic, I also think it was inevitable, and perhaps even necessary if Chain World was to succeed at the contests stated thematic goal: make a game that could be a religion. As the bids for Chain World on eBay approach $500, and as Rohrer futilely urges on Twitter that the believers reject this reappropriation and exploitation of his creation*, those currently in power are taking suggestions for a tenth commandment for the game (essentially, putting their own rules over Rohrer's) as they institutionalise Chain World into the religion it had no chance of not becoming.

Chain World succeeded. Humans, on the other hand, have not.

(* Interestingly, I could be reappropriating Rohrer's words in a similar way myself by saying this is what he meant in this tweet, which he quite possibly didn't!)

(** Also, for the sake of full disclosure, and if it wasn't clear from the post, I am an agnostic/athiest (it depends what day you ask me). I apologise if my cynical views on religion offend you and your faith as I mean no disrespect to anyone's personal beliefs.)

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Some Thoughts on 2010: Part One

Like most of you, I played quite a few games this year, and I've had one or two interesting thoughts about most of those games. I'm not very good at end-of-year lists or rankings, so instead I thought I might just write a couple of paragraphs about the games that I remember of 2010, something I found interesting about those games, and some good pieces of writing I read about them. This won't be an exhaustive list, nor is it in any order other than the order that the games came to mind. Feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments, or links to any other interesting articles from this year. Suggestions of games I have missed are also welcome, but you might want to wait until I finish the series!

Bioshock 2

Nearly every review of Bioshock 2 that I read called it "the perfect sequel to a game that didn't need a sequel". For my part, it was a delightful return and fleshing out of a world I never expected I would visit again. I was wary the game would ignore the themes of the first game (much as the second half of Bioshock ignores its own themes when you are asked to continue taking orders mindlessly after the encounter with Ryan), but Delta's mental conditioning and the way it affects his decisions is blatant from the start. As you go on your quest for Eleanor, you know exactly why you are doing it: because you have no choice.

Gameplay and mechanics wise, Bioshock 2 improves on the first game's already solid systems nicely. The more open-ended design adds new dimensions to the city of Rapture and combined with the various new weapons and plasmids adds a whole new layer of potential tactics.

Bioshock 2's greatest achievement for me was that I truly felt like a Big Daddy. I felt big and bulky and heavy. My feet clunked on the timber flooring, my drill crushed the skulls of splicers, my rivet gun recoiled as the rivets punched through the air.

Also interesting was how my choices affected gameplay. Instead of the number of little sisters I saved just affecting what cut-scene plays at the end, it instead affected the kind of person Eleanor became and the decisions she made. Towards the end of the game, choices are no longer yours to make and you must stand by helplessly as Eleanor makes up her own mind. Yet, it was your decisions earlier in the game that determined the kind of person she became. You stand by helplessly, knowing that the choices you made allowed this to happen.

Probably my favourite Bioshock 2 related writing this year was Justin Keverne's "Groping the Map" series on Pauper's Drop. Definitely still worth checking out.

Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect 2's cinematic trailer ranks as one of my all time favourite game trailers, just behind practically ever Grand Theft Auto IV trailer. It was good enough for me to finally play through Mass Effect so that I could play Mass Effect 2. Sadly, I found the game only a fraction as enjoyable as the trailer. After all of Mass Effect and more than enough hours of Dragon Age (by which I mean ten very dull hours) I am completely over Bioware's "gather a party and save the universe/middle-earth" plotline. 

Which is not to say I couldn't at least appreciate Mass Effect 2 is a good game, just one I didn't enjoy. Unlike Dragon Age, the universe is at least interesting and well thought-out (even if you only get to discover most of it in the 'codex' menu). And the symbiosis between player and character in Commander Shepard is done superbly.

Yet, the gameplay was disappointing, and I couldn't help but feel I had done it all before. I didn't 'quit' Mass Effect 2 so much as just stopped playing one day and never started again. I just didn't see the point.

Minecraft

Rarely will I classify a single game my Game Of The Year, but 2010 has a clear winner in Minecraft. Probably the only release this year that I sunk more than a hundred hours into, and I don't regret a single one. Minecraft means something different to each player. I never built more than a single-room hut, and I was never more than a tourist on the various multiplayer servers. For me, Minecraft was about the lonesome exploration of new worlds. I spent countless nights exploring the deep places of various worlds, filling chests with diamond and redstone, then moving on to another.

The game could evoke emotions unlike any other game. Distress, anger, exuberance, sorrow, disbelief--all from a procedurally generated world with no set goals. That every action is final and irreversible certainly had a say in this. The experiences and memories I have from my all-night sessions of Minecraft easily surpass any other gaming experience I had this year. Surprising, considering I am usually one for the authored narrative.

And then there is Towards Dawn. What started as a simple musing tweet of "I wonder what it would be like to play as a nomad?" has turned into a forty-day-and-counting adventure across strange and beautiful lands. Though, it has stalled the last few weeks over Christmas, I'm afraid.

Many people wrote many things about Minecraft. Experience Points had many a good post, as did Rock Paper Shotgun with their "Mine the Gap" series and their Game of the Year post. Meanwhile, at Binary Swan, Gerard Delaney was one of the first to unwrap, for me, just why Minecraft feels so good.

Sleep is Death

For the few days after Jason Rohrer's experimental title was released, my brother and I played nothing else. The stories we created were quick, nonsensical, and improvised, written on-the-fly as we hastily found default sprites to further the story. The potential of the game was massive, but sadly I feel few have realised it. I guess the community it required just wasn't there in the way it was for Minecraft. That, or I am just unaware of it.

The greatest element of the game was cooperation. I've seen too many 'player' players play the game as though they were in competition with the 'director' player, a competition where they must break the story that the director has planned. Of course, this is a competition they usually win as breaking the story is easy. This isn't fun for anyone. It's like going left from the start of 1-1 in Super Mario Brothers then complaining when you can't go anywhere. Rather, if you cooperate with the director, the game can be an amazing experience.

In one of my brother's and mine first game, when neither of us really knew what we were doing, I managed to paint an entire scene blue by accident. My brother played along by saying "Ah! Flood!" So we went with this. His family jumped onto the bed and sailed it out to sea, living on a diet of fish until they found an island. It was these experiences that made this game awesome. Sadly actually setting up a game was always difficult and I have thus not been motivated to put much more time into the game in recent months.

Halo Reach

The end of the Halo series, as far as I am concerned, and also the most complete Halo title to date. Bungie has taken the best of the first Halo, added the improvements of the sequels, and removed the ideas that never quit meshed. The story and pacing is adequately tragic, with the helplessness of Noble Team mounting gradually at first then exponentially later. It only suffered from a lack of subtitles informing the player of how much time passes between missions. Some were actually weeks apart, and the missions would have made more sense if I was aware of this at the time.

The juxtaposition between your initial setup of Your Very Own Spartan(TM)'s armour with the customised, individualised helmet of said Spartan smoldering in Reach's rubble was excellent. Many people would have spent many minutes perfecting their ideal Spartan, excited that they would be seeing that Spartan in single-player as well as multiplayer. And then, the second they start campaign, they know that that Spartan, their Spartan, will be dead. It worked stunningly well.

I found matchmaking far more enjoyable than Halo 3, too, but that is mostly because I seem to not such at Reach while I sucked quite incredible at Halo 3. Firefight, however, despite the myriad of new options, I found somewhat lackluster compared to ODST. I can't quite put my finder on why, though. Perhaps it is the map design. Reach firefight is excellent for a short game, but it can't put a light to the multi-hour marathon's I had on the open levels of ODST.

Roger Travis wrote a great post at his Living Epic blog that looks at Halo Reach in the framework of the classic epic which is a bit heavy going at times, but is well worth the effort.


And that will do for Part One of 2010. To be continued tomorrow!

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An Update (or lack thereof)

It has been some time since I have updated Critical Damage, and I apologise for that. The good news is that this is largely because I have been busy writing elsewhere. So until I finally finish off one of the three half-written posts that I am meaning to post here, I thought I would update you all on what I have actually been doing.

Firstly, and consuming the majority of my writing time, Towards Dawn is now up to Day Thirty-One and till going strong. I've had some crazy adventures and seen some amazing sights. I'm still unsure just how and when the saga will end, but when it does, I would very much like to compile the whole series as an e-book for people to download. 

Still Minecraft related, I am now a writer over at CraftHub. I'll be posting things as often as I find things worth posting about and have time to post them. I would also like to use the opportunity to perhaps write some more in-depths pieces on this game that has consumed so much of my gaming time this year. 

This past week has also seen my first two print articles published. Hyper 206 has my Minecraft guide "The Craft of Mining" in the Front End section, and Kill Screen #2 has a story I wrote called "Capture the School". I haven't received my copy of Kill Screen yet, but if the past two issues are anything to go by, it will be absolutely stunning and well worth your money--and less of your money than previously! Seriously, you will not find a better collection of game writing this side of the internet. As for Hyper, issue 206 is something of deputy editor Dylan's lovechild. He has put a lot of work into this issue and it really shows. If you are in Australia and walking by a news agency, go in and pick it up.

At the academic end, I am putting a paper together that I will hopefully get to submit for the OZCHI 'Games and HCI: A Long Romance' workshop later this month. The topic is going to be a furthering of an essay I wrote for a course this semester that looks at applying some Actor-Network Theory stuff to my interest int he relationship between player and character. The more ANT stuff I read (predominately just the work of Bruno Latour at the moment, I admit), the closer I feel I am getting to articulating what I actually am talking about when I talk about player privilege. I'm not sure on the copyright specifics of OZCHI papers, but assuming I am allowed, I will post the completed paper here after the workshop.

And that is where I currently am with my writing. I am also doing quite a bit of reading in preparation for Honours next year and my dissertation Similar to the above OZCHI thing, I will be looking at the player/character relationship through an ANT lens, which consequently will probably mean I will end up looking at the player/character/everything-else relationship if I am not careful. But more on that in the coming months.

As for games I have been playing, I sadly have not had much time to get too committed to any new games. I am still spending many hours in Minecraft, both in my nomad game and my more traditional games. I've also, quite recently, discovered the joy of multiplayer servers. I am not one for building towns, but just knowing that other people are in the same world certainly adds something to the experience. The joy of mining with a couple of comrades is also something I underestimated.

I have also been playing quite a lot of Super Meat Boy. The game is absolutely stunning and deserves all the praise it has received. The controls feel absolutely perfect. I love the way my entire body tenses as I realise that this is the run that will shave .02 seconds off my time if I can just clear this last jump. The game also acts as a sign of maturity of the medium of gaming. The multitude of intertextual references to other games is only possible because of the maturity of videogames as a medium. Somewhat related, I really enjoyed Michael Abbott's writeup of the game.

And apart from my nightly wind down in Audio-Surf, that is about all the gaming I have done. I dabbled in Red Dead Redemption's Undead Nightmare DLC (the subject of one of my unfinished posts for Critical Damage), and I still hit up Reach from time to time. I am yet to get Fallout: New Vegas; however, I think I may pick up a copy this week to keep me occupied after I get my wisdom teeth ripped out on Thursday. 

And that is my update. Hopefully it will not be so long until the next one, and hopefully it will be more interesting than this one. Oh, and one last thing! Along with several other handsome, game-writing gentlemen, I am growing (or attempting to grow) a mustache for Movember. If you want to help men with depression and prostrate cancer, or if you just like laughing at how foolish we all look, you should totally consider donating some coins to our team.

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Towards Dawn

Hello there.

Due to my study load and some other writing commitments, Critical Damage has been a bit quiet lately. I have a few deadlines coming up in the next week and after that I will finish off a few posts I have been working on and try to get them up. However, in the meantime, on something of a whim I seem to have started a side project that is turning out to be quite interesting. 

That project is Towards Dawn, and is simply a diary I am keeping of one specific Minecraft game where instead of setting up a 'home', I continuously walk east towards the dawn and note the new and exotic things I see.

In the earliest forming of the idea in my mind, all I was thinking was that playing Minecraft as a nomad could possibly be kind of a cool, alternative way of playing. The majority of players tend to have a 'home', not too far from where they initially spawn on the map. Sometimes this is a large castle; sometimes it is just the first room in the player's first cave. Typically this home contains vast riches that the player has mined and placed in chests for safekeeping. I thought it could be interesting to subvert this. In my Towards Dawn game, I only possess what I can carry with me. I have no home (though my spawn point far to the west still feels like home, interestingly). I leave as little a mark on the lands I pass through as possible.

I did not fully consider at first how this would in fact be something of a perma-death experiment, somewhat similar to Ben Abraham's Far Cry 2 experiment, or the many others that have already followed. I made no pact with myself to delete the game if I die, but if (when) I do, my nomad adventure will certainly be over. I will spawn back at 'home' and I  most certainly will not be tracing my steps for game-days on end to pick up the trail. 

Perma-death playthroughs are something I have been fascinated about for some time as they relate deeply with my interest in consequece (that the blog where Ben's initial perma-death experiment can be found is titled Sometimes Life Requires Consequence says it all). 

The extreme consequences faced in a perma-death playthrough of a game highlight, I think, how permanence adds to the significance of a story. The story is not weakened by the player dying and then rewinding time to tell the story a slightly different way--the player dies and the story ends and is complete authoritative. This isn't how the story 'could' be; this is the story.

This is not to say that for the sake of story all games should go so far as to delete the player's file when they die. Rather, that permanency in some fashion can go a long way towards strengthening the fiction of a game.

Minecraft already had this before I began my adventure, and I would argue that it is one of the reasons the game resonates so deeply to so many people. While death is not the end in Minecraft, its consequences are certainly real. Minutes after my first ever diamond discovery, I tripped and fell in lava, losing said diamond, along with over two hours worth of other resources. I respawned and the game continued, but that loot was lost forever. The feeling of loss and despair in my gut as I watched myself burn to death that night was one of the strongest emotional reactions I have ever felt towards a game. That is not an exaggeration.

This occurs simply because of how Minecraft saves the game. That is, the game is always being saved right now. You cannot simply load an old save and not get your items back. The second you died, your game saved again. 

This permanency, this fact that you can not go back, that you must keep moving forward, makes experiences in Minecraft more meaningful. At least I feel like they do for me. That existing energy is something that Towards Dawn is tapping into.

But that was quite a tangent! The point is that Towards Dawn is an accidental perma-death experiment, and I feel that is what makes it more interesting than if I were to simply blog as I begin to build a castle, die a couple of times, and finish building a castle.

But what is the point? What is Towards Dawn trying to prove? Well, I'm not too sure yet. I'm thinking that will become apparent as I continue to play. For now I am enjoying the new experiences my less grounded, less materialistic lifestyle is offering. When it ends (whenever that is), perhaps I will have something more profound to say about it. For the meantime, I hope you enjoy the journey.

You can follow Towards Dawn here, or start from the first post here. Also, I would really appreciate some feedback. Is it interesting? Boring? Is there anything you think should be changed in either the presentation or the playing? Let me know!

In other news, I am playing Halo: Reach. But this post has already gone on too long so that will have to wait for a future post.

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Guest Moments: Diary of a Minecrafter

 [In this pseudo-regular section, I record some of my more memorable gaming moments, the moments that remind me why I play games. Those who follow me on Twitter will already be aware of my recent obsession with Minecraft's emergent gameplay. The simplest of systems (mine resources to craft tools to mine better resources to craft better tools) is applied to a sprawling, procedural world for you to explore, tame, and master. New stories are born practically by the minute. The following is one such story. However, it is not my own.

The first time I read the following story I was laying in a bed in a Melbourne youth hostel. It was 7am on a Sunday morning and my phone beeped with a new email. For some reason I rolled over and checked it, only to find this rambling, livid, excited tale from my brother, Glynn Keogh, who had just lost an entire night to his Minecraft world. It was a good tale that exemplified exactly what I love about this game, so I asked him if he would let me re-post it here. So thanks, Glynn, for the following tale.]

Note: Screen captures are taken from my own game, not Glynn's adventure.

 

Progress on the subterranean highway is going well. For many long hours I have toiled down here, far below the surface world, forging a safe path hidden from the ferocious creatures and demons that roam through the night up above. It started out as a humble mine, but time and necessity drove me to make it so much more. Back up on the surface I am constantly on edge as soon as that great square sun hits the horizon; but buried here amongst the rocks and dirt, I am safe and free.

For the hundredth time tonight, my pick axe digs into the tunnel wall, and another chunky cube of rock breaks off. The highway is another foot longer. Soon it will be time to travel back to the tunnel entrance and begin laying tracks for the cart system that will eventually make journeys faster and safer. A few more squares and I will raise another shaft to the surface to gauge my progress, for it is daylight and the world outside is safe. Another chunk of rock breaks apart, the sound reverberating off the tunnel walls. But there’s also another sound, the most dreaded sound a minecrafter will ever hear underground.

Running water.

I curse to myself and continue to listen, struggling to pin-point the direction of the underground stream. It seems to be coming somewhere from the left of the tunnel, but for all I know I may hit it if I continue forwards, too. This is my first Minecraft world and I’ve never struck water underground before, but I know it’s something I certainly don’t want to do. This tunnel is the backbone of my entire domain and I cannot afford to lose it; I have no wish to risk the surface world at night. There’s really only one option, so I backtrack slightly and begin digging into the wall towards the sound: better to find the stream on my own terms than unwittingly flooding the entire highway later on. Grabbing a torch from my pack, I seal the side passage off behind me in case the worst happens. One way or another I will find the stream, but it will never reach the highway if I can help it.

I dig for a long time, far longer than I expected would be necessary. The sound of rushing water is misleading; it seems to come from all directions yet never can I locate the source. My good steel pick is blunted from the continuous digging, and I am forced to use my back-up stone picks. Soon even they are all but exhausted. My torch supply is also dwindling rapidly. I decide that once my last pick is gone I’ll head back to my safe house at the mine entrance, make some new tools and go back to the tunnel proper. If I can’t find the water after this long it must be safe enough to keep digging. My final torch dug in to the ground beside me, I dig away at the rock one final time and my pick is destroyed. The rock drops to the ground…followed by a rushing torrent of water.

In that brief second when the water pushes its way through the hole, I realise just how inexperienced a miner I am. The side tunnel I’ve dug is completely unorganised and random, the result of me wildly trying to trace the confusing sounds. Worse still, the tunnel slopes away downwards the way I came. As the water hits me I know with utter certainty that this tunnel is almost perfectly built to become completely flooded.

Suddenly I’m under the surface, and so is my nearest torch. A few seconds more and the torrent has smothered my other light sources. I’m plunged into darkness so complete my monitor may as well be turned off. All I can see is my rapidly dwindling air supply, and all I can hear is rushing water. Every now and then my head somehow breaks the surface and I stop myself from drowning, but I can tell that I’m being swept far further than the start of this tunnel. Somehow I’ve entered a natural cave system.

After awhile I manage to clamber on to dry land, amazed at the fact that I haven’t died. The rushing water has deposited me somewhere on a cavern floor and continues to flow past me in the dark, sounding deceptively tranquil and calm. I have no idea where I am, only that I didn’t build it. There is no way out; the newly formed river is filling the only entrance to the cave, and I have no wish to jump back in any time soon. I have no torches, no picks or shovels, and no coal. All I have left in my inventory is my sword, some wood, and the stone I have been mining. Resigned to finding my way out with zero lighting, I turn off all the lights in the house and count myself lucky that it’s 1am; by making my own world pitch black I can faintly make out the outlines of the cave with some effort. With a chunk of rock in my hand I begin pounding at the wall of the cavern, prepared to dig my way out by hand. This will take some time.

I dig for a ridiculously long time, guided only by the soft, constant trickle of water. I follow the underground river upstream, hoping to work my way back to a familiar tunnel. Several times along the way I am forced to hastily dam the stream and alter its course, lest I be swept away once more. Finally, my eyes aching and my hands sore from clawing through so much solid stone, I break through into another cavern. The hole I’ve dug is already leaking water as I once again have struck the cursed river, but I manage to duck through the tiny gap without being swept away. Incredibly, this cavern is actually lit, and for the first time in ages I can actually see properly. The cavern is beautiful in a deadly sort of way. The centre of the floor is a pile of loose gravel, which I manage to climb on to with some effort. The mound is surrounded on one side by the large body of water I had managed to find myself under, and on the other by a huge pool of lava, the source of the glow.

As I stand surveying the scene, my screen suddenly flashes and I am knocked forwards as something strikes me from behind. Only luck stops me from falling head first into the lava. Turning around, I see a zombie advancing out of the shadows towards me. I’d be lying if I said this didn’t scare the crap out of me after all I’d been through. I draw my sword and charge the monster, knocking it back and gaining myself a little room to maneuver. I duck around behind it in an effort to get away from the lava, receiving a blow to the head for my troubles. My hearts perilously low at this stage, I know that another hit will end this adventure. I charge a final time, and send the zombie flying into the molten rock. I start breathing again.

I slouch away from the computer for a moment; my nerves just can’t take it anymore. As I watch the lava flow slowly by, I decide upon a course of action. I retrieve the almost forgotten planks of wood from my pack and craft them into a workbench. I could have done this earlier, but the notion of crafting items in pitch-black damp caves seemed too unfeasible for me to consider. But here in the light of the lava, I could finally set to work. Using the very last of my wood and some stone I manage to craft a single low quality pick. It is the most wonderful tool I’ve ever held. My new pick in hand, I begin the task of digging my way out. By now I have no idea where I am or in which direction lay the subterranean highway, so I go the only way that makes sense: up. All this effort, all this time and glorious adventure in the name of fleeing the surface, and now I am desperate to escape the underground and see the sky once more. Therein lies the beauty of this game: every hole I dig, every wall I build, every tool I craft is all in the name of forging a little place where I can be safe. And now, as I claw away the last few chunks of dirt and sunlight shines down onto my face for the first time in hours of play, I am finally safe.

After finally finding my way home from that fantastic and terrifying hole in the ground (another adventure in itself), I am once more at the advancing end of the subterranean highway. Now with new tools in hand and a good number of fresh torches in my pack, I am ready to continue my work. The sound of running water is no longer audible through the tunnel walls, and I can only assume that my efforts to redirect the stream were successful in leading it away from this point. In any case, I am not about to go looking for it again. Happy to finally be back to mining, I swing my pick at the wall and another chunk of rock shatters. But before I can swing again, the gap I have opened up is filled with loose gravel. I scoop it clear, and yet more replaces it. Careful to avoid a fatal cave-in, I continue scooping away the debris until the flow stops suddenly. With a loud clatter, something heavy lands at my feet.

A makeshift workbench which, until moments ago, had been resting on a pile of gravel between a river of water and a pool of lava in a cavern, which is beautiful in a deadly sort of way, not 3 squares above the fore of my subterranean highway.

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