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Games of 2012: The Unfinished Swan

I’ve spent a lot of time in 2012 playing games, but not a lot of time writing about them. As I did last year, I’d like to tell some stories or share some thoughts about the ones that meant the most to me this year. I’ll be posting one a day until Christmas. See all Games of 2012 posts.

Today, a friend of mine lashed out on Twitter over a familiar argument bubbling up again:

I don’t blame him. The Internet loves to argue about things that can never truly be settled, and “are games art?” is up there on the list of Never Ending Debates. It gets particularly bad when titles with lofty aspirations and long lead times are nearing release; their game designers make grandiose statements to the press, someone disagrees, and then everyone throws down.

“Are games art?” is a pretty ridiculous question, so very broad in scope. “Is this particular game I’m talking about art?” is slightly less ridiculous, but still an exercise in subjectivity, not logic or reason. The best question I can form, if I’m trying to be introspective, is “Is this particular game doing something interesting with the medium of video games?”

My initial time with The Unfinished Swan was one of the times this year I could answer that with a “yes”. The first moment the game hands control over to you, the screen is completely white. Pressing on the joysticks appears to do nothing. With enough pawing at the controller, you summon and fling a black ball through the air, which splats satisfyingly against a wall. In the inky mess, you get clarity as to what your charge is. You throw more ink, and the world suddenly begins to reveal itself around you. Maze-like walls open up to reveal sloping paths, trees and ponds fill in around you. You’ll see yellow footprints in the distance, your breadcrumbs to help you chase down the titular swan. The game does next to nothing to hold your hand in this stretch – you will have to find your own way.

That sense of discovery and wonder in the beginning is incomparably wonderful. The way the ink splatters across the landscape created a beautiful contrasting landscape. I have deep respect for games that can run with a unique visual style, and The Unfinished Swan had it in spades. It was reminiscent of the opening minutes of Portal, as you gradually learn without the game resorting to signposting or explicit tutorials.

I loved that opening motif so much that I felt let down when the game started to add other visual elements and change the mechanics. Shadows appeared, then colors; my ink blobs changed to water blobs and I was forced to solve some more puzzles. What started as unique quest of discovery turned into a first person puzzler that feel conventional. (It’s somewhat telling that most of the media and marketing descriptions of the game don’t mention this change.) Even as the plot continued to unfold interestingly, I found myself losing interest, and left it unfinished (oh the irony!) despite what I’ve been told is a terribly short running time.

I will probably get back to it later this month and polish it off, but it’s difficult to find the motivation. I know that combination of what is essentially a bedtime story with a video game – with gameplay and visual style so tightly entwined – isn’t what awaits me if I re-enter that world. I don’t care whether or not The Unfinished Swan meets anyone’s definition of art. What I care about is if it’s interesting or unique within the expansive spectrum of video games. The beginning absolutely was; the rest, not so much.

If only there was a way to turn young Monroe around, to stop worrying about that eternally honking swan, and return to that pond I stumbled onto at the beginning.

The Unfinished Swan is available on PSN.

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Games of 2012: Girls Like Robots

I’ve spent a lot of time in 2012 playing games, but not a lot of time writing about them. As I did last year, I’d like to tell some stories or share some thoughts about the ones that meant the most to me this year. I’ll be posting one a day until Christmas. See all Games of 2012 posts.

It is a strange thing when my favorite television “network” has become one of my favorite game publishers as well. Adult Swim, home of staples like [The Eric Andre Show](http://theericandreshow.tv/) and [Check It Out!](http://video.adultswim.com/check-it-out-with-dr-steve-brule/), has been steadily releasing Flash and mobile games for the last few years. Unsurprisingly, most of these games are pretty twisted – but not the subject of today’s post, Popcannibal’s Girls Like Robots.

GLR is a charming little block puzzler, with a nice drawn art style that sort of reminds me of Double Fine’s Stacking – perhaps because the animation style is similar. Most levels give you a grid, a number of tiles to place, and asks you to organize them to achieve a certain score.

There are rules to those tiles, naturally, and they are gradually rolled out over the length of the game as the story unfolds. As the title says, girls like robots – but girls don’t like nerds. Nerds do like girls, but they don’t like other nerds. Robots like girls (but don’t like being surrounded by them) and are indifferent to nerds. Everyone likes pie, except for robots. One particular girl doesn’t like robots but does like bugs. Fish and robots are mortal enemies. Space seals make…actually, let’s not talk about the space seals.

The rules of placing tiles is often variable too – sometimes you can pick the order, sometimes it’s pre-determined. Most levels are asking you to maximize happiness, but some want you to make everyone miserable, and others demand a balance of emotions. Some levels feel like Tetris, others involve physics.

Putting this all in text may sound overwhelming, but the thing I’ve really dug about GLR is that it keeps slowly changing as you play it. Add a tile type, take away some tiles, change the rules…it’s a gradual build and it works really well. There’s a little storyline with some cinematics (which you can skip, but it’s worth watching for the little jokes), and most new gameplay elements are introduced with enough tutorials to get the point across.

GLR also manages to balance the difficulty well – the best solutions are typically non-obvious, but I’ve never felt stuck on a puzzle (and there is a Skip button in the menu).

This trailer probably explains the gameplay and style a lot better than my text did:

I enjoy a good high-stress, twitchy game as much as the next guy – but sometimes a relaxed puzzle like Girls Like Robots just hits the spot.

Girls Like Robots is available as [a universal iOS app](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/girls-like-robots/id533815482?mt=8) for $3. It’s also on Steam Greenlight.

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Games of 2012: Cargo Commander

I’ve spent a lot of time in 2012 playing games, but not a lot of time writing about them. As I did last year, I’d like to tell some stories or share some thoughts about the ones that meant the most to me this year. I’ll be posting one a day until Christmas. See all Games of 2012 posts.

You, in space, alone. A solitary life of drilling through space junk welcomes you in Cargo Commander, a quirky little indie game that popped onto my radar this year.

It’s rough around the edges – some graphical aliasing, some launch bugs on OS X, some obtuse gameplay mechanics. But there’s also a lot to like about it – a creeping dread storyline, generous randomization to keep you on your toes, and a great anticipation of cracking open a giant new space container and seeing just what’s awaiting you inside (and if it’s deadly, floating away in an act of defiance). It feels faintly like a roguelike, but with the perma-death eased up a bit and gradually earned upgrades helping you along.

The game is full of lovely small touches. Perhaps the greatest silly little joy is a helpful mention on one of the game screens to press the F key if you need to relieve some stress.

What does the stress relief key do? Causes your hapless character to shout some variation of “FUCK YOU” to the vast emptiness of space around him. It sounds juvenile, but after escaping a series of collapsing containers with only a sliver of health, you’d be hard pressed to want to hit any other key.

Cargo Commander is available on Steam for Mac and PC. My experiences were with the Mac version.