In years past, I’ve done Twitter threads on my game(s) of the year, but the vibes over there are... off this year for some reason. 

Hmm.

Anyway, in a general effort to spend less time on my phone and more time writing, I’m going to kick off what will probably end on up a list of resolutions for the new year by doing a little soft launch of this new Itch feature with my GotY write-up here. 

Typically I choose a singleplayer game and a multiplayer game, but this year I don’t really have much to say on the multiplayer front. The boys and I played a little HALO at the beginning of the year, then went back to Apex, then finally returned to Overwatch in the form of Overwatch 2, which despite its many (mostly good) changes is still Overwatch, a six year old AAA game. 

Anyway, enough preamble. My 2022 Game of the Year is... IRON LUNG, first-person thalasso-hemo-horror photograph-em up. Rather than explain the premise, I'll let the game's introduction speak for itself.

Oh hell yes. I came for the intro, and stayed for the PS1 graphics and horrible subsurface claustrophobia-inducing sound design, but the thing that has made this my favorite game of 2022 is the design of the gameplay.

So one of the ways we can understand a game's design is by looking at its verbs, which is the term we use for the actions a player can take. In a well designed game, you can see the influence of its verbs everywhere you look. Using the example of Mario, we might say the main verb is jump as it's the player's primary way of dealing with enemies and collecting powerups, and its mastery is required to navigate levels. Mario’s jump has certain parameters, namely a max distance of X units and a max height of Y units, which must be taken into account when designing the levels the player will traverse; gaps have to be equal to or less then your jump distance, and likewise ledges to your jump height. Powerups can be used to modify those parameters and open up level design space by modifying your verbs parameters. Like an adverb. Sorry, there are no footnotes on the Itch blog module, bad jokes will be in the main body of this text.

Verbs don't just define the borders of gameplay; they're important for reasons of theme and characterization as well. I'd be willing to bet most of us picture Mario mid jump, one fist raised, a "Wahoo!" or 8-bit boing playing in our heads. From NES to N64 to Switch, Mario's jump is where the designers put all the juice; his voice lines (and these days, facial animations) all convey the energy, motion, and freedom of his jump ability. A games studies professor I had once said he thought that Mario was as close as a video game could ever get to being its verbs. Anyway, you can see how the relationship between what you do in a game contributes to what the game is. In IRON LUNG, the player's verbs are crafted in such a way as to reinforce the themes of the narrative while possessing a deconstructive element that made me rethink how game designers can use the concept of verbs in their craft.

In IRON LUNG your main verbs are steer sub and look at map and take picture.  But it's also important to note that you can walk; you're not seated at a console with all of your controls at arms length. Instead the camera controls and computer interface are located aft, meaning you have to step away from the navigation console to use them. Later, as the sub's seals creak under the ocean's gory pressure, making your way back and forth across the sub means sloshing through a rising tide of blood.  Walking around the sub reinforces how small it is and how trapped you are, while a simple oxygen gauge consisting of four lights tortures you with too little information. When the first of the four lights goes dark, you immediately think "How long have I been playing? Am I going too slow? Does walking deplete my oxygen?"  It probably doesn't (I have not yet tested my theory that it is linked to progress and primarily serves to ramp up tension), but making me wonder at all is testament to the mindset this game puts you in.

Though walking using W/A/S/D and your mouse is standard practice, I'd identify the main move action in the game as steer sub. Your steering controls consist of four arrow buttons and four readouts. They show your X and Y coordinates and your orientation, with north being 0 degrees. The orientation display is also a radar/proximity detector which lights up when you stray too close to walls... and other things. You can move the sub forward or backwards, and turn left or right. Those controls aren't mapped to keyboard keys; you don't leave the first-person free roam mode and lock into the navigation controls. You just look at them with your mouse and click to interact, a great touch that reinforces the "there was no time for training" bit in the setup, suggesting that only the most intuitive, foolproof steering system was deemed suitable. Since you can't see out of the porthole, you are forced to navigate using your map, and it is the combination of these simple controls and the map that had me hooked.

The map shows you the points of interest you have to navigate to and photograph; it does not show you where you are at any given moment. This means that going from Point A to Point B consists of using a map and coordinate system, setting a heading, checking your map until you reach a waypoint that you set for yourself, etc. This was utterly engrossing to me: the simplicity and clumsiness of aiming at controls and the quick calculations of which heading would get me to my next waypoint without hitting a canyon wall. Most games make you learn how to play them, but having to use these two interrelated but disconnected systems felt like learning not just a skill but a method, somehow fundamentally different from learning an enemy's attack patterns and timings, or which character is a good counter to another. 

So, back to verbs; while in the traditional sense of what counts as a video game's verbs we would note steer sub and look at map, there's this emergent category of action or verb that arises from combining those verbs that I'm choosing to call navigate. And to a certain extent, I think this is probably true of very game; if you combine move and shoot you get attack or defend, for instance. I guess why this one sticks out to me is that lots of games ask me to combine verbs, but IRON LUNG first deconstructs move by denying you the ability to understand your surroundings first-hand and in real-time, and adding a layer of abstraction to your inputs by linking them to the first-person control scheme. Then it asks you to build them back from scratch by deducing how to use your sub's simplistic helm in tandem with the map's simple coordinate system. Most games want to make your actions to perform by adopting common control schemes or designing new ones that are easily mapped on to a controller or keyboard, but IRON LUNG very intentionally makes movement harder to reinforce the themes of the game and make your brain work in a way it's not used to.

If any of  that sounds interesting and you want to play it but are low on funds at the moment, DM me and I'll gift you a copy.

Honorable Mention

One of the best things about 2022 was discovering Mike Klubnika and his excellent games, specifically UNSORTED VHS (a twist on the found footage horror genre), The Other Side, and Carbon Steel, both of which feel like spiritual siblings to IRON LUNG  in all sorts of ways. I won't go into any further detail, but if you've played these games and are interested in a more thorough analysis let me know. I'm thinking of streaming them (and the rest of his library) and dedicating a blog post or two to them. 

That's it for 2022. Let me know in the comments what you played that sunk it's claws into you this year, or how badly you too want a sequel to IRON LUNG. I'm going to spend the rest of the break working through God of War (2018) and SIGNALIS and NORCO and catching up on some personal dev projects. Happy holidays y'all.

-DG