Not Played Yet
This game takes place in an apartment, just before you move out of it. You have to pack up the last of your stuff in your room. You do this by picking up objects and placing them in the boxes scattered around. You also must decide where in the box to place each item, in a sort-of 3D Tetris style puzzle. This can lead to some juggling around as you decide certain items would fit better in other boxes. Whenever you pick up an item, the UI will show some text about that specific item, each time offering a tiny insight into the life of the player character.
The game get surprisingly emotional during the closing minutes as you leave your empty apartment. You can feel the memories that have been made here as you walk around checking each empty room.
The art style is simple, but effective and there is a good use of sound as the floorboards creak under your footsteps as you walk around. There’s no voiceover, but that doesn’t stop the narrative getting through in this arguably more mechanics based game.
There is a lot of mystery involved with this game’s narrative. It focuses around the player character’s obsession with a particular painting and the artist that created it. It plays with themes of mental health and leads up to a gut punch of an ending.
The art style is low poly, but the game creates a very intense atmosphere as you walk around this small apartment. Interactions are linear and limited, however there are elements of choice within the game, such as your conversation with online “friends” (that turn out to be people trying to get you to provide your credit card details). The choices appear to have little impact on the game itself, but the illusion of choice is enough to immerse you into this world.
It does feel as though perhaps this game was meant to be longer. The ending seems to suggest that the sequence you play through was the first in a series of vignettes with similar themes, but when you try to access one of the others it abruptly ends.
Find the right key to unlock the door! Throw away the keys you don't want. Did you accidentally throw away the key you need? Gotta keep trying them all!
In this game, you are stood on a platform with 293 keys on it. Only one of them unlocks the door in front of you. After you try a key you can throw it off the edge of platform if it doesn’t work. Once you unlock the door you can walk through to a screen that offers you stats on your play through. Repetitive music.
The game was made in only 24 hours.
PLAY THIS! SHORT! GOOD STORY! LOW POLY! - Barb is a short exploration game made for the Global Game Jam 2016. The theme for that year was ‘Ritual’. The game uses the theme to play through a characters morning ritual, only there’s a slight twist. The game has a really interesting low-poly aesthetic, which is enhanced by a lack of colour. The only colour other than white is red as objects turn red when they can be interacted with which is a neat way to guide the player in what to do next. The music is really fun and the audio effects all sound as though they were made by people creating effects with their mouths and voices, which is a really unique approach to sound design [but I believe this was also one of the diversifiers for that years game jam]. The game can take about 5 minutes to complete, but is a nice little experience that manages to pack a lot into it. Great visuals, audio and story.
PLAY THIS! SHORT! LOW POLY! - Cool little game that takes place in an apartment. Plays with themes of anxiety and depression. Sadly, I couldn't finish it, but watched a Let's Play and it has a nice ending.
