This collection is for looping games and games that loop you: maybe that means looping the same path in gameplay or story; maybe engendering a sense of redundancy or repetition even if something has changed; maybe drawing on reiterating shapes like fractals, mazes, labyrinths, or circles; or maybe just drawing you out along one unending line.
maze :)
The labyrinth (a line, no choices to be made) versus the maze (many choices, most of which are wrong). Really very clever, tense, and fun. The levels are apparently procedurally generated!
I know there are plenty of dead ends in the branching pathways of this game, but it feeeeeels good to walk in circles.
"about the feeling of being lost" movement in an undifferentiated desert until you find ruins; floppy disks are the "keys" for a nice touch; surreal moments, like structures forming around you or falling away from you until they disappear like they never existed, or another you dashing across the screen quickly in another direction
after playing STEP by tak, I kept thinking of this game, of replaying this game, of how playing this game is already replaying the game--and how nice it can be to have an game that encourages you to head off in any direction and see what happens (see also meow by tak)
Not exactly a circle; more like a maze. But the maze feels like the constricting spiral of a labyrinth even if it is about process-of-eliminating all other paths but the One Labyrinth Path. You can go in any direction and die and start again, so the loops are present.
There are finite distances, locations, and pathways, but the UI is so blank and spacious that it feels sometimes like you're lost or that your movement is redundant and means nothing; for a fetch-quest game, movement sometimes feels like busy work to stretch the gameplay out, but this game's specific setting of a post-apocalyptic shelter makes the space seem meaningful: this is where people have planted a garden, or collected rubbish, or made art while occupying this same space for years, and this is also the same empty space that says "we haven't overcrowded ourselves yet; there are still ideas and possibilities to be had."
See also: purrgatory
see notes on Drift Mine Satellite, but replace fallout bunker with purgatory
maybe a greater emphasis on "traveling" than "circles" but I wanted to have at least one ocean-voyage game in this sea (ha) of desert-voyage games
sometimes navigating a hard-to-navigate space IS the gameplay (this is the thesis for this collection too btw)
bro these pathways are So Convoluted through repetition and lack of recognizable landmarks and alien environment design bro
bitsy doesn't let you design or navigate looping environments like other games, so simulating the experience of mental loops is going to have to do it for you (and it does)
you know I guess Manifold Gardens could also go in this collection
okay I have to put at least ONE Snake game in a collection called "traveling circles"
okay I haven't played it but on principle a fractal game belongs in this collection
I played a one-shot horror ttrpg once whose premise was essentially this title
