itch.io

I knew I had seen this mentioned before & it just dawned on me where.

In season 9, episode 18 of Seinfeld "The Frogger," (1998) George is pushing a Frogger arcade cab across the street to stop anyone from beating his high score when a truck rolls by. George jumps out of the way and the truck smashes Frogger. As he's laying in a pile of rubble, he mutters something super quietly to himself. 

The weirdest part of this is that I remember looking for this scene to show someone and when I got to that part, the Youtube captioning didn't pick up on the line.  I love a good George one-liner, so I kept going back to try to decipher what he was saying. Then on a whim I switched the language to Spanish and this line appeared, translated to something like "It's like the Junji Ito pinball machine all over again." I thought it was strange that the caption wasn't showing up in English but I didn't think too much of it since I figured a Junji Ito-themed pinball was plausible and Youtube's auto-generated closed captioning is always fickle.

It's so funny to see it come up in this context on itch. I wonder which one of the writers played it lol

sometimes being at a games event feels surreal — it’s peculiar that people around you can be as nerdy about your thoughts as you are. this game captures that sensation in a beautiful , melancholy way 

"Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, whereas all of Los Angeles and the America that surrounds it are no longer real, but belong to the hyperreal order and to the order of simulation." - Jean Baudrillard”

sometimes i think about the "end of the world" & how we likely won't have access to computers and all of the games i've made--an art that uses technology--will be defunct, deprecated, reduced to memories.

maybe it's an impulsive instinctual desire to play with fire, to know this & make games anyway. but maybe it's brave to work in a medium that is bound to burn out like the sun.

this was such an innovative use of photography & typing game mechanics. what a brilliant bite-sized game.

as someone who travels a lot & finds themselves making friends in corners at parties or at nearby cafe tables or in adjacent airplane seats, i've never experience a piece of art that so beautifully captures the ephemerality & intimacy of falling into the right conversation at the exact right time.

i often have discussions about how reading a book or watching a movie will hit so much different depending on what my life looked like at the time: where was i? who was i talking to most? where was i working? who did i love? how was my health? etc. but i don't think i've ever applied that lens to why certain one-off conversations strike me so deeply.

this game was a graceful exploration of how our experience of time is not linear, but contextual.

fiddling with these noises told such a sweet little story. i've never seen a sound toy that feels so *present* -- 

simple. reminded me of how sweet the medium of videogames can be.

maybe

this is how i feel about the part of my brain that remembers all the lyrics to the 2009 billboard hot 100

well that settles that

playing this game felt like sitting with the funniest kid in the lunchroom. i felt so enchanted & delighted & taken care of, even as i'm taken through a violent wonderland. gorgeous, hilarious & brilliant.

this game asks: is it a good thing to be a good minotaur?

i love the idea of ghostliness as a consequence of being too engrossed in those still living's lives to move on. maybe being a ghost is just like binge watching tv -- you should probably stop but you can't help getting sucked in for another episode...or 2...or 4...

this is probably what i would do if i was dracula

accurate title

this is absolutely adorable & reminds me of one of my favorite games of all time: Hamtaro Ham Ham heartbreak <3

an ode to all the internet friends that are still out there in the world somewhere

feels like getting lost on the wrong side of your brain

real

this was delightful! reminds me of the kind of guessing game you play on a roadtrip

this was beautiful & captured the eeriness yet profoundness of identity & language when you're used to playing a role & living in a constructed world. what a refreshing way of making dialogue choices too. standing ovation.

i feel seen

this was a phenomenal adventure back to the days when it felt easier to be real online than in real life. the comfort, yet vastness and darkness that the internet evoked was captured so elegantly. thank you, i loved this <3

this was a beautiful little dive into a sunken memory. the writing is divine. my grandma is on hospice and this piece made me feel more connected to her. thank you for that <3

great work! i also pick my face a lot & there was something so cathartic about turning that into little vignettes of mechanics. what a sweet autobiographical exploration <3

wow i am so flattered to be compared to those movies! thank you so much for saying that. this comment really inspired me 💕

this was precious & one of the best downpours i've ever played. what a lovely perspective ~

wow what a delightful little music tool!

i have an idea. what if i talk to identical twins separated at birth who have some kind of feeling or a connection. what do you think?

thank you so much for playing! i'm so happy you enjoyed the game & connected with it too (:

thank you for playing! i'm so glad you enjoyed it 💕

thank you so much! this means the world coming from my escape room idol 😎

thank you, charles ✨

crockpot is a game about bored teenagers growing up in the midwest that explores the intimacy of doing nothing with someone else ✨

play it at https://koonce.itch.io/crockpot

enlightened

this game is a fish tank of the teenage experience.

you watch as the little people mill about, sequestered in this simple environment, left to pace and spin and pace and spin. as the player, you mold and mend that environment, encouraging spins, discouraging paces, attempting to direct movement toward one direction and ultimately failing. 

my high school experience felt claustrophobic--there was not much to do, i didn't have much control, and every little change to my environment very much had an effect on my internal world. playing with this game felt like deconstructing how all of the shifts in perspectives, spaces, and movements deeply affect the agents within that paradigm who are trapped, simply reacting to their environment with so little power over it.

yet, you as the player are the god that shapes the world for its inhabitants and thus the one connecting your actions to consequence. although its clear that the systems in place account for the behavior of the people to change based on what the player does, there is no certainty from this faux-omniscient perspective of what your actions are actually doing. you can call a manipulation of the wall an unsuccessful or successful means of achieving a certain reaction from the meanderers or simply an exploration into this digital toy, but that is a characterization you have made and not something inherent to the systems at play. this parallels the way we look back at our adolescence: we wonder what then caused the affairs of now, what were the conditions that affected our skills, our thought processes, our trauma that we experience in the present.

it is clear that the design of things all around us shapes who we are, but the meaning that is made from that process is ours to shape. or, in other words, to decide "if it's fun."

again, flan has outdone themselves with a fantastic spin on the walking sim genre, literally wallowing in the depths of space, time, and iconic characters.

playing this game felt like sinking into my head in the hyper-mediated age of simulations, simulacra, and late capitalism. the way it's structured and the constant sense of not being able to tell where one room ends and the next begin, where you end and the world begins, was a deeply intrusive yet poignant look into my subconscious corrupted by media. the way this game is framed and its constant reference to other characters, media, and life formsallows it to hold a mirror up to our brains as they're filled with so much external stimuli--movies, games, music, pictures, museums, etc.--that we begin to question what thoughts are our own and what thoughts are intrusive sunken ships, armed with lost romances, abandoned ballrooms, and unfinished stories to disturb the insular deep-sea from its peace. 

if i've learned anything from this game, it's this:

it's scary what goes on in all the places we can't see, but it's important to remember that even in darkness, your heart will go on.

those are some pretty good faces

omg EASTON SELF?!?!!?!? i will be in touch IMMEDIATELY