I didn't have alot of problem with the platforming, but I think the developer actually fixed a bug with the jumping recently so maybe that's the difference.

I got through most of the platforming by holding down the jump button and hopping around randomly, so I don't think it was all that hard. There were a couple of spots I had to take a little more care in.

The music and the gradual revelation are what makes it, I think.

I wonder when artiste indie game developers are going to get sick of "Memento Mori" as a concept.

I see people griping about this in indie games from time to time, and I wonder how many of the accused games really do stall on the concept. I may have to break it down.

Part of the problem is that "memento mori" has two fairly disparate connotations in Western culture. Originally, it was meant as a reality check to victorious Roman generals. In Middle-Age art (and continuing to varying extents in the following centuries), it was a more direct reference to the mutability of earthly (i.e., non-divinely eternal) existence and emotions.

Now, when I hear or read the term being applied to a game, it seems it could have even more diverse meanings. I'll list a few.

1. Programmed-in decay of in-game objects (guns fall apart in Far Cry, health ticks down in Gauntlet)
2. Realistic treatment of death, failure, or time
3. Broken stuff depicted in the game that never has any functionality (architectural ruins and otherwise damaged old things) which, I guess, in a sense, relates to skulls in portraits during the hight of memento mori in paintings, or to their later descendants of blasted trees or reclaimed nature in Romantic art
4. Pyrrhic victory as "win" state (completing all challenges doesn't yield a full, classically comic ending of marriage and happy-ever-after)
5. Just about any condition where actions in the game have far-reaching and potentially negative consequences
6. To throw out one of my own, "here comes a new challenger" dynamics in games wherein it seems like no victory is ever complete (4X games do this for a long time, but MMOs are a more pure example)

But really, I don't see it here. #3 is present, but if the existence of a blasted tree in a Thomas Cole painting counts as memento mori, then JMW Turner was a Color-Field modernist.

If the destruction and decay in some of the maps was your reference, Benu, then I strongly disagree. Rather than the levels being explicitly about mortality, I'd argue that the character goes on a Hero's Journey from a complete and untarnished womb atmosphere, out into and through various areas marked by imperfection as a way of "reconstructing Osiris" in order to move beyond (i.e., transcend) reality. If anything, suggesting that a hero can conquer or otherwise escape the imperfections and decay of this world is the opposite of memento mori.

Very pleasant - Evokes memories similar to my early attempts at Dwarf Fortress, partly because the music would suit it, but mostly because I was expecting to die unpleasantly (if somewhat amusingly).

Just getting started, but this is flowing between my soothing Torchlight sessions very smoothly...

HOLY COW is my pixel revealing OCD being triggered though! I freaked out on some MMOs that used "fog of war" (Maybe "fog of exploration" would be more accurate) for certain zones and spent a couple of hours flying around killing all the black parts of maps that exist over functionally irrelevant features like water...

[edit]: And finished... wow.
The logical part of my brain knew that the music was just a (very appropriate) track playing, but my pushing to explore kept lining up with it such that little crescendos would appear to be happening in reaction to my revealing really thought and emotion provoking little tableaus. [can that word even be pluralized?]

My reaction to the game was basically: "Hey, I'm in space! It's snowing! Missiles! Venice! A dead dragon! Oh, I launched myself into the sun. That was pretty cool".

Also, I'm pretty sure that those are not pixels. Pixels are not textured.

Er... well I guess those exclamations are only spoiler... esque?

wordsmythe

All I was referring to was the fact that this is yet another online indie game with an end goal of the player's death. That would be the "remember to die." part of memento mori, which is as far as I thought it through.

I'm sure you're right, but I don't think that makes me wrong.

I've now seen a video that shows the elevator going where other people have said (-ish, I don't think it would go down to go to that destination), but I don't remember that part being there when I played. Is it possible that there are two endings, depending on how much exploration you did during play?

Here is a quote from the game's author website about his game: "My pretentious little art-game Small Worlds is finished, and has been entered into the Jay Is Games Casual Gameplay Design Competition #6! Voting is open right now – you can play and rate all the games here."

I had a feeling...

I played it again, and I cannot find any clues that would indicate an alternate ending.