Small Worlds

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I love to explore in games. It's one of the reasons I play video games—each new game is a new world to explore. If somebody took the exploration part of a game and stripped out all the other mechanics, I'd still enjoy it. Which is why I enjoyed Small Worlds so much.

Small Worlds involves guiding your character around several levels and just exploring them. Your character is a little 3-pixel abstract man who can jump and move about. There are no enemies or failure—just pure exploration. There's some wonderful, mood-setting music and some great examples of retro graphics in this game. The details are well done here and make you feel like you're a part of another world.

But what makes Small Worlds stand out is the way the world is represented, as you explore more of the world the screen zooms out to see everything. You start out zoomed in to just your character and immediate surroundings, and as you explore your screen zooms out to eventually take in the entire world. The sense of scope this provides has to be seen to be believed. A sense of the scale of the world is a huge component to exploration in a game. Small Worlds's unique presentation absolutely nails it.

To talk any more about it really spoils the experience, so I'll leave it at that.

Why You Should Check This Out: It's short, playable in a web browser, and completely free. The music and the graphics set the tone of isolation well. An exploration game, your screen zooms out as you explore to take in the entire world. It's the essential bits of an exploration game distilled into their purest form.

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Comments

I checked this out and found that while the exploration was indeed cool, the platforming itself was kind of annoying. Still, another example of minimalist graphics that can be used to great effects - especially when you look at the level of detail when you're fully zoomed out.

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'm really digging this, even if I stubbornly refused to play it when Rabbit effused at me.

Also: I want to refer to the character as "Little Jumping Penis Man."

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.

PyromanFO wrote:

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 found it nicely smoothed out, so that I didn't have to jump over small bumps, etc.

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

There was a spot in the winter level where the music gradually built up as I uncovered ... nuclear warheads. It got me as few games have. The image of a peaceful world, in the death of nuclear winter just revealed itself in my brain. Is that even the backstory? No idea, it could just be a mountain with missiles in it, but for so few pixels they evoke alot of imagery.

PyromanFO wrote:
The music and the gradual revelation are what makes it, I think.
Spoiler:

There was a spot in the winter level where the music gradually built up as I uncovered ... nuclear warheads. It got me as few games have. The image of a peaceful world, in the death of nuclear winter just revealed itself in my brain. Is that even the backstory? No idea, it could just be a mountain with missiles in it, but for so few pixels they evoke alot of imagery.

Spoiler:

All the worlds seem broken in some way.

More importantly, a friend of mine commented that the character reminds him of Oscar the Grouch's pet worm, Slimy:

IMAGE(http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/muppet/images/3/34/Ewflowers-slimey.jpg)

Edit: Fact Check! Sesame Street spells it "Slimey."

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

Well, seeing as how it goes back at least 1500 years in art, and possibly much further, I'd say not any time soon.

Hans

benu302000 wrote:

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.

  • Programmed-in decay of in-game objects (guns fall apart in Far Cry, health ticks down in Gauntlet)
  • Realistic treatment of death, failure, or time
  • 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
  • Pyrrhic victory as "win" state (completing all challenges doesn't yield a full, classically comic ending of marriage and happy-ever-after)
  • Just about any condition where actions in the game have far-reaching and potentially negative consequences
  • 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.

wordsmythe wrote:

wall of text

Nerd.

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).

I had fun playing it.

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?]

Playing it at work, with no sound, I didn't get the full immersion, but still, the silent gameplay was great.

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.

Excellent application of ambient music in the first level. What a charming game. Thank you for sharing.

Snooglebum wrote:

(Stream of consciousness spoilers?)

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

kaostheory wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

wall of text

Nerd.

Was there ever a doubt?

Snooglebum wrote:
Spoiler:

Oh, I launched myself into the sun.

You did? Not sure that happened to me.

xeneth wrote:
Snooglebum wrote:

(Stream of consciousness spoilers?)

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

Oops, sorry.

wordsmythe wrote:
Snooglebum wrote:
Spoiler:

Oh, I launched myself into the sun.

You did? Not sure that happened to me.

Yeah, that last scene did seem edited as if the player had.

Spoiler:

He jumps in the bottom-most pod, it launches down and away from the station, then the next scene says "Silence" with a sun at the bottom. Basic cinematography would present that as flying into the sun, but who knows if that was really the intention in this game.

Fun to explore, though.

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

Nerd.

Spoiler:

The weird beacon of light in the center of an asteroid field threw me off a little, but in a good sort of way.

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.

benu302000 wrote:

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 not a scholar of Latin, but my understanding is that a better translation is "remember that you will die," also commonly written as "remember that thou art mortal." I've never seen it as "remember to die," and I suspect that "mori" would be differently conjugated if that were the meaning.

wordsmythe wrote:
benu302000 wrote:

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 not a scholar of Latin, but my understanding is that a better translation is "remember that you will die," also commonly written as "remember that thou art mortal." I've never seen it as "remember to die," and I suspect that "mori" would be differently conjugated if that were the meaning.

I think the general theme of "remember you're going to die" is consistent with the ending here.

Spoiler:

The entire point is to make the spacestation stop moving/blinking (i.e. die) then launch yourself into the sun.

benu302000 wrote:

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.

I don't think it is clear from the start (or at any other time) in this game that the end goal is death. If I understand your point to be that this is yet another title where the player dies upon successful completion of challenges, I think we could discuss that.

Would the experience of Small World be any different without the Greg Louganis into the Sun/Star? If Slimey was just ejected into space, would that have been acceptable? If happy music, rather than the somewhat contemplative music played in the end would we feel better?

Honestly, I played the game again to confirm that yes indeed...

Spoiler:

You get launched, presumably, into the Sun, to die.

I didn't notice the ending the first time through at all hence, I don't even think of this fact as a spoiler. The ending didn't spoil anything. We shouldn't have to use Spoilers when discussing this event.

Which I guess, leads me to my comment. For this particular game, the ending did not affect my gaming experience. It feels like an artsy-fartsy add-on to take up memory.

(This does not invalidate my earlier comment... I still had fun playing it.)

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?

wordsmythe wrote:

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?

Now you are going to make me play this game again!

Baaspei wrote:

For this particular game, the ending did not affect my gaming experience. It feels like an artsy-fartsy add-on to take up memory.

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.