Simple Things

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As a child I kept a small collection of found treasures in an old cigar box. It was an odd assortment, made up of such things as bottlecaps, a fake diamond ring, polished agates, a broken watch, a shark's tooth, a dog whistle, a Chinese coin, and a fossilized trilobite. While they all appeared mundane compared to any of my store-bought toys, each item still had its own particular enchantment, and I could easily while away an afternoon perusing the box's contents.

What follows is a similar collection: a hodgepodge of simple but immediate experiences, gathered from both recently explored and dusty corners of the Internet, and presented here for your consideration. Though they may at first glance seem to pale by comparison to the games that typically capture your attention, you might find that each, in its own way, still manages to offer something special.

(Note: some of the links in this article, if clicked, will launch Flash games, complete with sound. Turn down your volume if necessary)

Zen Bondage

They Might Be Giants once set to music the unspoken but apparently universal desire for a rock to wind a piece of string around. If you've harbored such longings, but have yet to find that special rock, look no further.

IMAGE(http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/files/images/zenbondage.jpg)

With a grace and simplicity that is almost mesmerizing, Moppi Productions' downloadable freeware demo, Zen Bondage, gives you a length of string and your choice of six three-dimensional shapes. The string leaves splotches of color as it's laid across the shape's surface, and the goal is to completely cover the shape before you're out of string. A grooving, ambient, asian-themed sound track accompanies your efforts.

From a technical standpoint, Zen Bondage is a beautifully shaded and textured physics demonstration. From a gameplay standpoint, it's a slice of almost absentmindedly simple, addictive bliss.

A Murder of Scarecrows

Today's vocabulary question: we call a flock of geese a gaggle, but what is the term for a flock of crows? Answer: a murder.

Crafted from Flash, A Murder of Scarecrows portrays three ragged agricultural sentinels beneath a grove of leafless trees, beset by a Hitchcockian assembly of menacing little birds. Left unattended, the scarecrows will be slowly torn to pieces by the crows, and the roots that inexplicably extend beneath their posts, signifying their life force, will wither and die. Your goal is to agitate the scarecrows with seeds flung slingshot-style from the trees, until they begin to swipe aggressively at the birds with their twiggy appendages.

IMAGE(http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/files/images/Scarecrows_All.jpg)

It's simple, but there's something about the image of a desperate, immobilized creature fighting for its life that resonates on a gut level. A Murder of Scarecrows is at theskeletonshop.com, the site of artist Vincent Marconi, whose preferences clearly tend toward the macabre. To get to the game, follow the "enter" buttons, then click on the word "play" that will appear in the lower right-hand corner of the main screen.

Gunroar

Kenta Cho has been cranking out eye-popping homebrew arcade-style shmups for a while now, earning hilmself a reputation as one of the dojin/hobbyist scene's more appreciated contributors. While there's something to like in nearly all of the downloadable freeware games at his bare-bones website, ABA Games, Gunroar is my favorite.

IMAGE(http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/files/images/Gunroar.jpg)

Imagine vintage Xevious-style vertical scrolling gameplay, combined with Geometry Wars' dual-stick controls and abundant particle effects, and you'll have a rough idea of what Gunroar is like. Except instead of showers of tiny sparks, Gunroar's innumerable bullets and pieces of shrapnel are represented by luminous translucent shapes, layered in a rainbow of rich, pleasing tones against a black backdrop. It's a lovely, addictive game, all the more impressive when you consider that it was coded by Cho himself, in his spare time, in about six months. If only he were developing Xbox Live Arcade titles.

flOw

This is what might happen if the Electroplankton stopped their frivolous singing and decided they'd be better served by eating each other.

Another simple Flash game, flOw begins with the player controlling a tiny, luminous invertebrate who drifts through the topmost layer of a two-dimensional primordial soup. Similar creatures squirm and float by, and the immediate goal is readily apparent: eat, and avoid being eaten. You'll catch hazy glimpses of larger creatures in the water below, and soon you'll realize that the tastiest (and most intimidating) prey are found the darkest and deepest of the game's aquatic layers. If you can manage to reach the end of the food chain, your creature will evolve. (If you think this sounds familiar, you're not alone; at this year's Game Developers' Conference, Will Wright reportedly complimented flOw's creators and jokingly thanked them for prototyping Spore's opening levels).

IMAGE(http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/files/images/flow.jpg)

flOw is simultaneously charming and haunting, and owes a lot to its evocative soundscape and basic but convincing ecosystem AI. Despite its simplicity, it's an outgrowth of a heady mixture of psychology and game design, the focus of its creator's graduate thesis. If you find yourself particularly taken by flOw's gameplay, there's at least an hour's worth of evolution to keep you occupied.

Orisinal

Ferry Halim's growing collection of simple Flash games at Orisinal is a fantastic example of a carefully refined and personal vision of casual gameplay. To date, he's got 57 instantly playable titles, nearly all of which offer charming, heartwarming little scenarios, accompanied by soothing music. Starry Night gives the player a single bubble with which to bounce a star into the night sky, where it illuminates other falling stars; Friends has a turtle and rabbit teaming up to avoid snakes and bomb-dropping crows; Bugs features a little girl joyously stomping the ground to frighten away rainbow-colored ladybugs; and Wake Up Calls depicts a tiny mouse riding a leaf downward through sunlit tree-branches, pausing to wake butterflies from their chrysalides. Each is beautifully illustrated, with a graceful, childlike artistic style that manages to be cute and kid-friendly without ever coming off as sickeningly saccharine.

IMAGE(http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/files/images/bogs-orisinal.jpg)

Not all of Orisinal's offerings are stellar, but the best of Halim's works border on the sublime. I'd pay good money to play these games on a handheld console, especially titles like Floats, which would be ideally suited for the DS's stylus controls. Why isn't Halim working for Nintendo? Completely ad-free, elegantly organized, and undeniably appealing, Orisinal is one of the best casual game sites on the Internet.

Comments

I love both games like these and reviews like this that introduce me to new things.

The only one of these I'd previously played were the titles at Orisinal, and let me second the recommendation here. Not only are the games great and original, but Halim's visuals are just plain art. There are several games where a screenshot would be quite worthy of framing and hanging on the wall in your bedroom.

Awesome stuff; I've actually already had the pleasure of playing all these since quick and interesting games are kind of my thing. If anyone's looking for more there's a wealth of fun to be had down at the experimental gameplay project: http://www.experimentalgameplay.com/

Wow, thanks for the great article, Fly! All of those games sound very appealing indeed.

Man, I haven't heard of half of these before. Great finds!

I second the games over at Experimental Gameplay. My personal favorite is the Tower of Goo.

As for flOw, I found it a few months ago and personally just found it to be boring and lacking in depth.

I've been enjoying Zen Bondage all afternoon. Thanks, Fly!

gamesource wrote:

I second the games over at Experimental Gameplay. My personal favorite is the Tower of Goo.

As for flOw, I found it a few months ago and personally just found it to be boring and lacking in depth.

Lacking in depth? But it's like, an ocean.

Tower of Goo gets points for the name alone. I agree, it's a pretty cool game. It very nearly ended up in this article.

Excellent article, Fly. My girlfriend is mesmerized by Zen Bondage. Which, when put that way, sounds kinda hot.

Orisinal is just amazing - thanks for pointing it out, Fly! Any of the games on there are more enjoyable than the vast majority of the minigames in most "real" titles (I'm looking at you here, Feel The Magic). Fantastic music, too.

flOw is, quite possibly, the best "small" game I've ever seen.
I just played for over half an hour, I think I "won" because it stopped, gave me a credit, and started me over as a completely different body-shaped life-form.

And, if I didn't have to work tomorrow, I could play another 30 minutes.

Simply wonderful.

Demiurge wrote:

Excellent article, Fly. My girlfriend is mesmerized by Zen Bondage. Which, when put that way, sounds kinda hot.

Totally hawt. This thread is useless without pictures.

Nice collection. I'll have to see which ones are cab-friendly. Thanks!