Free and Worth Every Penny - Issue 68: Digital: A Love Story

I opened one of my first Free and Worth Every Penny columns, about RunMan: Race Around the World, with the following:  "This may only work for those of you of a certain age and a certain background.  For those in the right group, however, I believe it will work quite well."  I can't think of a better way to describe this week's installment, so there it is again.  If you weren't in the right place at the right time, this might not do anything for you.  If you were, though, then this is my holiday gift to you, and I think you're going to love it.

Merry Christmas.

I kind of wish Digital: A Love Story was designed to be a Christmas gift, because it's a wonderful one, but the truth is that I simply missed it when it was released by Christine Love earlier this year.  Luckily, the fine folks over at Rock Paper Shotgun featured it in their series of Advent Gaming articles, so I doubled back and gave it a try.  I'm so very glad that I did so.  No other game has taken me back to my childhood so effectively this year.

The year is 1988.  You're a teenager, and your dad just bought you an "Amie Workbench", complete with a state-of-the-art 1200 baud modem.  You don't have permission to dial long-distance numbers with it, but anything local is fair game (and if you know the right tricks, there are ways around that long-distance thing).  There's a popular local Bulletin Board System with the number 698-5519 - I hear a bunch of folks hang out there.  The world's your oyster, kid.  Go have a ball.

I think I used to log into a BBS with this exact login screen image.

I need to be straightforward in telling you that I love this game because I've lived in its world.  Not in 1988 - I didn't get there until the early 90's - but I had a binder full of phone numbers for local and toll-free bulletin boards in my computer desk when I was in high school.  I would take notes about which ones were still operating, and whether they'd let you register for free.  People would gravitate to different boards to talk about various topics, and over time, you figured out which ones had the folks you wanted to spend time with.  You learned which places carried shareware game downloads, and which ones could get you the full games.  These weren't just networked computers, they were places you visited through your computer - clubs, bars, seedy back alleys - and thanks to the clunky technology involved, the journey to reach them felt far more tangible than typing in a web address could ever feel today.  Upgrading from a 1200 to a 2400 baud modem (or, finally, one glorious day, to 9600)...  it was like getting a new car.  It was a whole new type of freedom.

Yeah, we all knew about "The Matrix", whatever name it went by.

Digital takes place entirely in that space, and as the title explains, it tells a love story.  You're going to meet a girl.  Things will get complicated, miscommunications will occur, and difficult realities will be faced.  (All of these things happened on the BBS's of my youth as well, of course, though admittedly in far less dramatic fashion.)  It's an entirely linear adventure, with the only real puzzle being which action you need to take at a given time to advance the plot.  In a slightly odd design choice, you never actually input the messages or replies your character sends to anyone in the game, only seeing what the other characters are sending back to you.  It does remove some of the direct interaction you'd otherwise have, but I like how much imagination it invites you to inject into the story.

This is a gameplay-light experience, I'll warn you ahead of time.  Mostly, you'll be reading public and private messages on these Bulletin Board Systems to trace the story through its paces - you need to pay attention so that you know which board to dial next, and occasionally you'll need to intuit the solution to a problem and act on it, but "driven narrative" is very much the theme here.  With only two exceptions I can remember, there are no problems you can't solve by just clicking everything you can click.

I loved it anyhow.  The atmosphere is fantastic, with messages posted about William Gibson, or what the hell "PC Load Letter" means, or virus troubles and how to deal with them, or the history of BBS's (pre-Wikipedia, folks just posted really long articles to BBS systems and hoped someone would archive them)...  or, of course, Star Trek.

If you were this guy, or still are, I forgive you.

This is the way the Internet was before there was an Internet, and Digital: A Love Story understands it.  It wants to take you back there for an hour or two - or show you what it was like, if you were never there.  You can play this game in a window, but don't.  Leave the scanlines on in the graphics options, and play it full screen.  Don't turn off the modem sound effect, even though that noise is still one of the most grating things to ever come out of a computer.  Leave the music running.  Get lost in it.

Is it a good love story?  It's not bad.  I became more invested in the plot than I thought I would, and enjoyed pursuing it to its conclusion (though there was some cheesy heavy-handedness at the end I could've done without).  But I don't know that the title refers entirely to the romance that develops between the player and Emilia.  This isn't just a love story about a person, it's about a time and place with boundless possibilities;  seemingly limitless freedom;  constant, joyous discovery.  To be a kid on the still-forming information superhighway was to explore a new frontier with people you'd never met but who somehow understood you, and through doing so realize that virtual and "real" relationships weren't all that different, no matter what your parents said.  It's how I became the crazy Internet-loving nerd I am today, and I'm sure that's true for some of the rest of you, too.

So go on.  Go be a kid again.

Digital: A Love Story is...

• maybe the most lovingly crafted retro computer experience since Uplink.
• well-written, and hit a surprisingly wide range of emotional notes for me.
• a great example of how games can tell stories in a way no other medium can.
• a time capsule - a window to a world that is lost but should not be forgotten.

Digital is available for PC, Mac and Linux, so you have no excuse;  you should play this one.  It weighs in at just under 50MB;  download it here.

"Free And Worth Every Penny" is a column I collaborate on with Mike Bellmore at Colony of Gamers.  This piece also appears there.  If you're done with this one and want more, feel free to browse the archives.

Free and Worth Every Penny - Issue 67: Escape From the Underworld

2010 seems to be a year of resurgence for the difficult platformer.  I suppose that's a fairly obvious claim to make for any year that opens with VVVVVV and closes with Super Meat Boy, but I've noticed it in this column, as well - from twitchy madness like Super Crate Box to more slow paced but no less diabolical challenges like L'Abbaye des Morts, everybody seems to want to make a classic throwback game that loves to kill you this year.

This installment of Free and Worth Every Penny highlights another game you can stack on that pile.  In some ways, it's one of the better ones I've seen lately, with a great concept and some moments as satisfying as the ones I loved in Hero Core and IJI.   In other ways, it's a frustrating mess that doesn't live up to its potential.  Still, I don't regret the time I spent with it, so if you think you're up for a challenge, let me invite you to...

So you're an angel.  Not a cute cherub "bow with love arrows" angel, either - one of the avenging kind.  ...Well, you were.  But without those wings, or that badass sword, it might be harder to convince anyone.  I won't tell you exactly how you ended up stuck down here, because the opening to Banov's Escape from the Underworld is one of the better introductory surprises I've seen this year, but stuck you surely are.  You'll need to figure out how to reclaim your lost power, with nothing and nobody to help you.

Everything seems so idyllic.  What could go wrong?

As in many of the best freeware side scrollers - the aforementioned IJI and Hero Core, as well as the exquisite Cave Story, come readily to mind - Metroid is the most obvious design influence for Escape From the Underworld.  Stripped of your abilities, you must make your way through a labyrinth of caverns, slowly acquiring the items that will let you open new areas and face increasingly difficult enemies.  It's a classic formula, and in many ways it works here.  Every power upgrade feels significant (honestly the last one feels almost game-breaking), and a helpful automap keeps track of where you haven't been yet, and what you found in the places you have explored.

This sucks. I want my wings back.

Sadly, I can't say that all of the design choices behind Escape are successful ones.  The opening sections of the game are brutally hard, giving you absolutely no directional clues to help you figure out what you should do first.  You constantly run up against areas that are blocked off to you or enemies you can't handle, until you manage to luck into the right path.  Worse, save points are few and far between, so it's easy to lose progress to a quick death if you're not meticulous about backtracking to save every time you find something useful.

Speaking of backtracking, you won't find the handy telepoters of VVVVVV here, or the ability to warp between save points, or anything like that.  You'll be traversing the same ground many times, and given the number of enemies and environmental traps that can quickly become tedious.  Barriers to pathways re-spawn even after you have the ability to remove them, so you're going to have to destroy that boulder / energy barrier / etc every time you want to get to the room on the other side.   It doesn't break the game, but it sure does break the pace.

None of that might matter - after all, Super Metroid had plenty of backtracking and no teleporters - but on top of it all, the controls feel far too clunky for a game that demands so much of the player.  Let me give you a recommendation:  get a gamepad, and map the Jump command (the Up Arrow key if you're playing on the keyboard) to one of the buttons, because having to actually press Up every time you want to jump in a game with this much jumping is torture.  After such gamepad mapping, I found it playable, but still never as precise as I wanted it to be.

This. Is. What. I'm. Talking. About.

So why put up with it?  Well, largely for the reason displayed in the screenshot above - you get to be an overpowered God by the end, and it really is pretty satisfying to tear through areas and enemies that once gave you so much trouble leaving naught but destruction in your wake.  When you get to the aforementioned near-game-breaking item, you won't complain, you'll say "F*** yes!" and have a blast using it.

The usual pleasure of exploring a map and finding items in a Metroid-style game remains, including the requisite hidden ones you'll want to locate if you're a completionist.  I should also mention that the music by "Prophecy" is great, hopping back and forth between catchy synth with a solid beat and Gregorian-sounding chants.  I didn't get tired of listening to it at all during two playthroughs.

That's the bottom line, I guess.  As often as I smacked my forehead at the way Banov did some things in his game, I played it from beginning to end twice.  I write up lots of games I can't say that about.

Escape From the Underworld is...

• a really neat concept for a game and character that I've love to see fleshed out more.
• inspired by some of the best games of all time, which never hurts.
• sadly hindered by not learning all the right lessons from those games, and furthermore by finicky controls.
• still an impressive effort, and one I'm glad I played.

The game is Windows-only, and comes in under 15MB.  You can pick it up here.

"Free And Worth Every Penny" is a column I collaborate on with Mike Bellmore at Colony of Gamers.  This piece also appears there. If you're done with this one and want more, feel free to browse the archives.

Want Some Free Games? A Whole Lot?

A very nice reader sent me an e-mail with the following Youtube video, consisting of - so it claims - 111 free games that you can go download and play, covered in 11 minutes (11:11 exactly, which is a neat touch).  I say it claims this because I have not heard of all these games and certainly have not downloaded them all myself, but I have no reason to doubt him.  I do see some games I've played in there, certainly, and others that I've heard of.  Some appear to be abandonware, some are completely original titles, and some are fan-made games that might be begging for a cease and desist, but presumably haven't received one yet (Sonic Robo Blast, I'm looking at you).

If you'd like to watch it, you can follow the link above or just watch it right here:

I notice that there are a lot of shooters in the beginning and middle of the video.  First-person shooters, third-person shooters, top-down shooters, side-scrolling shooters... it seems that folks who make free games are pretty drawn to making games about shooting stuff and making it blow up.

I suppose that could be a reflection of what's popular in the commercial industry, as well - certainly the Halo's and the Call of Dutiful Medals of Battlefield Honor continue to often enjoy a lion's share of attention from the gaming media, not to mention profit.  But I'm a little surprised to see so many frankly samey-looking shooters from people not being paid to make them.  I've written up some shooters here on the site, for sure, but I also try to feature different things, games that try to explore new gameplay types and ideas.

Still, some of the shooters in that list are pretty good, I understand, and there are other things in there... the last third of the video has more genre variety.  It gets bonus points for having Spelunky and Battle for Wesnoth, two of the all-time greats.  (No Cave Story, though!  I mean, what?)  If you want to download a few of them and try them yourself, as I'm sure I will, the video sends you to this page where all the games are listed out with links.  The page is in German, but none is necessary to find the games.

Enjoy, and thanks to "doink" for sending me the link!  Back later this weekend with another writeup, I hope.

Blizzard Wants You Back

Or, if you've never been on World of Warcraft, they want you for the first time.  Enough to make it very cheap for you to get in.

As part of the lead-up to next month's release of the Cataclysm expansion, they've kicked off a sale on all of the existing game content.  The original World of Warcraft package is $5.00, the Burning Crusade expansion is $5.00, and the Wrath of the Lich King expansion is $10.  These are very deep discounts compared to their standard prices, which are $20, $30 and $40 respectively.

If you've never played at all, your purchase of the original game (and any expansions) would come with 30 days of gameplay.  If you're a former customer (like me), that won't be true, but you can get a 10 day trial of either expansion pack and then buy near the end of your trial - the deal appears to run until November 30th.

This is a very shrewd move on Blizzard's part, IMO.  I understand they've revamped the game quite a bit in anticipation of Cataclysm - and of course when that releases the entire game world gets "done over", so to speak - but luring back customers who skipped out on the expansion packs was going to be a tricky thing.  Nobody wants to buy $30 and $40 expansions just to have the privilege of buying another $50 one.  But now, for $15, I can have all the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King content and be ready to bite when Cataclysm comes out.  I'm not sure I will bite at Cataclysm, but I'm in for the other two at the sale price.

I have to wonder whether the success of free-to-play Lord of the Rings Online has impacted this move in any way.  It might not have, but this is definitely the closest Blizzard has come to giving away their WoW content that I've seen so far.  Well played, gentlemen.  Well played.

Free and Worth Every Penny - Issue 65: But That Was Yesterday

You may recall that when I wrote up Sombreros a few weeks ago, I confessed (as though you didn't already know) to being a fan of art-house games.  If you're not one... well, you may want to skip this week's installment of Free and Worth Every Penny, because we're going all-the-way-pretentious this time.  If it's any consolation, I promise it's short (and this writeup will be, too) and it's easy.   Hopefully that'll be enough to get you to give it a spin even if you ordinarily wouldn't, because you might find yourself saying that you didn't think this sort of thing was worthwhile...

...Or maybe not.  I apologize for the abuse of the title card, there, and I should say up front that I know this game won't be for everybody.  Indeed, But That Was Yesterday won't even be considered a game by some of you, I'm sure;  it's as valid to call it a piece of interactive animation...  maybe even more valid.  You can't really lose - or rather, any moments of "failure" have no real consequence - and you are limited to moving along the pre-set path laid out for you by the designer.  Of course, I will refrain from pointing out how well that last sentence also describes many of the AAA single-player games I've played in the last couple years.  Wait, I guess I just did.  Well, nevermind.

In any event, it certainly isn't a game about challenge...  wait, that's not true.  It isn't a game about mechanical challenge.  It's very much about challenge - the challenge of loss, and pain, and acceptance, and perseverence.  I expect you'll find that at least one part of the narrative laid out here, if not the whole thing, resonates with the experiences you've had in your own life;  the themes tackled by Michael Molinari ("Bean") in But That Was Yesterday are fairly universal.  Like Jason Rohrer's Passage - another favorite of mine, though I know many dislike it - this feels like a very personal piece of art, but I think it means to speak to everyone about the joys and hardships the world holds for us and how to deal with them.

Unfortunately, I can't actually talk about how the game asks you to deal with them, or I'd give away the only secret it holds.  Allow me to dance around it by saying that the game makes the most of an extremely minimal input set in some pretty clever ways, and that while I did think the whole thing went on about 5 minutes longer than I needed it to, I still took genuine satisfaction from the way everything came together in the game's final section.

But That Was Yesterday is an entry in this year's "Casual Gameplay Design Competition", run by JayIsGames.com and sponsored by EA.   The theme this year is "Friends" - you can view all the entries here if you'd like to try more of them.  As I said before, there's an argument to be made that this game is so casual that it doesn't even qualify as a game, but personally I think it's a wonderful take on the theme, and I'll be very curious to see how it fares against the other entries.

You'll notice, I'm sure, that I've spent a large portion of this piece writing from a rather defensive stance, as if I'm hesitant to put this out there and stand behind it as a game I like.  That's because I am.  Not for any good reason, really;  I feel the same way I might feel taking a friend to a really quirky movie I love but that I know they might not like at all, or putting a painting on my wall without knowing exactly what people will think it reflects about me.  What if anything that says about the "are games art" question, I leave for you to decide.  If my words or the above screenshots have piqued your interest, evaluate it for yourself and let me know what you thought.

But That Was Yesterday is...

• not going to appeal to everyone.  It's about a subject matter some people think games aren't suited to, and even then it arguably takes a position some may not like.
• very pleasant aesthetically, with simple but bold color use and some well-chosen music in the background.
• extremely straightforward from an interaction standpoint, but most of the time I appreciated the chance to think about what was going on.
• the only game I've ever played to use sitting on swings with a beautiful long-haired girl as a "level."  As it happens, that's also a pretty awesome level in real life.

But That Was Yesterday is a flash game, so any supported browser will work fine.  Click here to try it out.  As a postscript:  there are multiple endings, but I wasn't able to figure out whether anything I did determined which one I got.  It may be random.

I hope you like it.  See you next time.

"Free And Worth Every Penny" is a column I collaborate on with Mike Bellmore at Colony of Gamers.  This piece also appears there.