Hallå pals! Jonas here with another issue of Indie Notebook to get some ideas out of my noggin, and to inspire you to do the same. It was my birthday this Sunday! I had a chill day at home, playing some video games, read comics (The Gulf by Adam De Souza) and then we went to my favorite sushi place for dinner. We tried rice dough skewers, the texture was
It's gonna be awesome to download Surmount from the eShop and finally play it!
Last night, I was a bit restless and decided to look around the eShop and I looked for Surmount in the list of upcoming games. The top of the list was a game called "Insurmountable" -- I kind of had to do a double take there. It's another climbing game but it couldn't be more different from Surmount.
I think games as a whole are still struggling with a significant narrative problem. You want something that is fun and engaging but how do you "funnel" all of that play and interactivity into something that is also meaningful and fulfilling? A game about climbing a mountain, I think, has turned out to be a great solution to this problem. Everyone understands the meaning of reaching the top of a mountain, how what we are really climbing is ourselves, deep down, and how the mountain and the game serve as metaphors for each other. The mechanics and interactivity all become a bit meaningful insofar as they relate to climbing the mountain. Every step of progress is evident as well as any step back.
To sum up my thesis: the mounting climbing game is a beautiful confluence of meaning and mechanics.
(Now that my coffee stained thesis has been turned in, I gotta pull of the lab coat and get some fresh air, as I'm nervously awaiting the year-long review process...)
Happy birthday and congrats! Excited to see how it does!
Happy birthday! Mine is in 2 days :)
It's gonna be awesome to download Surmount from the eShop and finally play it!
Last night, I was a bit restless and decided to look around the eShop and I looked for Surmount in the list of upcoming games. The top of the list was a game called "Insurmountable" -- I kind of had to do a double take there. It's another climbing game but it couldn't be more different from Surmount.
I think games as a whole are still struggling with a significant narrative problem. You want something that is fun and engaging but how do you "funnel" all of that play and interactivity into something that is also meaningful and fulfilling? A game about climbing a mountain, I think, has turned out to be a great solution to this problem. Everyone understands the meaning of reaching the top of a mountain, how what we are really climbing is ourselves, deep down, and how the mountain and the game serve as metaphors for each other. The mechanics and interactivity all become a bit meaningful insofar as they relate to climbing the mountain. Every step of progress is evident as well as any step back.
To sum up my thesis: the mounting climbing game is a beautiful confluence of meaning and mechanics.
(Now that my coffee stained thesis has been turned in, I gotta pull of the lab coat and get some fresh air, as I'm nervously awaiting the year-long review process...)