YouDigress

16-bit Poster

 

You need to play Passage.

Have any of you folks played the game Passage?

I guess it was an entry in a contest where you had to create a game that could be beaten in five minutes or something. I stumbled across it when browsing 1Up's 101 free games feature.

I finished it, and it was one of the most moving experiences I've had playing a video game. I don't want to spoil it, so I'm going to wait until I see if people have played it or not, but you really should. It's quite an experience.

EDIT: hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/

Thought I'd put the link there so you wouldn't have to find it.

Brad Gallaway

Demons are defeated

 

 

Re: You need to play Passage.

Never heard of it before you posted, but i just played it...

at first, i didn't get it, but as the game went on i started to see its elegance.

in retrospect i think it's not only phenomenally clever, but also quite sophisticated, especially in terms of how low-tech it is.

the blur effect, especially... i initially thought it was just some random thing, but the significance of what it meant hit me at the end.

it might sound silly, but the game seems sort of like an electronic poem.

excellent recommend, YD.

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Reharl

Moderator

 

Re: You need to play Passage.

How many lifetimes can there be in five minutes? And how many different ways to deal with the inevitable burden of death when they expire?

The simple eloquence of this little game is nothing short of staggering. During my first incursion I delved deep into the areas, finding treasure chests, amassing riches, always pursuing and seeking the next box of goods, always keeping an eye out for a blur that symbolised things of value. Then I died.

The second time, I moved forward. I found a companion. We trudged together, stopping only to find what rewards were already on our way. As the time moved forward, so did the difficulties increase. We couldn't fit between the tight passages that I could have negotiated alone. More than once we had to backtrack and find a better, safer, larger path for us. As the night fell, she died. Shortly after, so did I.

And now, what happens if I go backwards? Or if I seek treasures and joys with my companion, but do not move forward? What's to keep me from staying put and letting the five minutes sip away my existence? Why did I want to go back to the game and move forward, accompanied and loved?

Oh, this is a clever little game, which speaks of nothing new but uses the medium in a most interesting way. The allegory of carrying out, by your own hands, a whole life under five minutes, with nothing else following the bleakness that always ensues, is an elementar, familiar, and thus powerful statement. Why is this so different, atypical? I have been tasked of developing and planning lives before, even generations, in games such as Civilization or SimCity. Yet, something always followed; a better, more advanced reality, a remnant of my actions past. I have been tasked of driving and moving forward episodes in some characters' lives, their adventures. But the game ends and their life continues, or at the very least something lives on. Passage ends with a black screen. So perhaps it is true that of all living things, man is the one that conquers death by way of the works he leaves behind. Why, then, is that black screen ever so uncomfortable?

This reminds me of an altered first level of Super Mario Bros I once saw, held at an exhibition somewhere. There were no barriers and no finish lines, only a race against the ineroxable ticking clock. Some players rushed and rushed until they fell. Others took the time to calculate their steps. Some even invented obstacles and jumped between clouds or other patterns they had imagined for themselves. The end was the same for everyone, and yet all that played had their ways of getting there.

idiotic

128-bit Poster

 

Re: You need to play Passage.

I don't get it.

YouDigress

16-bit Poster

 

Re: You need to play Passage.

I didn't want to drop the "games as art" bomb here because I've been browsing other forums discussing Passage, and in all of them, the discussion has boiled down to two extremes: people who claim to "get it" much more so than everyone else and then lord their artistic sensibilities over everyone else with condescension to the nth degree, or people who flat out refuse to see the game as something more than a game, and claim that "the gameplay sucks, thus, it is not art."

Let's try not to devolve into that.

idiotic

128-bit Poster

 

Re: You need to play Passage.

It's all a blur to me.

Avptallarita

.

 

Re: You need to play Passage.

Oof. Fascinating little thing. Has more personality and content than most of the stuff I tend to get on my gaming screens.

The fact that it's only five minutes long is not a weakness of course, but it is a limit - it's a wonderful work, but a very small wonderful work.

Personally, I consider it a brilliant idea and an extremely clever exploitation of the medium, especially in the sense that it distances itself so much from the concept itself of "game" (in other words, it thinks outside the box - puts the art before the "fun factor" or what have you). I too thought it was a pretty moving experience, in its own small way, and I friggin' love that blur effect.

I forwarded this to my seminar group on narrative theory. Thanks for the link.

Mike Doolittle

Telling people how it is