In the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of time considering so-called “walking simulators,” first as I dug into different definitions of games, and then, as I moved away from that, into perceptions of games and the experiences they offer. One of the games that comes up most often […]
ambient adventure
5 posts
I’d like to pick up a small part of last week’s discussion on games, narratives, and experience, as the idea of environmental narrative bled into my seminar papers this semester as well. If we want to think about games as a matter of being – as in, what happens when we […]
There has been a lot of discussion over the past week about Ian Bogost’s recent article in The Atlantic entitled, “Video Games are Better Without Stories,” an article in which Bogost argues, ultimately, exactly what his title says–that is, that the idea of games seeking to tell stories is an […]
Many games, particularly smaller indie games, present limited experience, and these limitations can manifest in myriad ways. Firewatch takes place over a single summer. Depression Quest is all text, with text options denied as its driving mechanic. Reigns is a series of yes/no decisions. Some games, though, ask you to […]
Exploratory adventure games, narrative adventures, spatial adventures, environmental adventures, narrative explorations—different, certainly related phrases, all used to describe games that rely heavily on exploration to craft an experiential story. Walking simulators often overlap heavily here, but with games like Her Story, for instance, there’s not much (or any!) walking, so we needed […]