Down In The Hollow

 

One of the things I like about Steam is the suggestion algorithm. Wait. Do I mean "like?". No, I think I mean "find laughable".

When I say "algorithm" I'm just guessing they use one. It's all algorithms these days, isn't it? Honestly, though, I have no clue how they'd come up with the kind of titles they claim I ought to be trying.

From the results I'm seeing they might well employ a haruspex. I'm pretty sure a quick glance at a sheep's liver (still warm from the sheep) would give just as good a reading as "Players like you love..." or "Because you played...". 

Still, if you throw enough stones in the pond, you're bound to hit a goldfish, eventually. There must have been some sect that did that.

This all came up because I found myself at a loose end yesterday evening, when I wanted to play Dragon Nest Origins and the private server I rely on for that fix was down. (Yep, I'm still playing DNO. Further along than I've ever been before, too.) Scratching around for something to fill an hour or two, I powered up Steam to see if there were any new suggestions.

I've played quite a few free games there now so Steam has the idea I'm cheap, which suits me fine. I am. They keep shoving more freebies my way and a surprising number aren't at all bad. Even if they are, they're almost always very short, so I'm out no cash and not much time if I pick one and it's a bust.

 

The other day I played Faefever, "winner of two Swedish game awards": "Best execution in narrative" and "Best diversity execution", categories that seem oddly focused on... well, execution. Maybe its a translation error. 

The game was entertaining, although I can see why the most common complaint among the otherwise "very positive" reviews is that the ending doesn't make much sense. 

Also there was one puzzle that I didn't understand even after I'd watched someone on YouTube solve it. I mean, sure, I copied what they did and it worked, but how they knew what to do still eludes me even when I could see them doing it. The whole thing felt unfinished, somehow, although not unfinished by me because I did get to the peculiar ending.

That's another thing about these bite-sized games. I finish them. Over the course of (what is it now?) forty years of playing video games, I can't pretend I've finished many, but my percentage is rising fast now I'm on the short stuff.

That's every small town in a fifty mile radius of where I live.

The whole feel of these pocket games from tiny studios reminds me strongly of the indie comics scene back in the '80s and '90s. I read a lot of short, whimsical comics loosely based on peoples' personal experiences back then. They were often drawn with considerable skill although equally often with significantly less self-discipline.  

Sometimes, when it worked, their images or themes stuck with me in a way commercial, professional comics didn't. I can still remember some of the Help! Shark stuff, for example, particularly Speedo Kitten ("Speedo Kitten, brave and strong, always there when things go wrong, he'll help you when you're in a fix, he likes eating chocolate biscuits."). It's just as well I remember it, too. It seems to be one of the few things you can't find on the internet. Maybe I should dig out my old zines and digitize them for posterity.

All of this probably seems like a self-indulgent, rambling digression but for once it's not. Not quite.

Wait a minute... there are leaves inside the house?

 

Faefever was okay but the game I played last night was very good indeed. It's called Scarlet Hollow and it's the creation of Black Tabby Games, "an indie studio founded by Real Married Adults Abby Howard and Tony Howard-Arias". 

Abby is a comics artist and the game has a deep and pervasive comics sensibility. An unsuprising number of these small, short, free indie narrative-driven games do. A venn diagram of comics, visual novels and animated movies wouldn't leave an awful lot of white space, I imagine.

Scarlet Hollow looks and feels quite specifically like the kind of thick, squarebound, black and white books that take up so much of the space on the lower shelves of the graphic novel section in the bookshop where I work. Many of those feature detailed renderings of architecture and interior design in the tradition of Harvey Pekar, combined with a loose, expressive Eisneresque approach to figure-work, the combination of which gives the whole thing a satisfyingly grounded yet freewheeling effect. 

My philosophy exactly.

 

In terms of gameplay, Scarlet Hollow is "a horror visual novel and adventure game", which about covers it. Actually, no, it doesn't, quite. There's some rpg in there, too. You get to pick some traits that have an effect on gameplay (Pick "Talks to Animals" or you'll regret it) and there's a good deal of what I'd call faction work.

That was probably the part I enjoyed the most. The writing is very good, the graphics are gorgeous, the plot is intriguing and the puzzles are satisfying but it's what Tony Howard-Arias calls "the dynamic relationship system" that makes it feel like a game. 

You get a lot of these things in all kind of games, nowadays. The character you play talks to people or gives them gifts or does things for them and they purport to like your character more or less because of it. Dragon Nest Origins does it. My Time At Portia does it. Every game that has those borderline-creepy "companions" does it.

Scarlet Hollow does it more naturally than I've felt it being done before. Except, perhaps, in Doki Doki Literature Club. Even there it was more up-front. In Scarlet Hollow, as is the intention, it's very subtle. I could always feel a relationship taking form in every interaction but I couldn't grasp it and twist it the way other games overtly allow or even expect. I had to nudge and guide and feel my way and even then I was never quite sure if I'd ended up where I wanted to be.

If this doesn't get me on Stella's good side, nothing will.

 

Playing through the whole of Episode One took me just over an hour. I'm slow at games. I always take longer than the average, which in this case is apparently more like forty-five minutes. I do take a lot of screenshots, though. I blame it on that.

Episode One is all there is so far. Episode Two will be available either in "late Q2 in 2021" or "when it's sppoky enough", whichever comes first. I'm a little vague on whether or not that will also be free to play. The itch.io page says it "will be available as part of a season pass". 

The Steam page, however, says the Early Access version will "give our players access to new episodes as we finished them." (Sic). There are seven episodes planned in total and the schedule is to have them all done by October 2023, when the game will leave Early Access and launch in its final form. 

Depending on the pricing, which is going to be the same throughout Early Access and at launch, other than if it goes on sale at any point, I will most likely buy in when the option arrives. In a way it would make more sense to wait until it's finished but autumn 2023 is a long time off. Not to sound too bleak but we could all be dead by then.

Yeah. Me too.

 

In the meantime, I'll be following development in Tony Howard-Arias' informative and interesting blog posts and working my way through Abby Howard's back catalogue of comics. That could take a while. I read Chapter One of The Last Halloween before I began wring this post and it took me longer than it took to play through the first episode of Scarlet Hollow. 

If you like funny, smart writing and drawing I recommend both the comics and the game. although you might need a certain sensibility to enjoy either.  It is horror, it's true. The game has a warning on Steam for mature content and "gore and other disturbing imagery." 

I wouldn't worry too much about Episode One but if what I saw in The Last Halloween is any guide I wouldn't be so sanguine about what comes after. And yet, even though I really don't like horror as a genre (I have a whole post brewing about how everything has to have a horror inflection these days and what a bore that is...) I really liked Scarlet Hollow. It's more X-Files than... well, than some horror thing I won't have seen because it's too grue.

Score one for Steam's algorithms after all, guess.

The Longest Road

 

Surprising though it seems (to me, at least) informed comments by XyzzSqrl and Paeroka on yesterday's post suggest at least some of the demos in the Steam Game Festival will only be available for a week. Make that three days if you're starting from now. 

I was going to spend this evening playing through a couple more but given the urgency, I thought I'd better get this up right away. I would strongly recommend taking a look at The Longest Road On Earth while you have the chance. It'll only take you twenty minutes but it'll be a good twenty.

The Longest Road is a difficult game to describe. For a start, it's not a game. I know I say that about a lot of things but in this instance it's the plain fact. The full version, when it appears later this year, may or may not be a game; the demo certainly is not.

To be scrupulously fair to the publisher, Raw Fury, they don't claim that it is. They describe it as "An emotive interactive visual and auditory experience". A bit fancy for my taste but accurate nonetheless. 

Raw Fury are quite fancy, though. They describe themselves as an "(Un)publisher": We don’t care about genres or mechanics. We care about experiences and emotions." There's quite a lot more like that. You can read it here if you like.

I don't particularly care how they describe themselves, not if they're going to (un)publish "games" like this. Not to mention Kathy Rain and Backbone, both of which they also have in their stable. 

If pushed, I'd say the Longest Road demo is the closest thing I've seen to a true adaptation of the classic indie graphic novel style for interactive media. Everything from the choice of black and white to the animals-as-people characters to the focus on small, personal slice-of-life storytelling suggests it. 

If that sounds appealing then you'll love this demo. It's elegaic, evocative and open to interpretation as the best small press comic-shop favorite. Just don't expect a story.

As the Steam notes say, "There’s no context given in these chapters, you won’t know these characters or their stories, but you can experience moments of time with them and create your interpretations." What I'm not so clear about is whether that applies just to the demo or to the full game. It seems to be lifted verbatim from the game's entry on the Raw Fury website, which doesn't mention the demo at all. 

I hope the finished product will be very much the same. I found the complete lack of exposition to be one of the most compelling aspects of what was, for me, an exceptionally immersive experience. I don't feel any narrative is necessary. Context, though... well, I felt it had plenty. 

The mechanics deserve a mention. There aren't any. Oh, alright, there are a few. Here are the keys I had to press: A, D, Space. And here's how much say I had about when to press them: none.

The "game" (seriously, it's not a game) prompts you at every possible interaction. Those actions are sequential. You either press the correct key and the next thing happens or you don't and you sit and watch a static image. Your choice. 

It's compelling. Despite having no agency you feel you have agency. The exact same agency you have reading a graphic novel. You can turn the page or not. Sometimes you want to turn the page. Sometimes you want to linger. That's your choice.

The best part I've left 'til last. Yes, the pixel art is beautiful. Yes, the non-mechanical mechanics are a joy. The real reason the whole thing feels so magical, though, is the music. 

 

The Longest Road On Earth demo has what may well be the best soundtrack I've ever heard in a video game, bar none, although it's hardly a fair competition. I've never played a video game before that simply uses a succession of songs as its soundtrack in the exact same way you'd hear them if you'd put on an album. 

The Steam page acknowledges how crucial the music is to the experience: "The Longest Road on Earth includes the soundtrack so you can take the experience with you on your journey". If the aural experience of the demo is replicated throughout the full game when it appears, it might be hard to tell whether it's the music soundtracking the visuals or the visuals providing video in support of the songs.

The first thing I did when the demo ended was to trawl the web to find out who I'd just been listening to. It wasn't hard. The songs are the work of one person, Beicoli. She's a Spanish indie-type with a very low-key presence on the usual platforms: Bandcamp and YouTube,. I found only one video of her performing live:

The bulk of her available material seems to be on Soundcloud. I'm listening to it as I write this. It could scarcely be more in my wheelhouse but that doesn't explain the superb synergy between her music and Mohammed Bakir's pixel art.

While I'm handing out praise I ought to mention the other members of the  team, Ed Verz, in charge of the game's aesthetics, graphic development and programming and Arturo Monadero, who handles production and narrative design.

Together, the four of them have brought something quite special into the world. Why all the characters have to be anthropomorphic animals yet again is a question for another day.

Climb Higher

 

I spent an hour this afternoon playing two free games I found on Steam. I say "playing". I might be stretching a point.

The first was Cloud Climber. It's from Two Star Games and it only appeared on Steam a couple of weeks ago. Someone must have been waiting for it. It already has a "Very Positive" rating from nearly fourteen hundred reviews.

That could be because the developer's previous game, My Friend Is A Raven, has been available on Itch.io for a while, long enough to pick up some (Over-enthusiastic) reviews and a whole bunch of video walkthroughs on YouTube. 

 

I played MFIAR (as no-one is calling it) after I finished Cloud Climber. It's one of those multiple-ending games that seem to have become something of a talking point around here of late. 

It could almost be an exemplar of the genre. Its endings are so central to the design they aren't only named, they're numbered. My first playthrough took me less than ten minutes and I got the bad ending. I know it was the bad ending because... well, see for yourself.

 

It seemed quite plain to me that the idea here must be to see all the endings. When it's made as clear as that my issues with the general concept don't seem entirely relevant. Also, it was pretty obvious how to get to see the rest.

Well, two of them. I skipped through the same steps with slight variations a couple more times for those. It only took two or three minutes each time. It would have been rude not to.

I couldn't figure out the one ending I was missing, though. I thought I'd rung all the changes. There are only a very few ways to twist a tale with so few moving parts. In the end it turned out I needed to do less, not more. That fixed it. But I had to watch YouTube. I didn't figure it out on my own.

 

So that's My Friend Is A Raven. I realize I haven't actually described it in any way but why bother? It's free and it takes ten minutes to play. If you're interested, go try it. It's no life-changing experience but it's worth ten minutes of anyone's time.

More unusual and possibly more intriguing is the game that led me there, Cloud Climber. This one really does push the boundaries of what could reasonably be called a game. The description on Steam calls it "a short narrative adventure game". Well, it is short. I won't argue with that.

 

Gameplay consists of climbing ladders and opening doors. A couple of times there are keys to pick up because a couple of doors are locked, even though there seems no reason they should be. There's one interaction with a fixed object and twice you need to collect some planks and repair something but again doing so doesn't seem to serve any function whatever except to justify calling it a game.

As for narrative, there are diary pages lying around and the protagonist soliloquizes now and again in voiceover. The sum total of the storyline could be jotted down in a paragraph. A short paragraph.

 

The minimalistic approach is highly effective. It doesn't really need anything more. The whole thing isn't so much a game as a mood piece, a tone poem even. 

It takes place atop a series of wooden towers high enough to reach the clouds, which is precisely what they were built to do. Visually, it's breathtaking. Literally, I imagine, if you have any kind of a fear of heights.

I'm not sure whether it's possible to fall off the stairs or platforms. One of the diary pages does allude to the possibilty. I was very careful not to find out. It certainly feels like it could happen at any moment, though.

 

The soundscape is understated and evocative. There's a disorienting sense of isolation and loneliness. The ending (there's only the one this time... I think) comes laced with bittersweet confusion. The developer (it's just one person, Gavin Eisenbeisz) calls Cloud Climber "a really relaxing experience" and I guess it is, at that. Provided you don't think about it too hard. Or have acrophobia. Or abandonment issues.

Once again I won't go on at length. Cloud Climber took me about fifteen minutes and the screenshots pretty much tell the story. It's free, go play it.

There's a third project in the works from the same studio, something that does indeed look much more like a game. It's called My Beautiful Paper Smile and it's already available in Early Access. It's a cheery little fable about "a world where children are raised in large facilities, and taught to smile at all times. If the kids show any emotion other than happiness they are deemed imperfect, and are heavily punished". Just the kind of thing we all need right now, I'm sure you'll agree.

Might give that one a miss, at least for the time being. Not sure I'm really quite in the mood.

Sunlit Uplands

I wasn't going to comment on SynCaine's recent piece on the future for niche MMOs, or on Keen's very similar take on the same topic because, well, its all been said so many times already. But then I happened to read Massively's short piece this morning on the Pathfinder Kickstarter campaign.

This is the summary of what Pathfinder is supposed to be:

"a grindless, classless system that allows for limitless character progression, large-scale battles, player-built structures, player-driven content, and useful trade and crafting."

And to build this wonder they reckon to need just $1m.

This begs so many questions, not the least of which is why, if an MMO fulfilling all those criteria can be made for $1m, we don't we have a slew of them already. What's the variable that might allow this team to produce a such a God Game for 1% or less than what it would cost a big-name studio?

The main cost everyone seems to want to cut is the cost of making it look good. Is that really where that 99% cost saving comes from, though? Mightn't it really come down to how much the people making it are being paid? That, and the cost of the environment in which they work while they are making it.

How much of the $100 million in "development costs" of an AAA MMO goes on making the game look (and sound) beautiful rather than on salaries and infrastructure costs?  Is making something that looks beautiful intrinsically more costly than making something that, well, doesn't?

Is it shallow to want this level of detail?

If you could work for a big company offering all the perks and paying you the big money, why would you choose instead to work for a fraction of that somewhere far less comfortable? Won't indie studios always rely on new up-and-comers who'll be out of there as soon as a better offer comes up, on-the-slide devs just glad to get the work and mavericks who think they can do it better than anyone, regardless of the evidence to the contrary?


Or am I misunderstanding the way the industry operates? Does someone coding or 3D Modelling an indie MMO get the same industry-standard wage-and-benefits package he or she would get for doing the same thing for Blizzard or ANet?

I grew up with the punk ethic. "It was easy, it was cheap, go and do it" as The Desperate Bicycles declaimed at the end of their 1977 non-hit "Handlebars". And yes, it was easy and cheap to make a punk 45. Whether you can make a sustainable, satisfying  MMO as cheaply and easily, that I'm not so sure. And, really, $1m dollars isn't all that cheap and two years in development isn't all that easy.

Or to look at a screen as though through a window?

Hugely commercial video games can be produced by small teams. In the 80s that was the norm. In the 21st century Minecraft hammers the point home beyond argument. We've had MMOs for more than fifteen years, though, and if there's been a large-scale, commercial success from a tiny team operating on a shoestring budget I must have missed it. How many people work for CCP? How much did EVE cost?

Like SynCaine and Keen, I hope we are at that watershed. I hope the next few years will see a stream of well-designed, well-executed, stable, commercially and aesthetically successful MMOs emerging from a plethora of independent developers. I hope we have choice coming out of our ears. I'm more than willing to live with the problem of having too many good MMOs to choose from to be able even to try them all.

For the moment, though, this brave New Wave isn't much more than a ripple far out at sea.