Lo-Fi Plays II: Six Tiny Reviews for Six Tiny Games
by gamer_152
When thinking about games, we tend to sort them into two big piles, piles that we didn't really have twenty years ago. There are AAA games which we broadly describe as being high-budget and polished. And then there are indie games which we understand to have lower production values but more room for experimentation. Independent releases are able to satisfy niche interests and may not necessaril...
When thinking about games, we tend to sort them into two big piles, piles that we didn't really have twenty years ago. There are AAA games which we broadly describe as being high-budget and polished. And then there are indie games which we understand to have lower production values but more room for experimentation. Independent releases are able to satisfy niche interests and may not necessarily speak to a general audience. Using that dichotomy is fine if we're talking about video games in the most general terms possible. However, go any deeper than that, and we must acknowledge that indie games aren't a monolith.
An independent developer could spend anywhere from nothing to a few million dollars on a single title. A development team for such a game can consist of a single person or a group of fifty. So, the label "indie" doesn't tell us much about the production conditions in which a game was made. Therefore, it doesn't describe much about the game itself. Mid-tier products with sizeable budgets and ambitious marketing campaigns get lumped together with bedroom projects developed for self-education or recreation. The danger in this thinking is that we often disregard the latter kind of creation. We ignore the little fish because, by focusing on the slightly bigger ones, we already think we are absorbing everything "indie".
I'm as guilty of displaying this bias as anyone. So, I wanted to take a moment to scrub through itch.io for some games off the beaten track. To rummage for the side projects and the hobbyist items. Here's what I managed to find:
The Last Door on the Left
The objective in The Last Door on the Left is so simple, it's suspicious. We have to make our way across one floor of a hotel and take, you guessed it, the last door on the left. The only problem is that door leads back to the start of the maze. On every loop, an aspect of the building's interior changes. Maybe all the chairs are now stacked on the tables, or there's been an accident in the lift.
TLDotL is a knowing reaction to everything horror games have been for the last decade and a half. The more time goes by, the more I think P.T. may have been one of the most influential lights of the 2010s, and you can see its fingerprints all over this thriller. The Last Door's graphics are also clearly inspired by the recent wave of "haunted" PS1 games that have set the low-fi indie world alight. Boutique developers have embraced low-poly modelling that obscures monsters and gives environments an uncanny, other-worldly feel. TLDotL won't bring you face to face with a villain, though. Its developers identify that sometimes what's suggested is more terrifying than what's shown.
The Last Door on the Left on itch.io.
Last Call
Note: This game contains depictions of domestic violence. If you are experiencing domestic violence and are in the UK, you can access resources from the NHS here. If you are in the US, you can find resources from the NCADV here.
There are various formats of storytelling that are highly popular outside of video games but exceptionally rare inside the medium. For example, dramatisations of real-life events. One reason to take a look at smaller games is that they're almost the only place you can see autobiographical work appearing. Nina Freeman has made a name for herself in this field with honest and intimate art that spans the emotional range from comedic romance to deep personal drama. Last Call is one of her darkest games yet.
Developed by Freeman and her partner, Jake Jeffries, Last Call has us explore a home full of burning boxes. In each box is a microcosm of the protagonist's possessions, and some of them contain postcards recording her time dating an abusive man. In addition to documenting the painful abrasions and lingering emotional scars of that partnership, these diary entries also discuss the complications that trap people in violent relationships: the genuine attachment to someone who'll hurt you and the moments of calm that keep the victim revolving through the cycle of abuse.
If you know Freeman, you'll recognise that the clutter of manga volumes and N64 cartridges between the cardboard is her real belongings. So, in the game, we're literally unboxing what she has been carrying around for her whole life. The raging fires impart how domestic violence can turn a home's typically safe and nurturing environment into one of perpetual danger and panic. The inferno never quite burns the place down, yet it's always nipping at our fingers.
Rococo
Games made with nominal resources can forgo the unnecessary extras and stick to the bare essentials. Rococo is a prime example. In fact, it's rather unusual that it's called rococo when it's rocking the minimalist look so boldly. Its art is almost vaporwave, but the colours are highly saturated. There's also a concrete environment on the horizon rather than just a jumble of dolphins and statues floating in the ether.
The setting is like a cross between a kitchen showroom and the carton for a tropical juice drink, and the play is a quick session on a trampoline. The floor has this springy texture that allows us to sink down into it like it's a soft bed and then jet up into the sky like it's a rocket booster. The experience's feel is second to none. There are also some amazing visual effects in this game that contort facial features and blur our surroundings. A developer working on a more substantial project should really look into borrowing them.
Death Flush
While some diminutive games use primitive polygonal art to disturb, Death Flush uses the same tool to comedic effect. You can compare both The Last Door on the Left and Death Flush to the original Resident Evil. However, where TLDotL is recreating the eerie atmospheric corridors of Resident Evil, Death Flush is a thirty-minute version of the "Jill sandwich" scene.
An adventure game, Death Flush follows the fate of Ronnie, a young man who believes he has escaped the ruthless Toilet Seat Killer, only to encounter the spectre one night in his girlfriend's bathroom. There's more than a dash of classic slasher franchises mixed into the game. However, it's sampling from the later movies in those series. It celebrates the point at which the script-writers were throwing out ever-more absurd gimmicks to get butts in seats and were reducing antagonists to a notepad of awful puns.
The humour in Death Flush works because the game doesn't feel the need to nod and wink at the camera too much. The non-existent animation, wooden acting, and ridiculous premise do enough heavy-lifting on their own. There are a couple of beautifully stupid surrealist landscapes in here, and it's wild the range this free title has. It takes on point-and-click puzzles, an environmental riddle, and a boss fight, and does shockingly well with all of them. We love the toilet, don't we, folks?
Tall Bagel
Tall Bagel is a game for anyone who's ever been to a dinner where they felt like the odd one out: A meal where they were so culturally distanced from the other diners that they might as well have been a different species. In Tall Bagel, you are visiting an expensive restaurant with your family members and their expensive friends. Everything chugs along quite formally, but at some point, you're going to hit the left-click and notice you can fling your tongue across the room like a chameleon.
This night out is the latest offering from Blendo Games, the decorated maniacs behind the off-beat classics Thirty Flights of Loving and Quadrilateral Cowboy. In the game, you can see Brendon Cheung's trademark technique of laying out an environment that looks logically consistent with our own world until you discover some hilariously off-kilter interaction between the parts. In this case, that you can Frog Fractions everything from food to drinking glasses right down your gullet.
The humour is in the clash between your absurd animalism and the formal proceedings. The other guests are concerned about law school and the establishment's exclusivity, and your worries are more base and biological. You can't talk to the other diners, the menu is all food you've never heard of like "tall bagels" and "horchata sprouts", and the party doesn't even seem to notice when you lick their faces. It's uncomfortably authentic when your fellow diners endlessly relitigate what to order or stare at you silently as if you've just been beamed down by a UFO. Plus, this game has one of the most delightful talking animations I've seen in a long time.
JINGOKU
I love Warioware, and I'll yell it from the rooftops. Its frantic music, amorphous art style, and unpredictable mechanics create this chaotic waterslide of a game. But Nintendo hasn't made new Warioware challenges in a hot minute. In response, some underground devs have picked up where Nintendo left off with grab bags like Game Soup and SPOOKWARE. JINGOKU is another such infinite minigame dispenser. Yet, it finds its own alcove in the space through how it fits its microgames into a macrogame and by bringing a traditional Japanese flavour to the format.
The top level of JINGOKU is a full-size Jenga tower. Each block in the tower corresponds to a minigame, which we play if we pull that piece out. We earn points by winning minigames, and the goal is to accrue as many points as possible before the stack comes crashing down. The game finds a way to retain the random element of Warioware while still giving us some role in selecting our tasks, involving us more in the play.
The act of delicately removing bricks from the lattice and JINGOKU's sparing use of sound mean that where Warioware is a non-stop onslaught of the bizarre, JINGOKU's vibe alternates between moments of hectic panic and those of concentration and patience. The game has a pristine look, using lots of untextured surfaces and negative space. It's also an instructive demonstration of how interstitial screens and overlays can add as much to a game as models. I came away from JINGOKU remembering so many charming smaller touches like how the blocks perform a backflip before dropping off the screen or how you can still pull pieces from the tower, even as it's collapsing.
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And that's all I got. Every one of the games I mentioned is free or "name your price", so if anything piqued your interest, go check it out. Thanks for reading.