I played the Places game, which are a bunch of small and atmospheric 3D paintings where one can walk around and spend a few minutes. Places was created by a creator with Tumblr handle ktch0 and tigsource handle ktch. The creator has some more info about their work at this link, which is where I found the Places game. I believe this is a personal project that the creator has iterated and built greatly upon. I think people of any age could play this game, as it is just a bunch of places to be explored, but there is some need for proficiency with how to use a computer. Many places are offered through web browsers, but there are Linux/Windows download links as well. I played solely using the web browser links.
Each of the different places was a different terrain with different weather. The player gets to walk around and explore whatever they want on their own accord. When I first entered my first game, I was surprised at the sound effects. There is a constant wind sound effect in the background, footstep-like crunches when you walk around, and water splashing if you are swimming. I felt this really added to the experience of the game. Had I had the sound on my laptop muted I probably would not have been able to immerse as much. I felt these were very integral mechanics that added to the aesthetics and dynamics of the game. The walking in the game is just like walking in real life, without actually having to be in that environment. However, since our “bodies” are not in the frame, the walking doesn’t really feel too connected to my humanness, so I didn’t care too much about whatever story there was to tell.
I felt that this game was intended to have some narrative architecture, but I didn’t really see it fit well under any of the 5 architectures. I felt it fit most under “Enacting Stories”, however since the game is just walking through places aimlessly, there isn’t much narrative actually going on. I don’t honestly think there was much of a story in the game, but the small story there was, had to be done by walking/swimming. That being said, I felt a little bored playing the game. I ended up finding myself searching for the edges of the world (which I did end up finding).
In many ways I do feel like the game prompted me to search the world unconstrained, and search for interesting components (ie the edge of the world, or glitches in the sky), but I almost think that’s because I would have been too bored to play it otherwise. Then again, some places were more interesting than others. For example, place 6 was the first game I played that incorporated swimming, and some places were just really pretty to me (see below).
I did run into an error message that I wasn’t sure how to interpret.
A couple of my game experiences were also lacking. I felt the swimming capability was extremely slow. I literally could not move in the water. The rules of each place were inconsistent, Some said “alt-enter” for full screen while others were just “enter”. Some also didn’t mention using “shift” to move faster, or “click” to grab/release focus, even though those were all valid moves. I had to explore on my own to discover this. I felt these were mechanics that are very important to the game experience, and would have been nice to have clearly stated in every place, not just some. Depending on the order someone tried playing these places, they may have had a different experience than me.
This game had little room for any violence. As players literally all we could do was walk, swim, and turn, and look. The closest I could get to violence was trying to walk off the side of the world. However, I was only able to get half my screen off the world and I couldn’t walk further. In section I played a game where we basically had to come up with random stories (as bears) to circumvent bad things from happening (for us it was security stopping us from opening a vault). That left a lot of room for creativity, and allowed for violence but not necessarily encouraged it. In this game, there isn’t even a chance to be violent since the action space is so limited. This exclusion of violent elements I think successfully keeps misuse of this game to a minimum. In general, I felt the game was pretty limited in its capabilities and opportunities, so there wasn’t much room for any ethical mishaps to occur anyways.
