Zarf Updates

It's the last day of the year. I can squeeze in one more post, right? If I keep it short.

I can keep it short. Here's some little games that I don't need to say a lot about.

• Despelote
• Many Nights a Whisper
• Keeper

(Don't worry, I have the big IGF review post queued up for January. As soon as the finalists are announced.)

Despelote

• by Julián Cordero and Sebastián Valbuena -- game site

In 2002, Ecuador qualified for the FIFA World Cup for the first time ever. Julián Cordero remembers what it was like.

This is impressionistic, personal, audio-vérité. You're a kid kicking a football around town. Picnickers yell at you. Older kids laugh at you. Sometimes you play a football game on the Nintendo. Your parents are mostly busy running their video rental store.

It's "Where did you go? Out. What did you do? Nothing." except in Quito with FIFA fever.

(Also, second game I've played this month that uses janky photogrammetry to great effect. Take that, realism!)

Many Nights a Whisper

• by Selkie Harbour -- game site

In some reclusive corner of the Mediterranean, everybody's happiness depends on one young athlete with a slingshot. Hit the target, light the torch -- everybody's wishes come true. Don't miss. One shot. No pressure.

You do get to practice, though. And your sling is strung with the gifted braids of the islanders as they tell you their wishes. Accept or reject the wishes. What do people want? What do you want? Just play it; you'll get the idea.

I will say that the final shot pulled me somewhat out of the story. Not because of the uncompromising all-or-nothingness -- that was fine. No, it was because I found myself lining up my shot with in-game polygons and the frame of my monitor. I was trying to work the game engine rather than the game. Oh well.

The protagonist's inner monologue, and their dialogue with the Mentor, is pretty hilarious.

Keeper

• by Double Fine -- game site

An ambulatory lighthouse and their vulture/parrot/griffin buddy go on a quest.

The adventure part of this is light-weight, almost pro-forma. It's all about the environment and the animation and the visual imagination. It's a joyously weird world: alive, probably post-apocalyptic, bustling with weird little dudes. A tonal palette of wonders. Even the underworld (underworlds plural) (this game may break a record for "wake up on abyssal trash-heap" story beats) are eerie without being horrific. I think if you were human, the game would be horror. But you're not.

It's very physical, is what it is. Not like Baby Steps, but your spider-lighthouse-legs are short and clumsy, and that is the shape of your experience. Until... Well, there's a lot to discover.

The best comparison I can make is Jusant. (Climbing quest on a post-civ coral-reef mountain.) But that game was weighed down with narrative journals. Keeper is cheerfully wordless. Also, the magical space (shrimp-) whales cooperate with you, rather than flying off to save the world with their ineffable whaleness. Like I said about the last Double Fine game I played: teamwork is the sign of the times.