alobear | Comedy, Catastrophe, and Computer Games

A couple of weeks ago, we went to Mitch Benn’s ‘I’m Still Here’ show in the basement at The Bloomsbury Theatre. It’s a very small venue, and it was a pretty small crowd even so. We sat in the second row, and my only criticism of the show was that Mitch seemed to be pitching himself to a much bigger space. Or maybe it’s just that he’s naturally very loud and I’m used to being further away. Anyway, it was a great show, tracking the whole history of his career in comedy songwriting, so involved old favourites, unfamiliar stuff, and new stuff, interspersed with very funny commentary on various issues in between.

As a total contrast, the book I read that week was The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood. It wasn’t one of hers that I’d heard of, but I saw someone at work reading it a while ago, and she recommended it, so I thought I’d give it a go. I was really intrigued by the premise, which was a couple signing up for a social experiment whereby they every other month in a lovely gated community, and the months in between in prison. It wasn’t initially made clear what this was supposed to achieve, and how it would provide enough money for the resources made available to the residents, in a future where the economy had pretty much collapsed altogether. So, I was interested to see where it would go, but it was mostly about unpleasant people doing unpleasant things to each other, focusing on sexual politics and abusive relationships, rather than the bigger societal picture. I really disliked all the characters, and found a lot of what went on very uncomfortable reading. In particular, the attitudes towards and treatment of the main female character by all three of the men in her life were appalling. It took a more interesting turn about halfway through when the plot started moving forwards, but I wasn’t clear on the message it was trying to impart, other than the suggestion that people don’t want to have to take responsibility for their actions, and are happier if they can blame others or their circumstances for their situation, rather than facing up to their own involvement. Weird and unsettling, but not in the way I was expecting.

After enjoying playing Florence while on retreat, I decided to try and find other games I could play on my phone that would be as interesting and fun.

The premise of Love You To Bits combines the problematic tropes of Woman in the Refrigerator and Damsel in Distress, in that it starts with the protagonist’s robot girlfriend being blown up and the aim of the game is for him to collect up all the pieces and put her together again. So, the character of Nova has no agency at all in the game and has to rely on her male partner to save the day. However, as well as collecting the pieces, he also collects objects that represent their shared memories, which he compiles to provide an overview of their relationship. In viewing those, Nova is presented as very much an equal partner (and in a lot of ways superior in physical and intellectual attributes) and it shows them sharing pastimes and experiences in a loving way (I don’t know if that mitigates the problematic premise, but I felt like it did - plus, the robots get the ultimate revenge on their evil creator, which also helps). The gameplay itself is also tremendously fun, as you have to figure out what actions to take and in what order to be able to reach the desired objects on each level. I got a lot of satisfaction out of working out some of the puzzles, but I was also glad to have access to an online walkthrough as there were a lot I would never have been able to work out without it. So yes, I cheated, but I only did so when I would otherwise have had to give up on the game altogether, which would have been a shame, because I really enjoyed it overall. There’s a new game out from the same designers, about an alien searching for his kidnapped pet, which I really want to play, but it’s currently only available on Apple.

Doggins is a weird little adventure game, about a terrier who dreams an evil squirrel has transported his house to the moon and is orchestrating a complex plan to gain dominion over humans, via the mechanism of a time-travelling penny farthing. It’s just as bonkers as it sounds, but it’s also very cute, enjoyably simple, and a lot of fun. My only criticism is that it only lasts about half an hour, so it’s perhaps not worth paying for.

Message Quest is similarly short, though a bit more involved, following Feste on his quest to deliver an important scroll to an unknown hero in order to save the world. I found Feste’s reluctance and the player’s role in encouraging him very appealing, and the variety of gameplay really fun. There were stained glass jigsaws to put together, broken road pieces to match up, point-and-click puzzles to solve, conversation trees and navigate, and a really weird fighting system which was most satisfyingly deployed to defeat Feste’s laziness. The whole thing was strange and quite fragmented, and again too brief, but I enjoyed it, and never got stuck.

Last but by no means least, I started Lumino City yesterday and so far it’s the best of the lot. The levels were all created by the designers as physical models with real moving parts, so it’s beautiful and impressive to look at, and works very cleverly in terms of how it all fits together. It follows a little girl, Lumi, on her voyage into the city to track down her missing grandfather and combines various different types of puzzles. My favourite thing about it, though, is the Handymanual, which provides detailed hints at every stage. I’m managing to work out some of the stuff on my own (which I like), but having a built in hint system allows me to access help at very specific points (rather than having to wade through lengthy walkthroughs online) and feels less like giving up and cheating, since it’s part of the game. Based on the index page of the manual, it seems like there are plenty of levels still to look forward to, so hopefully it will last a few days, rather than just a few minutes. Gorgeous, ingenious, and eminently playable - exactly the sort of thing I was looking for.