Playing Every Game in the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality
PEGBRJE: ‘Draw Nine’ and ‘VIDEGOAME’
So how is everything going?
Draw Nine is an interactive fiction piece create by Damon L. Wakes, a writer and game dev out in the United Kingdom. This particular story blends both elements as the magical world requires the protagonist to go on an adventure. Thing is, for some reason, the only thing they were given were nine cards; three cards specifically, but in varying quantities.
The game follows the interactive fiction formula of players reading the events and clicking on the text to continue. Many times there will be multiple texts to choose from, and it is up to players to make an executive decision as to where they wish to go and what would be the best course of action. The only time this ‘deviates’ from the formula is when the three cards appear, and this is when decisions start to get spicy.
Three types of cards are given to the player at the beginning: the steed, the spider, and the serpent (I just noticed they all start with s, sweet). These three are then given to the player in a quantity of nine total cards, meaning that the ratio could be 3/3/3, or it could be like mine of 2/3/4.
This may seem strange for a narrative game to give a random element, but it is this randomized variable that gives tension and excitement. Throughout the game there will be major choices that the player will come across, and only these three cards will be selectable. Each will give a very different ‘response’ to the problem based on the card and its stylization, such as how the steed will normally carry the player away from the danger.
However, as the cards are a limited resource, players need to treat each encounter with severe caution — if they run away from this issue, can they get away when something worse happens? What does the spider actually do, as it killed somebody the one time and made a sweet jacket the other?
Your ability to make educated guesses about what the cards may or may not do, how the situation will react, and if one card is worth using over another is the foundation of this games brilliance. You are constantly reading between the lines of the conversations being had, hoping to find any possibility that may sway you in to picking one card over the other while also weighing how many cards of that kind are left.
Credit to where it is due, the writing enables this gameplay superbly as it details the events as they happen and the fallout from the cards effects. This does mean that the game is a tad short, since there are only ten major decisions, but it keeps the game dense and exciting all the same.
If you love narrative games that like to give spins on how narrative decisions should be made (and love replaying stories to find out more about different paths) then this might be a great game to try out.
VIDEGOAME is the strangely named puzzle adventure created by Eric Koziol, a solo indie dev in Japan. Players will be following a randomly crafted protagnist as they attempt to… hang on, what exactly are we doing in this maze?
Let’s explain the core first. Using any directional interface, players will be maneuvering throughout the levels attempting to find keys. These keys have symbols on their base which correlate to the doors that they can open.
Each room may have a key within it, but may also contain serious hazards that can kill the player with a single touch and forcing a ‘restart’ of the room (via the interact key). This can be often as the puzzles and movement is more akin to a ‘precision platformer’, requiring exact movements and timing in order to avoid getting hit. Dying causes any keys grabbed in the room to be returned to their original location, as well as resetting almost anything moved or interacted with. The one exception is food.
SIKE! This is a survival game as well.
Yes, players have a hunger meter on the bottom right of the screen, and the only way to stave off its perpetual decline is to grab food. Thing is that food does not respawn after death, and can be destroyed by hazards if they spawn on top of each other.
This means that players need to be constantly wary of what food they consume and what to leave behind, because the consequences for low food are a bit nutty; just see above. First ‘PARALLAX’ lines appear, first grey then in colour. Then the screen begins to rotate and zoom in slightly to make it hard to see the puzzles, while keeping with the same control orientation. This just so happens to be alleviated by thresholds of food, but this can be quite tricky since the entire game revolves around precise movement.
VIDEGOAME is one that is hard to quantify. You are not given a directive that is explicit, nor does it entirely make sense. There’s flavour text on the store page and the top left, but at the same time the gameplay demands full attention making it challenging to absorb just what we are doing here. The precision movement is rewarding for those that adore precision platforming-esque games, but cannot be the main focus else food runs too low and it becomes nigh impossible to be ‘precise.
If this makes you confused, so am I — but I think that’s part of the charm. I can easily state that this game is not for everyone, such as myself due to my aversion to precision-heavy games, but I know that many might enjoy it. Give it a whirl if you think that it’s for you.
