HYPERTEXT WONDERLAND

Have you thought about what you'll do when you go to the rapture? I admit I hadn't before I played Everybody's Gone To The Rapture - the latest Walking Simulator from the good folks at The Chinese Room - but now I'm left wondering. The Chinese Room's third game, released in August last year, is great but with so much praise shifted onto it already I'm struggling to find something to add to the story. It is, as stated by so many others before me, a mature and sombre game. One that leaves traces of emotion like little specks of liquid light. Actually let's leave it there because I won't find a better alliterative phrase than that. Briefly then,  Everybody's Dog and Their Rapture is set in the aftermath of an apocalypse. A quick look on Google doesn't reveal much about what kind of game it is. Even a short video doesn't say much at all. To tell you the truth, I didn't have much of an idea about what the game was really about until...

I once read a quote by one of the writers of   The Talos Principle which said something about how video games are a great medium for tackling philosophical topics. While I've never been able to find the quote every time I've looked for it, I do remember the reason being something about games and philosophy requiring the same type of thinking. Obviously, that isn't always true; some games are simply about blowing things up for fun, but not all of them deal in the vicarious thrill of destruction. One example being said writer's game,  The Talos Principle  which works both as a puzzler and a rumination on the self-sustaining nature of technology. The core experience of The Talos Principle is a puzzle game. It plays a bit like Portal or Antichamber but rather than charming anti-hero es or eclectic aesthetics , the game offers more by way of philosophical conundrums. In the beginning, there are words and these words come from Elohim, the game's central Deity f...

Recently, I read a point about how video game soundtracks make the best music to work to. The person's theory was that the music is designed from the beginning to be part of the background and it naturally encourages attention to be spent elsewhere. While I'm not sure that's always true - especially when it comes to sweeping orchestral scores - I do find myself listening to game OSTs quite a lot when working. This seems to be especially true for a lot of modern indie game soundtracks, like this one for   FTL: Faster Than Light ;  a game I haven't played but whose soundtrack I really dig! It's futuristic-yet-minimalistic score really works a treat as a divider between it and the terrifying silence of the real world. Have a listen! //