Recent comments
 |
 |
 |
 |
Discord
Do you make little art games, or "game poems" to express yourself to the world? Would you like to see more videogames that tackle every aspect of human experience—the interior stuff, as well as the exterior stuff? Do you make games during the day and read poetry at night—or vice versa? Would you be interested in a cozy space where you could talk about this stuff with other game makers without being considered weird?
If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, join my Game Poets Discord!
Thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts Lucas—I really appreciate it. Making notes on paper seems like such an obvious thing to do… and yet, after living in a computer for so many years, one starts to forget that things like "paper and pencil" ever existed. Darned machines.
I too am new to IF and recently finished Anchorhead. I had played a few shorter games before it (Emily’s Galatea and Metamorphosis, and Lost Pig). Your review described my feelings of the game pretty well. I thought the writing was very effective and immersive and the game was just fabulous overall. I got into the game specifically for the Lovecraft aspects and I was certainly satisfied there. I’ve recommended this game to friends, but not as an intro to IF. Although it’s a super example of what IF can do, it was pretty daunting for me and I got really stuck often.
I tried a few times to type, "go to mansion," and other places, but it didn’t become much of a problem for me. I drew a map and kept notes on a notepad (the value of which I learned from the Myst games) and the compass directions and movement became second nature. Sometimes I would quickly move from place to place and ignore the descriptions, and sometimes I would pay attention.
My frustrations could be chalked up to IF inexperience, specifically not knowing that "look in" will provide different (and necessary) results from "x" or "look at." In those cases I thought it would be nice to have a little hint that you can look inside. For the most part the puzzles were intuitive and inobtrusive. It’s a testament to the writing that the player can share the character’s goals, and work out what can be done with the resources available to advance. Often, in all types of games, the only reason you go through a locked door is because it’s there.
Anyway, I’m new to your blog (found it through Emily’s) and what I’ve read so far has been fascinating. Looking forward to reading more!
Ah, a detachable esca "creature"… that’s actually quite an interesting idea, Sapid, which I hadn’t thought of (except in a more metaphorical way). I do like how this theory could serve to unite the ending with the rest of the game… I’ll have to think about this further—thanks for the idea.
Wow, great to see the developer here, and thanks for your commentary!
@Jordan: Actually, I was being very literal (in keeping with my mechanistic interpretation) and viewing the anglerfish as a sort of fantasy creature that is like a real anglerfish apart from its man-eating size and the fact that its esca is detachable, and can float around on its own. I could invent an entire theory about a symbiotic relationship between the fish and a glow-worm like floating creature, but that would cause me to become even sillier than I already am.
Thanks for the developer commentary ChevyRay: it’s really interesting to get insight into the creative process, like you provide!
@Krendil: you may be right about the ending, but I actually like the ambiguity, and the uncertainty in the Beacon. It’s one of the things that makes the game seem less simplistic than it might have been, in my opinion: Beacon’s message, like everything in real life, is not entirely clear.
@Sapid: I think your spiritual interpretation has merit. As far as the game’s ending, I have a hard time with "You have in reality been following the most dangerous thing in the cave the whole time." Are you saying that the Beacon you’ve been following is literally the anglerfilsh’s esca? I see how they can be compared, metaphorically, but the literal equation seems a stretch, if not impossible, seeing as how you haven’t even been traveling through water. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding you.
As far as praising the game’s interactivity, I should have perhaps expounded on that a bit, rather than making a passing comment. You are of course right that the game is quite linear, and that your actions are constrained further by The Beacon. What I meant by my parenthetical remark is simply that I cannot picture this game succeeding in any kind of non-interactive form, as some games could perhaps succeed. The question that arises, of course, is why, when the interactivity is so limited, is it so important? There are many games, by contrast, where you are more free, but where the interactivity feels more artificial, and less essential to the work. I used to think it was possible to analyze a game’s interactive components "objectively" to see how important interactivity was to the title (and consequently how important the title was from the standpoint of furthering our understanding of interactivity). I now think that such a view is too simplistic, precisely because of games like this.
(err, by which I mean "additional ones like this game", not implying that this game wasn’t thoughtful/atmospheric enough—quite the contrary!)
This is an amazing game! Thanks for linking to it and reviewing it, Jordan, and thanks for the creator commentary, ChevyRay! I hope we see more thoughtful, atmospheric platformers from you in the future ^__^
To be honest, Jordan’s interpretation of the game was almost spot-on, although I do like your more spiritual interpretation as well. It just wasn’t intended to be read that way. The whole premise of the game is for the player to develop a relationship with the beacon, and in having their otherwise inevitable death to the darkness spared, that relationship is almost immediately initiated by a trust in the beacon, that it is good and there to help you, to save you. In doing so, the player’s focus is meant to be turned to the world around them, their senses focused in on this small man, his efforts as he pulls himself up from every ledge, and a sense of overwhelming loneliness despite the fact that this dark, echoey cave is brimming with life.
You’re definitely right about the strong metaphorical past behind the "beacon of light" being a bad and evil thing, and actually perhaps that is something I should have given more consideration to, as I didn’t realize how much symbolism such a thing carried. There are definitely downfalls of not being very well read or educated, and having people misinterpret my creations as such is definitely a clear consequence of that.
I feel that had I severed your dependence on the beacon by giving you alternate paths to the end, or other outcomes to the game, I would have also severed the strength of this relationship. When the beacon leaves you behind, many players feel a sense of desperation, an almost anxiety at its departure, which is one of the things I pushed for the most while designing the game in that 48 hour rush. But in order to make that departing effective, I elongated the beginning of the game, which is another thing Jordan read into quite clearly.
Beacon isn’t about life and death, it’s not even about staying alive. I don’t try to inform or preach any message in the game, such as the inevitability of death, the error in misplaced trust, or anything like that. The game isn’t meant to judge you or anybody, it’s merely an exploration of a particular strong aspect of humanity, and that is our often potent ability to place trust in things, people, in our moments of weakness. A child in a grocery store with his mother? His mother is the beacon, the other shoppers and their own children are the creatures of this particular cave, your meetings with them fleeting and all too short. The aisles you don’t go down are the unexplored regions of the cave, unreachable to you. Or maybe you are a person at a party of people you don’t know, and you’ve accompanied a friend who is all too at home with them. You cling to that person, you’re afraid to lose them because they’re the only thing that you can trust in. It doesn’t matter whether your friend abandons you, or if they are a good or bad person, or if your mother dies in a car accident on the drive home. Those are all consequences of a particular instance of reality, but your trust and reliance you place in your beacon at any time is the same.
I could have given beacon a happy ending, one where you escape into the surface and the beacon retreats into the sky. But that wouldn’t have changed the meaning of the game at all. Telling people that placing their trust will result only in disaster is no more of a lie then telling them that it will guide them to freedom and happiness. But it is in human nature to trust, and to cling to what keeps us strong in our weakest moments, and Beacon is about how even the most misguided trust can allow us to see a part of the world that is unknown to use, to be scared of it, to wonder about it, and to get lost in it. Sometimes that trust ends in tragedy, and sometimes it ends in discovery. But what I explored was how powerful this trust can be, how painful it is when taken away or lost, and the anxiety that can result from questioning this trust.
So the ambiguity of the game’s ending, and any meaning it carries (which seemed to be even lost on Jordan in his VERY praise-filled, yet accurately interpreted review of the game) is definitely a fault of mine. Some people might even say that the ending was the weakest part, which only serves as a cheap joke in contrast to the rest of the game, and I could hardly call that innacurate. In all honesty, I didn’t know how to end the game at all, because I’d already accomplished what I’d wanted to by the time you’d fallen through the tunnel of lights, and I didn’t want to force any type of message in the game, just to encourage insight into a particular aspect of humanity that I found interesting and inspiring.
So I guess it was a way, like Jordan has stated, to keep people from taking the actual outcome of the game too seriously, and to keep myself from taking my creation too seriously as well. Beacon isn’t an art game meant to criticize people, other games, or anything like that. I don’t carry any pretentions or beliefs that the way I see or do things is better than anybody else’s, I just wanted to inspire people, to make them feel desperate, scared, lonely, but in a way that made those things beautiful and engaging aspects of reality, rather than in a cynical, sad way.
I am not exactly the most intelligent or artistic person, and I am usually better off making score-em-up arcade games, so Beacon was really breaking ground for me personally as well. You have no idea how good this review makes me feel about the game and the meaning I poured into it. Thank you!
Great review. I’m completely on board with your praise for the game’s technical merits, but I’m going to have to disagree with you about your interpretation. That giant fish at the end is, after all, an anglerfish. (In fact, if you look quickly you can see the esca–the "beacon" you’ve been following–settling back on the fish’s illicium.) You have in reality been following the most dangerous thing in the cave the whole time; you are the moth admiring the Arachnocampa. Of course the literature associated with "guiding" lights in dark places–Will-o’-the-wisps, kitsune-bi, pixy-lights, corpse candles, etc.–most often associates the phenomenon with misdirection or the passage to death, which raised my suspicions about this beacon right away.
I think "Beacon" can be viewed as a fairly simple metaphorical tale about spirituality in a naturalistic world. You are humanity, lost and highly edible in the dark. You see something amazing–"a beacon!" you cry, and, "hope!" You attribute will and beneficence to your Light, and it becomes a spiritual force that bears the promise of something greater. But this attitude does you no good; the universe is merely a mechanistic eat-or-be-eaten place, and ultimately your hope is your undoing and the giant anglerfish demonstrates its superior adaptations. You would have been better off clinging to your prudent fear and clinging to one of the light-producing crystals; you might have been "spiritually" empty, but at least you’d be alive. And continued existence is really the only thing of value in the world of "Beacon."
(I’m a little surprised by your praise for this title’s interactivity, as there’s only one way to reach the end of the game [unless you stop at a crystal] and as you pointed out the beacon serves to limit your speed and actions.)
I think ending also made clear the reason that all the other life fled the light. At first it seemed like the creatures were evil, but your beacon of light protected you. At the end, you realise that it is the beacon that they ran with good reason and, if anything, the beacon should be considered evil.
Regarding the ending itself, I think it might have been more effective if the beacon didn’t come back, and the screen just faded to black, leaving the character alone with his desperate, misguided hope.