Jason Rohrer (of Passage, Gravitation, and others) has put together a very different experience in his latest, Between. Hosted by US Esquire as part of their 'Best and Brightest 2008' feature, it's a two-player game with a twist. In his latest Gamasutra feature, Ian Bogost takes a look at the game and the element of disjunctive play we find — a game designed to highlight just how far apart we all are, not bring us together:

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Kotakuite Daniel Novais sent me an email this past week, asking me to take a look at his "little short artsy game" called Estamos Pensando (Portuguese for 'We Are Thinking'). Inspired in part by Jason Rohrer's Passage, Estamos Pensando is a sweet, sad, and polished little game. Daniel said that he's now trying to work on something a little happier, since one comment on Rohrer's Gravitation noted that these 'artsy' games are usually depressing. There are Portuguese and English versions of the game, and gameplay is quite simple. The game has apparently gotten some nice initial reviews since its submission to the Brazilian symposium SBGames 2008 festival, and it's worth a little bit of your time.

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Jason Rohrer's 'Game Design Sketchbook' has an interesting meditation up on the nature of single player game mechanics — a lot of the achingly simple, but endlessly challenging board games that Rohrer points to require a minimum of two players. Rohrer's question is how to make a single player game that doesn't rely on typical mechanics to provide depth and challenge? Is it possible to have a game with the (gameplay) depth of go without falling back on AI or randomness or 'physical' contests? Well, in short, no:

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Jason Rohrer (creator Passage, Immortality, and others) is back with another game, this one with the theme of regret (bet you never would've guessed from the title). Rohrer and a journalist writing about the design process game up with the theme, after nixing such topics as "stop snitching", "torture policy", and "stop-and-frisk". The game itself deals with feeding animals ... sort of:

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We've mentioned Jason Rohrer's weird little works before, in the form of Passage and Gravitation; now with his 'Game Design Sketchbook' column at the Escapist, he puts up new little games monthly. This month features the theme of life, death, and immortality (appropriately called Immortality):

We generally assume that immortality is good, just as we assume that death is bad. Of course, universal immortality (all six billion of us) would be physically impractical. But what about individual immortality? What about for you? If you could become immortal, would you?

Immortality is a game about that question, and it's also about the converse of that question: Does death have some fundamental value that we usually ignore?

Immortality [The Escapist]

Jason Rohrer, designer of weird little artistic diversions Passage and Gravitation, has a new column over at The Escapist focusing on prototyping and game design; each month will have a new discussion of a (playable) prototype. I love prototyping discussions, and it's so much the better when the things are playable; I just think it's a nice way to illustrate points about game design. This month, he introduces a little (simple) game called Perfectionism:

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Back in December, I mentioned a little game called Passage. Well, Jonathan Blow clued me in to the fact that Jason Rohrer is back with yet another weird, artistic little game, this one called Gravitation:

I'm not going to provide an in-depth explanation for Gravitation. I'm hoping that most people will understand it as it stands. However, it involves more complex game mechanics than Passage, and it is trying to express something much more subtle .... The mechanics themselves are relatively simple, but the emergent behavior harbors a lot of texture. Know that there are no "accidents" in this game design. Everything you notice about the game, and every subtle interaction that you experience, is intentionally packed with meaning. Gravitation explores how a particular corner of my life feels, as only a game can.

It's definitely worth a quick play through; Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux versions are available.

Gravitation: a video game by Jason Rohrer