passage
Passage Makes Journey To iPhone
9:30AM Michael McWhertor | Jason Rohrer’s lovely and, for some, heartbreaking game Passage has found another home: the iPhone. If you’ve already played the Windows, Mac or Linux version you now have an on-the-go option. More »
Disjunctive Play and Otherness: Between
4:30AM Maggie Greene | 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: More »
Weird Artistic Timewaster of the Day: Regret
3:30AM Maggie Greene | 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: More »Weird Artistic Timewaster of the Day: Immortality
7:30AM Maggie Greene | 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] More »
PvP: Portal vs. Passage
7:30AM Maggie Greene | Nick Montfort, a professor at MIT and GrandTextAuto contributor, has declared (with a some analysis) Passage is a superior game to Portal. Now, if the goal of games at large was to make people think, I might agree. But I think stating that “there are really two big ideas in these two games: The passage of a person through life and the idea that takes control by default in the other, supposedly message-free game, the passage of SKUs through retail stores” is going a little far. But like most provocative statements, I suspect it was intended to spur discussion as much as draw attention to a little game like Passage, and the comments section doesn’t disappoint:
Weird Artistic Timewaster of the Day: Gravitation
5:30AM Maggie Greene | 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 More »
