Small, well-crafted indie games can be great about delivering unfiltered experiences. In Adam Saltsman’s Canabalt, you ran and jumped until you couldn’t any more. With Jason Rohrer’s Passage, you wandered around a pixellated world that represented life’s journey, meeting a spouse and making your way together until that stopped, as it ultimately has to.
The games speak to different things — -speed and excitement for one, emotional attachment and contemplation for the other — but it turns out that they still work pretty well when mashed up together. Developer Sergio Cornaga did exactly that, throwing the colourful, ageing sprites from Rohrer’s game into the grey, post-apocalypse of Saltsman’s infinite runner.
It’s surprisingly effective to watch your character age while bounding over rooftops. Things slow down and your jumps don’t go as high. And, let me tell you, yours truly got a little choked up when I made a jump that my wife didn’t. Check it out for yourself, but keep some Kleenex handy.
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