Day 64: Escape to a Cyan world
When you tell people that you’re doing 100 Days of Play their typical response (after they’ve stopped laughing, or not, depending) is to ask you questions that indicate they think you mean one of two things: that you’re spending your days mucking around in adventure playgrounds; or that you’re playing video games. I’ve tried to keep the challenge a lot wider than just playing games, but today I decided to settle down and immerse myself in a computer game.
Part of the reason that I’ve avoided it till today (and tend to restrict my computer-game-play in normal life) is that I find it very easy to get sucked in. To be fair, I’ve chosen a game I knew I’d love – Obduction, the new crowdfunded game from Cyan, who made the Myst sequence of games. It’s a gentle puzzle adventure game with gorgeous imagined landscapes where you can’t die.
For me (and yes, I know everyone is different) this is exactly the sort of game that is worth playing: one that takes you on a journey to someone you simply wouldn’t be able to go in real life. This is play in the truest sense, just a little more ‘led’ than it might be if you were disappearing off into your imagination.
Part of the joy and the terror of this sort of play, for me, is that I can easily sink hours into this. It offers more discoveries, new adventures, revelations and experiences on a regular basis. You don’t need to worry about running out of your own creative juices – someone else has that covered already.
And I know I’m going to have to go back and finish it some time!
The obvious objective of video games is to entertain people by surprising them with new experiences – Shigeru Miyamoto
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