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28/02/21
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Sometimes I’ll be playing a game, often a good game, when I’ll think about how smart the person making this is. The person who made this must be a genius. Not every game I like makes me think this! It takes especial quality…
As True Homie Gamers know, one of the Aspects I love most in media is MYSTERY. If there is something to be UNCOVERED I will UNCOVER IT! Thus, most of the games that make me think this are mysterious to some degree! In fact, one could argue that the main 3 are all the same game, or at least exemplifying 3 points of a triangle: Noita, La-Mulana, and Outer Wilds.
NOITA - ESSENCE OF SYSTEM
The meticulously-simulated roguelike we all love (some don’t! They are the opposite of genius). Every minute of gameplay is a little discovery… a new interaction, a new spell, a new area… Luck is a factor as in any roguelike, but you do much better the more you understand the game world!
Knowing how to synthesize helpful materials from harmful ones and exploit spell combinations, there’s just so many facets in which you can succeed or fail, so many systems… And that’s not even getting into the exploration! I don’t even want to spoil it (this is a theme here), but that moment when you realize that the big main dungeon takes up less than 10% of the game world is fucking something holy shit.
There are so many secrets, so many tricks, so many obscure mysteries and geographical riddles! All of it rendered effortlessly within and around the systems of the game… everything is everything! Movement is combat, combat is spells, spells is alchemy, alchemy is discovery, discovery is movement… Everything does Something, some things are cooler than others, but still. It is a vibrant, living world with so much more beneath the surface than it appears, with the deepest secrets requiring utmost mastery of every system and its exploits… or good luck. Thus is Noita…
LA-MULANA - ESSENCE OF DESIGN
La-Mulana is simple as fuck, especially compared to Noita holy shit. You only know hit with whip, use subweapon, use item, jump, use hot spring and die.
And yet! And Yet!!!!
The combat is hard and fun, I’ll give it that. Some of the bosses in the remake are jaw-dropping spectacles to behold compared to standard gameplay (see Bahamut), but the meat of my feeling that the creator is a genius stems from the Puzzles…
Much like Noita, La-Mulana is a game of mystery! A game of tricks and deception! Read the tablets and deduce your goal, solve vague poetic riddles to find which statue holds a key in its chest! I had to look up solutions for a few of the more obtuse puzzles, but there were a definite collection of pretty hard one that I solved and had a blast. I thought “if this isn’t the solution this game sucks” and it was the solution, and I cheered. Including a weird meta one that I SHOUTED when it worked because I was so fucking happy about how smart this was, so lucky that a game like this exists.
Just like Noita it is a vibrant living world, but almost in the opposite sense… Noita is defined by its systems, and their reactions in the cruel randomness of the world. La-Mulana is cruel by design. La-Mulana is overwhelming in its scope, there’s so much meticulous hidden detail in every single room that can later prove essential to solving certain puzzles, every stone rife with authored meaning. It is absurd that a premade game could compete with the complexity of a procedural system-based game like Noita, and yet somehow La-Mulana manages it…
It feels like I am a lost soul travelling through the trials of the underworld, passing tests to prove my worth. The sheer grandeur… It doesn’t feel like a game, it feels like a challenge from the heavens… Was this game even made by a human?
OUTER WILDS - ESSENCE OF BEING
In many ways different, yet in many ways the same… This is the right one to leave till last. La-Mulana captures it very little, Noita captures it a little more, and Outer Wilds captures it wholly: Place. Time. Being. Doing literally nothing and sitting on a rock is an incredible experience that is only really fun in Outer Wilds. Simply existing in this world and marvelling at it is such a treat…
Both systems and meticulous design are part of its value near equally, this detailed fantastic solar system of unique, interesting planets brimming with secrets then given physics and set on their course, the rules of their weather and geological patterns affecting how you interact with these designed areas…
It is a game of mystery, but unlike the first two it is not a game of trickery. The mysteries are begging to be solved, every new discovery revealing a breadcrumb trail to 3 others, the web of truth slowly uncovered through play, culminating in some pretty incredible final stuff. Unique to Outer Wilds is the scared discovery, where you find something new and then your smile fades as you realize what that means you have to do. There are many moments like this, as well as moments of laughter, sadness, and sheer awe. Just existing in the game world of Outer Wilds is such an incredible experience, witnessing the dance of the developers' creations across the sky… It’s a very good game.
Truly Mysterious!
- Homie Boon
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