New art game: Today I Die
(Visited 10078 times) Game talk
May 062009
How can I resist a game that combines poetry and puzzle and art game? Here’s Daniel Benmergui’s Today I Die. There are multiple endings, by the way.
The game is brief, but interesting and affecting. Worth checking out, and it runs in the browser, so no download required.
His donation model is interesting too. Custom work for people, for a price, akin to how some musicians are offering house concerts for people who buy ultra-fancy packages of their recordings.
13 Responses to “New art game: Today I Die”
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My ending:
Free World
Full of beauty
Today I swim
Until you come
I don’t usually dig concept games, because they tend to stray too far from ‘game’ and into ‘something you do with a mouse and a screen’, but I felt like this really turned the relationship between space and language into a legitimately grokkable puzzle. I actually do wonder what the other endings are. Fun!
That was my ending too. I too am curious how else it can turn out.
Beautiful game!
Was also able to get:
Free world
Full of beauty
Today I swim
Better by myself
I’d like to play a happy concept/art game. One that doesn’t involve dying, lonesomeness, deathcamp trains or old ladies wandering around graveyards.
Does anyone have any links that could help point the way?
Chris: Mine. 🙂 https://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/andeanbird5.zip
@Chris EA: Today I Die is not that kind of game, but you would have to play it through first 🙂
Go play Andean Bird anyway!
It makes me very happy you liked the game, Raph!
Daniel, It makes me want to make an art game again. 🙂 I don’t actually have any ideas for one at the moment though.
So… how do you play the game? I can click and drag a woman with a rock tied to her and a couple words, but nothing ever happens. I don’t see any kind of end, but I can tell from the comments other people figured it out. What’s the secret?
I get that an art game might not want to have a walkthrough, but it would be nice to have some instruction as to the actual playing of the game. Without interaction it feels like an “art screensaver” or “art video loop”.
All the game is driven by clicking on the objects, sometimes clicking and holding.
Same with most every other program on my computer.
I really want to experience it and like it, given all the praise here and its blog post, but I’m completely lost and annoyed at the needless opacity. Sucks a bit to apparently be the only one who can’t do anything with it.
Maybe someone will read this and think that the game is Truly Art because not everyone understands it. That person would be wrong. At least with a painting people know to look at it rather than touch it; whether the audience makes a connection with the work is based on its content. This thing fails in form before I can ever consider its content.
urm, try moving the jellyfish things around a bit on the first screen. Additionally, the words can be moved.
urm, I think we just don’t want to spoil too much, because really, once you get the basic mechanic, the rest of the puzzle is in using that mechanic. So we want to give minimal hints to avoid spoiling the whole thing.
So, um… try clicking and holding on a jellyfish, and see what happens. See if you can get it to happen all the way without it being stopped, then see what you can do with what you get.
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