Small Games with Big Vibes
Vložit
- čas přidán 4. 07. 2024
- Kat talks three short games with absolutely outstanding vibes.
Spoiler warning: this video includes late-game footage from FAR: Lone Sails, The Pedestrian and Wide Ocean Big Jacket. It contains puzzle footage for The Pedestrian (so, possible visual spoilers for the occasional puzzle) and I explicitly give away a gimmick in one small puzzle. Nothing that I think would ruin your experience (the vibes are simply TOO STRONG for that), but I’d still recommend you play them yourself first for full impact.
Patreon: patreon.com/pixeladay
Twitter: @pixel_a_day
Tumblr: @katfrompixeladay
Transcript: bit.ly/transcript_smallgamesbigvibes
All footage from FAR: Lone Sails, The Pedestrian and Wide Ocean Big Jacket capped by me
Music used in this episode:
Warmth in the Cold - Joel Schoch
Inconvenient Circumstances - Joel Schoch
Night - Joel Schoch
Czar Louie’s Reigna - Logan Hayes
Moon - Logan Hayes
Sunrise - Logan Hayes
Highway (Title Screen) - Scott Archer
Wide Ocean, Big Jacket (Kids On The Beach) - Scott Archer
FAR: Lone Sails (0:00)
The Pedestrian (06:30)
Wide Ocean, Big Jacket (14:07)
Conclusion (19:31) - Hry
If you like what I do please consider throwing me a bit of money on Patreon, check out the tiers and benefits here: www.patreon.com/pixeladay
Wow! Thanks for including our game The Pedestrian in this. Great video! Keep it up :).
It looks lovely! I'll have to check it out.
Thank you, it makes my day to have a dev pop up in the comments! ❤️
It's actually these smaller games from smaller devs that stick with me and have me returning to them over and over again. It's pretty wild to see how a smaller studio can produce such masterpieces with a tight budget.
I really love the two FAR games. There's something about how tactile everything is, especially the vehicles at their centres, that really just clicks with me. And I do love the way it teases out the worldbuilding in the background - it's similar to Limbo\Inside, of course, but it's embued with more of a sense of... I don't know, loneliness? Loss? Melancholy? Something along those lines, anyway.
You are simply fantastic at this. You’ve got Pratchett’s insight and Gaiman’s lyricism. The intonation of your delivery is in perfect harmony with your writing. Thank you for your labor.
~~~
Lol “game feel” definitely evokes the same nigh-cringe as the culinary equivalent “mouth feel” and I LOVE that you allude to that.
Every game critic should get one "gamefeel", this was mine
Thank you so much for the absurdly high praise. You're way too nice but you've put a smile on my face! :)
Vibes are really all that matter
Amen
Wide Ocean Big Jacket is so cozy. turnfollows other game, Little Party, was even shorter, but I remember I adored it just as much back in the game, when there were even less of these kind of games. For another small game with big vibes, check out QT. So wonderful.
If you weren't doing this, hectoliters of dopamine would just float past dozens of people, waving happily. Thank you for your work here.
Really appreciate getting to learn about these little indie darlings that might not hit the mainstream... I'd heard about Pedestrian, but not FAR, and now they're both on my watchlist... Thanks!
I'm so glad to hear I've put these on people's radar! :)
I love the vibes of the first Assassin’s Creed game.
It has this vibe like you were in some fading, locked away memory(which you were). It was soaked in mystery with a philosophically charged narrative and a beautiful soundtrack.
Biggest Vibe-Game for me is hands off "Down in Bermuda". It's the most calming game i ever played.
Skookum Arts, devs of the Pedestrian, are starting a new game called Quiet On Set, they have some devlogs up right now that are pretty cool :)
I can't wait to see what they do next!
These all look so fascinating. I absolutely love the photo framing and may need to check that out with Pedestrian
Great essay !
Glad to see Wide Ocean Big Jacket being shouted out. I adored its writing and presentation. For how short and simple it may seem, it left me with a lasting impression. Not only of the cozy vibes and relatable characters, but of the different perspectives of said characters.
Thank you for making this.
Was just waiting for someone to notice far, it just it's own vibe.great work btw.
I really can't praise your writing and delivery enough. You're really raising the bar for how all youtubers engage with the games they play.
Also, I'm so glad to see The Pedestrian show up here - I still listen to its soundtrack regularly, and that ending reveal has really stayed with me!
I'm looking forward to whatever you cover next. If you feel like making more of these general 'here are some games I like, here is how they're connected' sort of videos, I am all in for them!
Thank you! :) Seriously how good is the soundtrack to The Pedestrian?!
Loved both Far games. Highly recommend.
Pedestrian looks amazing.
Great video!
There is a small game, that doesn't get the appreaciation it deserves is "Forgotten Anne". great game, great environmnet and great vibes
I'll check it out, thanks!
Holy shit I can't get enough of this channel, it's what I have been looking for for years!
I once had a glimpse at this kind of commentary on gaming, she was called Bukkuqui or something like that, she did so many great videos on subjects so varied and interesting. Unfortunately the toxicity of the videogame landscape in Spain at the moment meant she had to stop because the comments she was receiving where just... awful.
Shit, that sucks. We need more non-English language game analysis channels! Thank you so much for your kind comments
Absolutely loved this one. Vibes are the only goal when playing a game, and these choices are 👌
This was really cool, I hadn't heard of any of these before. FAR especially is right up my alley, thanks for showcasing these games.
You're welcome! I'm so glad I've brought these on to people's radars
Perhaps the true friends were the vibes we made along the way.
Perhaps the true vibes were the vibes we vibed along the way
clever & perceptive as always. love it!
I'm really happy to see games with that polygonal art style.
All of these look great too. I especially agree on the immersion discussion. Too many people fixate on photo-realism and it's limiting the medium.
Wide Ocean, Big Jacket is such a great game!
I really like stylized games that don't chase photorealism. It allows creators to focus on important things - gameplay, characters, story.
There are so many amazing games and I'm so happy to be alive in this weird time for that very reason. It shows that there are many amazing people with stories to tell and a wish to share those stories.
I really love "else Heart.Break()" in spite of how niche it is and ignoring all of its flaws because I love feeling like I'm in this game's world.
It's impossible for me to forget "Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor" with its holidays and weird traditions and rituals (especially gender swapping every few days)
I've replayed both "Grow Home" and "Grow Up" to feel that progression of getting higher and higher.
I've enjoyed replaying "Gunpoint" tens of times and playing "Heat Signature" exhaustively.
I can't stop thinking about the main dilemma of "Subsurface Circular"
You know a game's special when it lives in your head forever.
Your channel is my favorite vibe on the entire internet.
Great video as always. :) I love when you pick topics that are within the realm of emotional connection to games and how we perceive things while experiencing the games we play. It's a unique niche I always wanted to talk about and now you shine a light on this inconspicuous aspects of gaming. Vibe within a game is certainly an area that will further grow and become more and more important in game development. As a game developer, I feel that vibe most of the time comes as a byproduct of storytelling, game design and environment design etc. but mostly is nothing that gets considered as unique point of focus that influences these decisions in the first place.
Two of my games started with a certain vibe I had in mind that the game should create while playing rather than ideas for game mechanics or genre. The first one called "One Simple Observation" is about the feeling and vibe you get in moments and situations in life that make you really feel time and how time passes by and that nothing is constant and always changing. The second "Sleepi Boi Can't Sleep" is about the vibe and emotions, very late at night, I had during a phase of my life I couldn't sleep while in Covid Lockdown. Both games are by far the most impactful and rememberable games of mine, I had people cry and laugh during Let's Plays, sharing their unique experiences and emotions in similar situations. Game mechanics are surprisingly unimportant when it comes to the impact games have on players.
For me the vibes of a game are the underlying "random" connections of the game's emotions and your personal experiences in life. A game has vibes if it manages to not only create emotions based on its content (story, environment, music etc) but if it's managing to build interconnections and links to your own life - your memories, hopes and fears. A lot of times games get reduced in analysis to products that exist only to make us fulfill power fantasies, solve problems or overcome different challenges with a catalog of bad or good game mechanics - but in the end all of these exist to create emotions in us while playing - but I think these emotions only have a lasting impact on us if we can relate to them in a deeper way. Otherwise playing a game is a short distraction that isn't a rememberable experience, rather a sort of quick and shallow entertainment.
Thanks for this inspiring video and I certainly need to check out Far Lone Sails!
Thank you for your inspiring comment! I think we share the same frustrations with the gaming industry :) The beauty of games is in their artistic potential to move us, IMO. Your games sound fantastic by the way!!
I think this is now my favorite video of yours!
If giving goosebumps was one of your goals, then mission accomplished, twice: at 13:10 with "like it's inviting us to look beyond the confines of obligation and habit that box us into our tiny lives" and the conclusion, where you present the dual importance of both zooming in and zooming out... Felt like a hedgehog for a few seconds.
Far Lone Sails was already on my wishlist, so this only strengthened its position.
The beginning of the Wide Ocean Big Jacket section: vacation? meh. Like the Short Hike? Short Hike was ok, but nothing to write home about IMHO. Ah, probably not gonna play this.
The end of the Wide Ocean Big Jacket section: I GOTTA PLAY THIS GAME!! NOW!!
Did you make a video on Short Hike? If so, I should watch it, as I'm sure it will make me see it in a different light.
The Pedestrian section is where you express exactly what I was thinking about puzzle games recently, even more coincidentally the reflection happened while I was playing the very game you start it with: Baba is You! I urge you to stop invading my privacy by reading my mind!
And, of course, once again I was "forced" to add this game as well to my wishlist. Would love to try it, but I must finish The Witness first, which is gonna take a while, that game is huuuge for a puzzle game. And the Witness is one such puzzle game that does indeed have exemplary vibes - I recently discovered the boat and started travelling around the island and just gaped in awe at a monumental statue carved into the cliffside, while tracing patterns over it... Exactly the kind of moment like you described with Far Lone Sails.
It does have a name, this feeling, I was surprised you didn't mention it - the "sublime". I learned it in high school, when I saw paintings of Caspar David Friedrich in my coursebook. Since then (well since I remember, really, then I became conscious of it) I am in love as well with that feeling of smallness and frailty and wonder and anxiety all mixed together. It's why I love cosmic horror... even though, curiously, most of the stuff marketed as "cosmic horror" doesn't have this vibe at all lol, just tentacles.
For the sake of balance I'll mention the one point at which I felt a tinge of disagreement. It was at the end of the Far: Lone Sails section, when you say that the "trap" of indie games is to focus on more mundane things and sacrifice a sense of wonder. Without any negative examples (and it wasn't clear if the footage represented the bad or good games...) it's hard to know what you really mean by this trap, by "mundane", and I did feel like art (game, film, book, doesn't matter) has the right to look into and confront the subject of mundanity, boredom, or everyday drudgery, that it's a legitimate object of interest. But then it turns out that's not really what you meant since at the end you're talking about "the importance of zooming in on the intimate moments of small lives". I guess you weren't talking about mundanity in general, but in the context of horror-esque games? I'm not sure it became entirely clear to me, what is that "bad" thing, that "mundane" thing that you're criticising a lot of indie games of... but I get the feeling there isn't really any substantial disagreement here. So yes, if anything my criticism is simply about the essay being unclear about this point.
Thanks as always for your amazing support and thoughtful comments! I sure did make a video on A Short Hike! I also recommend Static Canvas's and Screen Therapy's videos on the game :) On the "mundane frights" point, I'm essentially talking about games where the horror doesn't really go beyond 'there's a gross monster' or 'you're being chased' or 'protagonist dies in horrible ways'. Limbo, Kholat, and Little Nightmares are all examples (although Little Nightmares does have some cool cinematography and sense of scale at times).
@@PixelaDay oh, I guess then part of the confusion stems from the fact that that's a hard disagree on Limbo from me, and totally not how I'd describe it - there's much more to it than that, to me it does have a vibe that's not just a replaceable coat of paint. In fact, I had exactly the kind of moment you describe, where I just sat and stared at the screen with a "wow" painted on my face, all hedgehogged again. A huge component of vibe-building there was to me the sound design, but it's also how the various elements connected, and the "silent cinema era" aspect of its aesthetic... I'd probably have to make my own video or write many more words to explain it. Anyway, it sits to me right there next to Inside, which while a refinement in many ways, didn't invalidate the Limbo experience to me. Damn, I'm probably gonna play it tonight or this week.
You also made a video where you have used the word "sublime" in the very title, CZcams itself was keen to tell me with its sidebar. (though the word has more than one meaning so I have to see it first)
This is lovely. I haven't played these but am immediately hit by the vibes just oozing off them. I can think of two games - Cart Life and Out There - that are little more than vibes because they have little in the way of gameplay mechanics or story, but the vibes go a long way. Even though similar games like Papers Please and FTL have much more depth to them, I'm just as fond of small games like these.
I've got to get around to playing Cart Life! Electron Dance loves it so I know it's good.
lovely vibes. thanks for the video! vibes are clearly one of the most important aspects to sticking with a game to the end for me, and it's sometimes hard to define.
I can't wait to check out one or two (or maybe even all three) of these games :)
Hope you enjoy them!
i really look forward to ur vids, can't believe i missed this one for a month!
Enjoy! The next one's coming out tomorrow XD
Yes! Far lone sails!
Love the video, I’ve been kinda unsure about far, lone sails. But you’ve really made me want to pick it up (when I have time).
Amazing video. Can't wait to play these three games soon myself, this video convinced me completely!
That's great to hear! Hope you enjoy em :)
I just want to say that i did play Far: Lone Sails thanks to you and it was very beautiful and profound expirience.
That brightens my day to hear. Thank you for watching and sharing
thanks for introducing me to these games.
This was awesome. I’ve had FAR sitting on steam for a while now. Definitely need to finally start it! Thank you, again! This was great
Hope you enjoy it!
You deserve fifty times as many subscribers. Gonna share the heck out of your stuff
Thanks!
That Lone Sails looks like my jam. Almost pay day, I'll slap it on the wishlist.
Comfy vid about good vibes, just what I needed. Cheers!
Glad to hear it! :)
$3 on GOG right now!
Contextual design is the approach that I'm using. I've noticed a while ago(like 2years) that games especially indie games are pretty much designing backward. That's why I researched for a way to adjust the workflow accordingly. Then I reached the conclusion that contextual design is the best way to develop videogames. People still rejecting this idea, but once they realized how much better this approach is compared to the traditional way, they'll change.
Great video as always and thank you for letting me know about Wide Ocean Big Jacket! There is a similar vibey game called Rainy Season, I'm sure you'll love it!
P.S. Did you know that Rain World just got a new massive DLC?
Oh yes I know! I don't know if I'll have the heart to go in again though XD Thanks so much for the recommendation, I'd never heard of Rainy Season. As a fan of rainy days, I approve!
I'm vibing with this video!
DON'T THINK JUST PEE made me laugh
Such a nice video. We play the same way.
I almost got Far lone sails at release, saw some less than favorable reviews so I held off. But I have been convinced to at least given it a go, on the recommendation of vibes alone. Amazing video as always
Edit: maybe I'm thinking of the sequel? Either way I'll given it a go
Glad you enjoyed the video :) If you're unsure maybe get it on sale, but I found it a lovely little 3-hour experience
Nothing shows the vibe of Pai- Rain World like staring out to the cloud encompassed sky on that one section of the wall and then having your just acquired trans be obliterated by a helplessly falling orange lizard that was on frame for half a second.(The same way gravity will obliterate that lizard.)
I'm surprised you didn't mention Far Changing Tides, or is it because it's a sequel?
Just haven’t played it yet because I’m slow to get around to things!
@@PixelaDay Hope you get around to it soon. I liked it more than Lone Sail mainly because of its beautiful environments
@@shadeflash5953 would you recommend I play one over the other?
@@leftovernoise I'd definitely recommend playing both as while they're both pretty similar gameplay-wise, the setting, story and characters are different in both games.
@@leftovernoise I'd second the recommendation to play both. They're both fantastic, but have somewhat different vibes (if I may borrow a phrase). I think the second one also hits a bit differently when you play it after the first, as well.
:)
Yeah you really picked the most boring game possible in The Pedestrian, I am also getting bored with puzzlers after 1 decade but every now and then I find something really cool and new so I am not playing as much as I used to but they are still....... part of me I have to say The Pedestrian is in my humble opinion total shajt and of course we can talk about a big picture and all of that but I didn't find anything in that awful game.