We're on the playground, a pack of girls and boys, huddled around a fortune teller -- you know, the one you make from a piece of paper and pop on your fingertips, and you flip the peaks, back and forth, back and forth, to find the answer to your question. Will I be filthy rich? No. Will I get a new dog for Christmas? Unclear. Will I die before my time? Yes. Giggles. And then you ask the question again. And you get a different answer.
That same feeling hits me when I play the poetic micro games of Argentinean gamemaker Daniel Benmergui, who released his latest, Today I Die, earlier this month. It's an indie game, and it's an art game -- but I use that term carefully, because if you're new to that scene, you might think "art" means "oppressive, overanalyzed, and stuck up its own orifice." And that's not Benmergui.
All three of Benmergui's latest creations -- Storyteller, I Wish I Were the Moon, and now Today I Die -- are short and thematically sweet. Each one hinges on a simple mechanic that helps you tell a story. In the case of Storyteller, you get a fairy tale, and you can change the plot with a click of the mouse. Here's the story when it opens:
But say you don't like that ending. Just switch around the characters in the first and second panels, and you change their fates:
In a role-playing game, you could spend 50 hours getting to one ending, and another 20 to the other. Here, the path not taken is a click away.
Today I Die (see top image) also starts with a clever mechanic: poetry magnets. But that's not what you notice when the scene opens. A woman is tied to a rock and sinking into deep waters, her hair trailing behind her. A poem that reads like a suicide note hangs above her. And the only way to save her is to change the words.
Benmergui's blog calls it a game "about the daily choice of waking up in the morning." When I asked him to reconcile the gravity of drowning yourself with the hassle of crawling out of bed, Benmergui observes that: "We are conditioned to look at life as a series of milestones and achievements, so anything that is not one of those seems to be irrelevant. Like, what you do every day. The game is not about someone who suddenly changes her life in a single, spectacular moment like movies show people doing. It's about a constant choice, an everyday choice."
Benmergui enlisted his girlfriend, Guadalupe Iturbide, for her handwriting. She's also part of the inspiration. As Benmergui puts it obliquely, "The game was born out of something in our everyday life that changed, and an insight I had after that. What was shared was the change, but the game was made after my point of view. I picked a girl because she's inspired [by] Guadalupe. But that character also reflects myself. You could easily reverse the characters."
(You can also add your own characters to Benmergui's game. To make some scratch on a game he gives away for free, Benmergui is taking sponsors. For $75, he'll draw a pixilated portrait of you or a friend. For $497, he'll put you and your s.o. in either Today I Die or I Wish I Were the Moon. And somebody's already paid $995 to give Benmergui a new ending to the game. The buyer "is well known in the industry. He might want to show the custom game or not. I'll let him choose.")
I don't want to spoil a game that you could play in the time it takes to read this column. (Try it HERE. It's free!) But here's the gist: though you start as the drowning woman, you get a chance to turn things around. Shadowy sea creatures surround you; to beat them back, you have to "shine." And when you reach the end and swim to a world of "beauty," you also get the boy -- if you want him.
Benmergui's favorite ending is the one where the girl and boy rise to the surface together. For Guadalupe, "I asked and she said that it's the one in which she surfaces on her own, but I saw her face when she saw the other ending, so she might be lying."
Today I Die is charming. The poem is cute, and, let's say it, sappy: Benmergui even deprecates himself, comparing it to what "a depressed teenager (with little sense for poetry, like me) could have come up with." And the dark vs. light symbolism is not a brain-teaser.
But the real message lies in the mechanic. When I want to change from a "dead" world to a "dark" one and finally, one that's "free," I find the word I need and stick it right into the poem. Just like Storyteller, you're always one step away from rewriting the story.
Now think what that tells us about the story. From the title and the opening image, Today I Die gives us an emergency -- but as Benmergui tells us, the game is about an "everyday choice." This isn't a giant drama but a little one. It'll happen again and again. And same for Storyteller. Even though it tells three life stories in a heroic setting, it's actually a very small, toy-like gizmo. You're not constructing epics; you're playing with one outcome after another.
And theres his secret. Benmergui takes the epic decisions that change our lives, and the little choices we make every day, and marries them in a single click. Victory, heartbreak, suicide, and salvation are all right there for you, and they'll be there again tomorrow. It takes me back to being a kid, when I could make a choice that seemed huge, and then shake it off and try something else. One day everyone's proud of you, the next you're in detention. Maybe you kiss Colin, and then you brush him off to kiss Stu. And maybe later you kiss Chloe, too. The point is not that every story has many endings; it's that the other endings don't go away. You gather around the playground and flip through the fortune teller, again and again, and the answers always change.
Rachael Webster (a.ka.a SG member PixelVixen707) is SG's Hit Play games columnist. A game lover and game blogger living in New York City, she also writes at PixelVixen707.com and tweets as PixelVixen707.
Excellent. It's great to see some text about a game that isn't mainstream. I'll be checking these out.
I also got turned onto Ico and Shadow of the Colossus yesterday. Never played them. They seem up your alley. Very story driven and very minimalist (for a PS2 game).
PixelVixen707
New York, NY
April 2009
MAY 19, 2009 01:32 PM