Before I go on a tear about this bizarre new game Blueberry Garden, we should chat about indie games (since it is one). I'm nuts about indie culture, and if you're on this site, you probably are as well. You dig the alternative over the mainstream, the underdog over the overlords. I don't doubt your taste in indie film, music, comics, and bien sûr, erotica, is impeccable.

But maybe you aren't sold on indie games. After all, the indie gaming scene is exploding, but it's not exactly accessible. Maybe you don't know where to start with indie games, beyond the ones that make it to the XBLA or the PlayStation store. Maybe the retro graphics, the Mario homages, and the thrill of downloading strange .exe's off the web with no idea if they'll eat your hard drive, just aren't your bag.

Chasing down the indie scene isn't meant to be simple however. After all, half the joy lies in the hunt: searching the blogs for something new, playing something other than the latest dude-shoots-dudes rampager, encountering a new voice that catches you off guard and maybe even makes you queasy. The press - both gamer, and mainstream - could do a more thorough job of spotting, cataloging and posing these talents like critters in a zoo. For now, I'm happy to dive into the wilds with a sketchy map and a tarantula hiding in my rucksack.

And nothing makes my point more elegantly than Blueberry Garden. After all, it won this year's Seamus McNally grand prize at the Independent Games Festival, which is akin to winning Sundance, or landing Pitchfork's album of the year. But it's not a "safe" pick. From minute one, the game is a total head-scratcher.

Here's the premise: you're Mr. Beak, and you live in a garden. Fruit grows here, and you also meet the wildlife, which includes clumsy fat birds, big blue moose, and little guys who look like marshmallows with party hats. Life in the garden is strange, but idyllic - at least, until you realize there's a crisis at hand, and only you can fix it.

This is the latest from creator Erik Svedäng, whose portfolio includes Pixel Cave Adventures - which you play in something called a Virtual Reality Cave, found only at the University of Skövde - and World of Pong, an online game where hundreds of people play Pong at the same time. (It is the funniest thing I've seen in weeks!)

Svedäng expects people to play Blueberry Garden twice before they beat it; the first time, you're just sussing out how everything works. You can take pleasure in the aesthetics, like the austere piano soundtrack and winsome visuals. At the same time, your left-brained gamer side wants to skip all the pretty stuff and work through the rules: What happens when I eat the pear? How high can I get on a running jump? How do I reach the giant pencil that's stuck in that cave? (And why do I even want to?) The game's chief achievement lies in fending off your reasoning, all the better to keep you wandering.

Aesthetics trump gameplay in another sense. Most of the movements feel clunky. Walking is a pain. Flying is, too. To reach certain destinations, you have to cruise to an altitude that's so high you lose track of the ground, 'til you think you're drifting aimlessly. (Maybe that was the point.) And while the game is technically a puzzle-platformer, you won't face puzzles so much as problems, and the tools you use to solve them feel rough and inexact.

But that's the point; the game's world is organic. It's built to creak and amble. After all, you're not controlling Sonic the Hedgehog: you're Mr. Beak, who's stiff and grumpy and a little aloof, but who nevertheless saves the day.

Beat the game, and you'll get a special reward: a link to a private page on Svedäng's website, where you and all the other winners can hobnob and swap notes. Svedäng even shows up to take questions. (Another reason to love indie devs: they're so touchable.) But truth be told, it's not that exclusive. Most people will knock their way through this thing in about an hour, which you should keep in mind before you drop cash on it. And maybe I'm focusing too much on the rules again, but the game seems to skip a chance to explore its own systems - to compound the difficulty, to use the animals in the puzzles, or to come up with any variations on the theme. It scores on charm but lacks depth.

But if you're new to indie games, and you want a title that'll show you what's up with all this fuss? Try Blueberry Garden. It's a perfect example of discovery in games and world-making in miniature. And who doesn't need a shot of 'wtf' in their gaming?


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.