Five Indie Games That Would Make Bitchin’ Children’s Cartoons

Among my most fickle of companions is the abstract phenomenon of nostalgia. It’s an intangible susceptibility that befalls all but the most nauseatingly self-satisfied and inexorably abused, with the ragtag everydaymen in between gradually accruing it in spades as they strive to justify their own generation’s moral and cultural superiority over those of the vagabondish youngsters who will one day be changing their colostomy bags.

It’s also dual-pronged in nature. On the one hand, a measured fondness for past glories can serve as a gentle reminder that the milk of human kindness remains deep-rooted in the very essence of the genetic structure of our species, an iron-clad stamp of approval on the hitherto undiminished pursuit of dreams and aspirations. On the other hand, it makes us talk complete twaddle.

Little embodies the borderline indoctrination of the human race by the ticking hands of time more than our addled memories of our most treasured children’s cartoons. Say what you will about the paltry standards by which the covetous television producers churn out their puerile material designed to render their youthful audiences lost to the clutches of gibbering clot syndrome, but the truth is that the animated classics you adored during your pre-pubescent days were every bit as banal and inane.

And let’s look no further than the televised video game adaptations that cluttered the airwaves like leeches at a Woodstock drum circle during the early 80’s and late 90’s. You know, The Legend of Zelda, The Super Mario Bros. Supershow, Earthworm Jim and the like. Those turds. They’re not around any more, marking a conspicuous absence that can be attributed to the increasingly gritty nature of modern gaming, a lack of newly-created mascots suitable for juvenile consumption and the fact that they were all by and large unmitigated creative disasters.

Yes, video gaming has carved out a new identity since then, one bereft of adorable critters ripe for the corporate small-screen raping. Nowadays, would-be cartoon spinoffs, like Ratchet & Clank, Jak and Daxter and Sly Cooper can all star in their own fully-voiced, pseudo-animated escapades within the gaming medium itself, unlike the predominantly mute, plotless affairs of gaming yesteryear. In short, the capacity for vibrant, soul-destroying adaptations of ambiguously executed video game icons has been snuffed out by the evolving nature of retail gaming development.

That’s where indie games step in. Today, the voiceless interactive avatars belong in the realms of independently-engineered titles put together on modest budgets, and they’re generally considered too obscure by the uncaring higher-ups to be apt choices for popular cultural expansions into alternative forms of media. But that doesn’t mean we can’t pretend, does it? Here, then, is a brief rundown of the indie games that would be ideal candidates for the mass-corruption of the youth inhabiting the bulk of the developed world. Hooray for clinical exploitation!

1. Braid

 

This one’s easy. It’s got dinosaurs, hedgehogs and a bright palette of intoxicating colours fit for the gentle soothing of fragile little minds. Starring Tim, a hapless, yet lovable chap seeking in vain to readdress his unrequited love for the exotic princess, who we’ll just call Braid, if only to avoid baffling the little twerps impressionable enough to watch in the first place, the show takes the form of a riotous, laugh-a-minute montage of slapstick gags and zany sound effects. Just try to keep a straight face as Tim plummets down chasms, fails to jump onto a solid cloud for the millionth time in succession and flails hopelessly in an attempt to find the last remaining key to enter the adjacent world. Oh, and let’s not forget all the sidesplitting ways in which Braid rejects his advances at the end of every episode. It’s a veritable hoot!

Thankfully, though, each episode will feature an interactive rewind feature that permits the viewer to erase all knowledge of the show’s existence from memory, negating all those vitriolic complaints about how the imaginations of thousands of uncouth reprobates have been irreversibly poisoned.

2. Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale

It’s always an uphill struggle to craft a typically male-dominated form of entertainment to the double-X chromosome demographic, which is why Recettear is such a godsend. As anyone who, like me, will never touch a woman can attest, girls lap up effervescent tales involving plucky female leads and stern, morally well-grounded fairies, and that’s exactly the foundation upon which this premise is built.

As in the game, Recette, a young girl, is tasked with commandeering a shop in order to pay off her numbnut father’s debts. Tear, the aforementioned fairy with enough vaginal sand to cover the underside of Skegness Pier, takes on the unenviable role of keeping Recette on the straight-and-narrow through an ingenious combination of ashen-faced reprimands and corporate rhetoric, whilst a cavalcade of bit-part mercenaries lay in wait as swords for hire as the duo embark on a myriad of adventures.

Vacuous comedic set-pieces once again set the tone of proceedings, but it’s actually the show’s educational value that will win doubters over. Savour the moment of unadulterated excitement as your offspring learn valuable lessons about the true virtues of endeavour, honesty and determination, but not before carting the sprogs off to the local shop to shell out some cash on our goddamn merchandise. Man, capitalism rules.

3. Super Meat Boy

 

There’s no better way to smooth over the sore wounds taken to the ego at the mercy of a tough-as-nails platformer than to turn it into a frenzied, madcap cartoon. Think Cow & Chicken or Ren & Stimpy and you’ll have an adequate idea how Meat Boy’s constant scraps with Dr. Fetus ought to be transferred onto television screens around the globe. This’ll be a non-stop, balls-to-the-wall stupor of chase scenes and gratuitous violence reminiscent of the Road Runner cartoons, and with all the pithy Americanised banter to match.

Unlike the sanguinary video game portrayal of Meat Boy’s incessant dices with death, this cartoon will place the antagonistic Dr. Fetus in the prized role of the unluckiest bastard in the universe. Over the course of each episode, he’ll be impaled on spikes, cut to ribbons by buzz saws and torched to a frazzle as each and every one of his ill-conceived traps go mammary glands-up and the crafty Meat Boy bounds off into the sunset with Bandage Girl in tow.

Chuck in a few cameos from Dr. Fetus’ robotic creations produced to stop Meat Boy in his tracks a la Scratch and Grounder from The Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog, a sophisticated and high-brow show that I won’t hear a bad word against, and you’re onto a winner with both the toy manufacturers and the folks with scanty attention spans. Trust me; it’s a tried-and-tested formula.

4. Thomas Was Alone

 

Mike Bithell seems like a fun-loving gent with a proclivity for the unconventional, so I’m sure he’d be up for this. Basically, while most animated video game adaptations come across as sterile, nonsensical affairs, the Thomas Was Alone television series will buck the trend completely in a blaze of wondrous glory. And that’s because it’ll be an educational show geared towards pre-schoolers.

Each episode will open with the titular AI quadrangle, Thomas, musing over his solitary existence. In due course, however, he takes it upon himself to take the pro-active approach to overcoming his social barriers, opting to explore the outside world each and every day to find a new companion from whom he can learn more about the human psyche and the intricate workings of modern society.

Along the way, he’ll meet men, women and children from all walks of life, all of whom will be more than happy to educate him on the values of such crucial issues as tolerance, the environment and, above all, convivial interaction, and there’ll be songs, counting games and mini-stories to add a little more colour to a world already awash with giddy imagination.

Naturally, rounding off the package would be Danny Wallace reprising his role as the official Thomas Was Alone narrator. His dulcet tones will pepper the eardrums of tomorrow’s youth in a manner that only a seasoned comedian can, his delightful narrative exposition and light, avuncular intonation lulling countless wide-eyed toddlers into a gleeful state of imaginative nirvana.

5. Limbo

 

A morose and perturbing entity, Limbo could probably only exist as a children’s cartoon in Scandinavia, where they can’t get enough of that morbid stuff. The Moomins was a harrowing incarnation of the nightmares that fuelled your childhood fear of the night, but Limbo’s animated adaptation promises to bring juvenile post-traumatic stress disorder to a new level entirely.

Produced through the game’s characteristic haunting black-and-white filter, this programme will focus on the anonymous, swollen-headed masculine protagonist in his quest to seek out his lost sibling. Silent and trepid, the boy edges gingerly through a macabre world of bleakness packed to bursting point with deadly traps and gargantuan arachnids, stopping only sporadically to scrape his lungs off the nearest spike.

Yes, there’s death in this one, and lots of it too. But that’s not the full story. You see, the boy keeps regenerating, snapping back to life in a fittingly sudden jolt each time he experiences the searing pain of what ought to be his untimely demise. He’s in agony, but he can’t perish. He’s doomed to roam the abyss forever, a prisoner of darkness for all eternity. The viewers subsequently learn nothing and cry themselves to sleep.

So, just like the game, then.

6. Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Hear me out here. Frictional’s house of horrors hardly seems an ideal starting point for a children’s show, but this idea’s got legs, I assure you.

Surprisingly, this isn’t a pitch for a sadistic collage of terror, mainly because that was already covered under the Limbo entry. No, Amnesia’s cartoon iteration needs to be compelling and engaging. It needs to be engrossing and subtle. It needs to be like Scooby Doo.

Set in a spooky mansion chock full of crazy abominations, the cartoon will centre around Daniel, a naïve and vivacious adventurer on the look-out for some groovy mysteries to solve. But he’s not alone. He’s got his trusty anthropomorphic feline sidekick, Rolf, to get him out of the riproaring scraps that inevitably ensue when ghosts, ghouls and monsters of every corner pop out to give our zany protagonist a good old fright.

But lest we risk condemning our youth to a lifetime of abject paranoia in the face of danger, fear not, because all is never lost. Daniel’s a bona fide master of disguise, and each episode will see him outwit his ethereal pursuers by dressing up as various characters from The Jetsons, upon which Rolf takes the opportunity to paralyse them in a fit of insuppressibly simmering mirth by demonstrating his astounding repertoire of amusing Irish accents.

Adventure-Ho!

I’m starting to feel as though sporadic blogging isn’t doing wonders for my self-esteem. Having already aired my self-pitying grievances with regards to gameplay difficulty, my tropologically designated gears have been well and truly ground by another venerable idiosyncrasy of video gaming convention.

They’re called adventure games, and they’re apparently seen as veritable staples of the gaming medium, serving as forerunners to the interactive narratives we cherish and savour so fervently in today’s age of ostentatiously crafted gadgetry and multi-million dollar budgetary razzle-dazzle. In a sense, they’re the glimmering examples of a pioneering era in which video games truly underlined their capacity to amuse, engage, excite and even shock living, breathing players by using the age-old art of storytelling as a genre-defining fulcrum.

It’s just a shame I can’t figure the bloody things out.

Yes, it’s time for another bout of florally-articulated passive aggression because adventure games just seem to have a knack of bringing out my inner embodiment of Lucifer himself.

 

And I’m not even sure where to begin because, on the surface at least, the adventure genre ought to be right up my squalid, darkened alley. After all, I’m an unabashed sucker for poignant writing, subtle characterisation and a light smattering of dialogical rumpy-pumpy in an interactive setting, and the traditional point-and-click interface certainly serves as a more-than-adequate conduit from mind to screen by way of index and middle fingers.

Yet it’s all for naught when you’re a nitwit, and a nitwit I most certainly am. Dump a piece of string, a banana and a glove puppet in my in-game inventory and you could circumnavigate the globe a dozen times before I worked out I was supposed to incapacitate my foe with the string whilst posing as a racist Disney caricature in order to curry favour with a small child, whilst my already swelling levels of befuddlement are unlikely to be assuaged when I’m dropped smack dab in the middle of a puzzle sequence in which I’m forced to decipher a radio broadcast comprised of morse code transmissions played in reverse.

But these are the cards with which adventure players are so often dealt, and these are the sobering barriers that the logically exiguous of us must overcome. That’s because a typical point-and-click escapade is little more than a combination of rigidly assembled narrative set-pieces separated by a slapdash motley crew of arbitrary puzzles. Of course, that shouldn’t pose a problem in its raw conceptual form because, all being whittled down to its common denominator, that’s more or less the formula that every story-driven game adheres to. No, my qualms with adventure games stem not from their contrived status as interactive films, but from the fact that they’re usually so knob-gobblingly convoluted and unfriendly.

Let’s take XII Games’ Resonance as our exemple du jour. Blessed with a rich plot, a punchy cast of vividly imagined protagonists and a scintillatingly well-realised and gritty setting straight from those dystopian novels you used to write on the underside of your maths book, the game nailed all the fundamentals of effective storytelling with all the aplomb of a Nobel Laureate, yet it tied me in knots. With four characters to control simultaneously, a heavily-touted long-term memory system through which to solve puzzles and a series of puzzle sections apparently designed by the most elitist and vitriolic of intellectuals, Resonance was a bona fide idiot’s nightmare with a barrier of entry that a paraplegic must face when being forced at gunpoint to ascend Mount Olympus.

 

And then there was the backtracking – my goodness, there was the backtracking. For your average cognitively challenged plebeian, trawling for multi-pronged solutions to all the quandaries thrown out by adventure game designers is taxing enough when travelling in a single direction, but chuck in the apparent necessity to traverse each area of the gaming world multiple times – with multiple combinations of characters, no less – and you’ve conjured up a brainteaser to make grown men weep openly.

Obviously, I shed no tears because I prefer to suppress my emotions in preparation for that sociopathic maiming spree I’ve been meaning to get round to, but I’m sure you get the point. For me, point-and-click adventure titles are the very epitome of what I’d like to refer to as “so near, yet so far syndrome,” a virile condition that assures that a developer will dangle a tantalising morsel before my eyes before snatching it away because I’m just too stupid.

That stupidity has festered over the years and has inhibited my enjoyment of more or less any adventure game that doesn’t include at least one patronisingly straight-talking hint system. Thankfully, a handful of studios, Telltale being perhaps the most prominent among them, have seen fit to humour us cretins by implementing increasingly explicit, not to mention completely optional, clues in their games to help guide us in the right direction as we take control of such lovable pop culture luminaries and Sam and Max and Marty McFly. Who cares if they ultimately amount to such asperse instructions as “Put the fish in the kettle, you hapless buttplug?” Not me, that’s for sure. I’m just happy I get to enjoy the story I paid for.

 

So, am I intent on overseeing the permanent demise of the adventure game in the modern gaming realm? Not really. I’m a proud subscriber to the “different strokes for different folks” doctrine, especially when it spawns quirky sitcoms involving Mr. T cameos and child-molesting bicycle salesmen. It’s overtly clear that nowadays, thanks in no small part to the independent gaming scene keeping them alive, adventure games have enjoyed a renaissance that has endeared them to a whole new audience of anoraks and cleverclogs, and it would be amiss of me to deny them that which keeps them ticking, even if it fills me with seething envy of the smug gits.

Besides, willing away the existence of an established game variant is tantamount to denying the inevitability that one just can’t be a connoisseur of all trades. Live and let live, as the insufferable ultra-liberal hippy douchebags would say.

Unless, of course, an alternative genre hasn’t been popularised by the point at which the arthritis kicks in and I can no longer handle games requiring a modicum of manual dexterity. In that case, if I’m left with nothing but turn-based strategy, adventure and spurious Zynga-developed rip-offs to play, kindly start the revolution for me.

Go Easy On Us Nitwits, Devs

I’d like to confess my status as a n00b in sight of the gods, lest I be lambasted and saddled with the pitiful moniker of dishonesty forever more.

But as derogatory labels go, a substantial downgrade it isn’t, for publically admitting one’s shortcomings in the testosterone-laden world of video gaming is virtually tantamount to accepting one’s abjection beneath the mercurial sandals of one’s more refined superiors, or perhaps to directing one’s own erotic hand puppet productions in lieu of mustering the courage to order Rectum Raiders 3 from the local Blockbuster branch.

But, alas, sucking is what I do with an air of such proficiency that I can no longer foster a stern-faced façade. It’s a humbling revelation no doubt borne from years of unmitigated ineptitude, and one that’s inevitably found itself accentuated by the hordes of self-aggrandising jizzgimps scouring the net as part of their incessant crusades to embroider their hulking e-penises. And thus my own e-penis of bantam-like proportions was created, modest in virility and soon to be leaking mephitic fluids.

All things considered, then, I’m at a crossroads of sorts. I can either quietly drift into the abyss and leave the dextrously and cognitively taxing gaming concoctions to the big boys or I can assert my self-centred advocacy for an easier interactive future for my bumbling equals. Call me a whinging douchenugget, but I think I’ll plump for the latter.

Let it not be said that I’m a supporter of easier games for purely egotistical reasons, though. I’m a devotee to the video gaming medium and a fervent one at that, one who’ll happily defend its calibre as a legitimate source of mentally and emotionally rewarding entertainment until the cows come home and I berate them for their tardiness, the bovine bastards. I enjoy a pulsating, balls-to-the-wall audiovisual hootenanny as much as the next fellow, and I’ll be quick to shake my head in a fit of pompous disapproval at the perceived dumbing down of our most beloved genres in the corporate drive to tap into a contrived new consumer demographic.

That’s why what I’m suggesting doesn’t directly correlate with the notion of dumbing down the standards by which the industry abides. Instead, I’m a proponent of universal encompassment, or variable difficulty settings if you’d prefer an alternative, less effeminate term. In essence, I’m talking about implementing both easier and more difficult gameplay variants into any game in which the option is realistically open to its developer.

And while it’s hardly an unusual plea, it’s still far from consistently supported across the board. I’m a firm believer in the assertion that many of the very greatest games manage to master the art of both accommodating the most impish of newcomers and posing a challenge to the most seasoned of prodigious gaming virtuosos, and the dreaded “one size fits all” approach to gameplay difficulty still employed by a surprising number of studios just doesn’t cut it in my rain-soaked book. Pretentiously put, a single difficulty setting condemns many a game to the inelegant “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” sin bin, and that means that the weak falter, the strong grow frustrated and those in between generally fluctuate between a happy medium and inordinate limbo, depending on the game in question. But bugger the middle grounders.

It’s not as though it’s even an exclusive symptom of solitary difficulty disease either. I’ve genuinely lost count of the number of times I’ve been well and truly humbled by a game’s so-called “easy” difficulty variant, leaving me without the slightest inkling of an entry point into a product I was figuratively touching myself in anticipation over just a few hours prior.

Take Baldur’s Gate, for instance. It’s a rollercoaster ride of emotional twists, rich lore and emotional characterisation, apparently, but can I get in on the bandwagon? Can I balls. I can’t even bypass the opening few chapters without my on-screen avatar serving as some wizard’s bitch dozens of times of end.

Then there’s the STALKER series, a trio of games said to breathe tangible life into the bleak harshness of a post-nuclear battlefield environment. I wouldn’t doubt that for a second, and I’m in no position to doubt the word of critics and enthusiasts alike, but I can wholeheartedly state that it’s hard to get a feel for the game’s heralded pacing and atmosphere when a Russian soldier pumps umpteen tonnes of lead into my character’s cranial membrane.

Clearly, though, a rule wouldn’t be a rule without its exceptions, and this little quandary’s counter-example comes in the guise of the platforming genre. In a domain founded on the lone premises of running and jumping in seamless tandem amidst a barrage of potentially lethal obstacles, catering for the puny can’t quite boil down to a meagre deceleration of enemy AI. For a platformer, the concept of challenge lies almost wholly in their inherent design, with developers possessing total control over the distance of a jump, the angle of a wall bounce and the trajectory of the player character movements, effectively underlining the genre’s nature as the purest expression of relationship between player and creator.

That’s partly why I can’t cast a loathsome eye over Super Meat Boy, Team Meat’s indie sensation that brought a whole new meaning to interactive vexation. Its challenge was lofty and its frustrations were vast in number, yet its controls were tighter than a menopausal nun and its levels were short enough to encourage perseverance without forcing players to endure boundless series of life-sapping load screens following their latest forlorn descent into a blade-encrusted crevasse. And while the game was bending me over its knee and administering an anal thrashing to make Conrad Bain cringe, I was oddly content in the knowledge that the story underpinning Meat Boy was one of such charming simplicity that I could take it or leave it, soothing my wounded ego and removing my narrative-obsessed inhibitions in one fell swoop.

More importantly, though, Super Meat Boy is honest in its intentions, regardless of how sadistic they may be. The game was, is, and presumably always will be, marketed with a keen emphasis on its allure as a devilishly unforgiving animal, and that’s a reputation of which anyone wishing to give it a spin is made overtly aware. I, like almost everyone else, knew what I was getting myself into, which is more than I can say about the aforementioned immersive breakthroughs in interactive storytelling-cum-exercises in my own juvenile angst. It was this level of consumer transparency on the part of Team Meat that deserves to take the plaudits on so many different levels, none of which I’ll mention here because as much of a dolt in the field of philosophy as I am in the field of sequential button-pressing.

So, what’s my point? Well, I’m not totally sure. Maybe it’s that I’m a self-loathing miser edging ever closer to that urban massacre I’ve always fantasised about when I drift to sleep at night, or maybe it’s that I’ve developed yet further sympathy for the trials and tribulations developers face in the uphill struggle to keep bawling underachievers like me happy. Who knows? Either way, it was a respectable way to squander another hour or so of my dwindling life, and perhaps yours too. Tough luck, eh?

Tattletale: Standing Up To The Blood And The Bullets

It’s the Art History Of Games conference 2010. Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn, the founding members of Tale of Tales, have just concluded their talk on whether games can be art with a resounding no. “Make love, not games”, they say. The audience responds with an awkward applause that only adds decibels to the confusion. Out of everyone, you’d think it would be this collective of open minds that fully understood the development duo and their artistic creations. But Tale of Tales only remains stalwart to their solitude in thought and determination in pursuing what they believe games can be. They’ve been painted as the advocator of the ‘art game’, due to taking the medium to new places and encouraging players to discover different emotions through it. If only that was enough.

“I don’t agree with what my parents made of me. And I certainly hope I’m not making the same thing of my own children. I have to fight these tendencies all the time. But I don’t think it’s a battle I can win. The best I can hope for is damage control.”