Salvation! We’re going to start the year off with a handful of coins until 2022. Sometimes we’ll take a look at trends we’ve spotted or themes that will likely continue to define things in games for a while. Sometimes we’ll just think of things we’ve enjoyed and where they might take us. Happy New Year everyone !
I’m not sure if you’ve used any of these run tracker apps before but then accidentally left it in your pocket for a very long time and only discovered it a few days later after recording hours and hours of your aimless wandering. ? It can be quietly enlightening. A lot of us, I guess, live everyday lives that take place in a fairly limited space. Covid has only brought things closer, of course, but I know that I live a large part of my life these days in my house and then in an outdoor space bounded by two parks, a local Tesco and the sea.
Maybe it’s just me. But anyway, it certainly helps explain why I love a huge open-world game so much. All this space! All this horizon! Steep, a favorite here between the parking lots, the Tesco and the sea, gives me a whole mountain range. I never tire of going from one summit to the map. Check it out! A panoramic experience. I could never see everything, surely! I love this stuff.
But it also perhaps explains an opposite trend that I only recently noticed. That on the other hand, I am also drawn to games which are very small. Sometimes very, very small. A Short Hike is an open world game, but the world is deeply cozy. You can walk around it in a few minutes. Toem is not an open world, but its linked spaces are hardly vast. You can go from any A to any B in seconds. Why am I so attracted? Why did I spend more time in A Short Hike and Toem than in many other bigger games? Are small games – games with small worlds – on the rise? I hope. Hope the trend continues.
A short hike is a beautiful game.
I still remember the first time I played A Short Hike. I may have sat in front of the PC for about three hours, completing the main storyline and getting a feel for the location. Coming back to this territory over the months allowed me to move from exploration to something closer to understanding: I started to get an idea of what the places were, of what they were doing. in their specific places and in the way the world has organically divided into natural territories. . It’s possible in any open world game, of course – one of the fascinating things about GTA 5 is the way the city seems to get smaller the more you play it, the more you understand it – but it is. a particular richness of the comfortable -globalist openness.
With a short hike, and with Toem and Alba, come to think of it, all that time in the game means I’m starting to feel something much better than ownership – almost the opposite of ownership in fact. I’m playing A Short Hike now and I feel like I’m visiting a place that’s inaccessible to me, and it’s fun. I spend so much time there, that I end up thinking of the place as I walk around, I see it as a place that is completely separate from me and what I’m doing there at the time. I suspect I do this less in big games because there is always something new to see, a new quest or mission or a new unlock that I should be aiming for, an icon that I should clear from the map. But in small worlds, you can quickly get to a point where it’s all done, so if you’re still playing, you’re playing for the sake of being.
I read something great about postcards lately – about how people should send them more, especially if they’re not on vacation. I think a small open world can be a bit like that, a bit like a postcard. He says everything in this view can be known, truly known. There is a wealth here to be experienced in a cozy space – you know, between two parks, a local Tesco and the sea.
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Article source https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2022-01-05-looking-forward-the-snug-pleasure-of-small-worlds