fl0w through the Passage of time

Today, I got around to play two games that are considered to be "art", at least by quite a few people. These games, as referenced in the title of post, are fl0w and Passage.

What prompted me to play these only now? Partly because I wanted to be inspired for my next assignment for class. Partly because of the sort of recent news about video games being considered art by one of the biggest modern art institutes of North America. I was also curious about why these games were considered art.

Passage... well it certainly does have many meanings built into the name as well as the whole of the game. It's hard to talk about without spoiling it, but it does have to do with traversing time in a way. Or traversing through space? There's apparently a ton of deep meaning to a lot of things, but I only found that out through the comments by the author found on the website.

fl0w is also a strange thing that really reminded me of the cell stage of Spore. Perhaps Spore was inspired by this. I find it to be a nice mix of difficulty that almost bordered on the frustrating, but instead led to a false sense of satisfaction. The fact that there was and there wasn't an "end game" was also strange. In the end, it made me think a little about an animals life.

By thinking a little more, I connected fl0w to the previous game's concept and see it more about life in general as well. Of course there's could be more of less interpretation on a seemingly simple game, but at least it made me wonder. And then there's the fact that it reminded me of classic Snake, except slightly more complicated.

In the end these games have inspired me a little, though interspersed between the two games, I decided to read up on Yume Nikki again. Now this game really makes me wonder about it and about the creator(s) behind it. Especially interesting are the two huge fan games for it. Coincidentally, one is name ".flow". Now I ought to really play through those games instead of being scared by their length and oppressive atmosphere.


Now time to sleep and wake up to finish a work that should've been done sooner.