Review: 3 Indie Games - Masq, The Path, Defcon

I have to admit I am one of the many who shamelessly prefer triple-A blockbuster titles over little games with budgets so tiny I couldn't feed myself with it. Yet, every so often, some indie game would blow the world over with its interesting experimentation that would be too risky for a commercial enterprise to try. Indie game devs aren't playing to the masses, they are playing to the people who are willing to try something different in the efforts to push video games in a new direction.

So here are mini-reviews of 3 indie games I've played in the last couple of weeks.

Masq

Think about all the soaps on TV, the melodrama, the handsome cast, and the over-the-top personalities. Soaps somehow appeal to us on a really superficial level, possibly because of the sensational stories that take place.

Well, Masq is a soap-like game. It's an adventure game. It's also a story-board game, meaning there is no movement, no interactivity other than selecting a multiple choice of actions. You see the illustration of what's happening, and you make your choice accordingly.

Like this:

The illustrations just work. So don't be put off by its primitive nature that harks back to adventure games of old. This one is utterly mature, thought-provoking and thrilling. The story is of you, a fashion company owner, who needs to get funding for a new project. Your wife's boss, a kindergarten headmaster offers to help. But you know he's got gangster connections. Is it a good thing to involve yourself with such shady characters? The choice is entirely up to you, and will unfold a story of epic proportions.

There are multiple pathways, multiple storylines, and multiple endings. And the characters are well-realized even without graphics. The story is relatively simple, but at the same time, you start getting into character, and really think about what actions you'll take. High replayability, especially if your choices lead to an early ending, you'd really go "Awww I want it to last longer".

You can lie, cheat, steal, be a hero, be a villain, and it feels refreshingly liberating. If I had word space I'd rant about this game some more, but in the interest of keeping this post succint (after the long wordy commentary about E3 yesterday), I'll just say go play it. A brilliant look at the necessity for good narrative in games.

It's been around for sometime, but game magazines and journalists haven't really paid it much attention.

It also happens to be the only free title out of the three today. Get it here. It can be played online, or downloaded, although you'd still need to be connected to the internet then. That's really the only flaw with the game, having to do some activation thing if you're playing offline, and sometimes it doesn't register. But if you forgo that trouble, this is a gem of a game. It feels like a game anyone can get into.

The Path

A reimagining of the Little Red Riding Hood story; a long path is set out in front of 6 girls that you control, flanked on either side by deep woods. The goal? To get to grandma's house at the very end of the path. So you walk the girls towards the house, go inside, and upstairs to grandma's bedroom.

The end right? No. The game says you failed, and you have to try again.

So this time, you think about it, and then instead of going towards your grandma's house, you walk off the path and delve into the woods. And so begins the horror.

Yes, The Path is a horror game, and it is sickeningly twisted. From the gothic-like graphics, to the jarring violins and ghostly choir music, there is something about it that just gets under your skin. But that's just cosmetic. Wait till you get to the pyschological.

You see, already the game throws convention out of the window when it tells you one thing, but actually encourages you to go against the rules. It's all about taking the girls off the road, far from innocence, and into a woods of really dark things. In the woods, the girls are encouraged to explore, pick up sparkly objects, and various things like a two-headed teddy bear, or a skull at a graveyard.

Occasionally, the girls would make a comment or two about their surroundings, and they are really poignant observations that wouldn't be out of place in a philosophy text. The girls themselves all have distinct personalities, and ages ranging 9 - 19. In the back of your mind, as you explore the scary, and nearly deserted woods, you feel a dread in your heart... what are you doing in there? You should take these innocent girls back out on to the path... but something compels you on anyway.

And that something is the Big Bad Wolf. It's more a symbolic meaning, representated through the image of a man. You're supposed to meet the Wolf, and when you do, the girl is "killed". But when I say killed, I don't mean literally. Something happens to her. A brutal cutscene plays out, and the next thing you know, the girl is lying out on the middle of the road. And then you are left to take the girl limping all the way to grandma's house, and you can see the change in body language, she's not all wide-eyed and cheery as at the start of the game. Something bad had happened.

But you aren't told exactly what. Some people have interpreted it as rape, and others have seen it as some kind of metaphorical representation for the death of innocence, a coming-of-age. I personally have considered the latter as more the possibility. But whatever it is, this game serves no purpose other than to provoke a reaction from you, whether it be an emotion, or a thought.

The presentation and graphics are good. The visuals are all dream-like, from the stately pace, to the music, to the atmosphere, and even the slightly blurred, saturated color-effects on-screen.

But as a game, it's no fun. There are subtle images that lead you in the right direction, but more often than not, you'll get lost and trek for eons before something interesting stumbles upon you.

It is extremely slow, exploring the big woods is a tedious affair, and what there is to interact with are sparsely scattered throughout. Just getting to the Wolf also takes a lot of time. And you have to do it 6 times for each girl.

You could say that such a game is taking big risks especially since they've placed a price tag on it. You could find other thought-provoking stuff on the Net for free, but this is without a doubt, quite polished. Just to me, it seems so horrifying both in the story and the tediousness of it. For a lot of mainstream folk, this is not your game. For those with a lot of patience, need something a little more arty, and love to go off the well-worn track, this is for you.


Defcon

Ever wondered what it's like to be the president of a first world nation with a whole armament of nukes at your disposal? Fallout 3 presents a world after a nuclear holocaust, where all the superpowers throw the worst weapons of mass destruction at one another. Laying waste to the planet as a whole. Defcon is that very event. The leading up to and the actual destruction by nuclear strikes.

With the sparse, bleak graphics, (as shown above) and minimalist representations of ships, planes, satellites, and missiles, Defcon looks to me more like a very clever boardgame. Kinda' like Risk except cleverer (if there is such a word).

Players build up nuke launchpads and satellites around cities of their territory, scout out enemy locations, and as the Defcon turns from 5 to 1, hit them with everything you've got. It sounds simple enough but it isn't. The strategy comes in juggling the limited amount of resources, knowing where to place your offense and defensive buildings, as well as what targets you'd want to strike.

The actual mechanics is more like rock, paper, scissors. Some kind of plane can take down this kind of missile, or only this kind of boat can attack this kind of plane, etc. And your lives come in the form of the populations of the cities under your control. The game is about losing less lives than your opponent, and its this morbid inevitability that makes the game so profound.

The game can take from as short as 15 minutes to play, or as long as 5 hours +, with the vehicles and missiles moving at realistic crawl. There is a multiplayer for the competitive.

The graphics are nice and minimalist. Nothing in excess, the map itself is darkened, so as to make the icons and sharp colors stand out more, as well as bring out a very tense atmosphere. There is some faint background music, like some kind of droning, and it further emphasised the bleak mood.

All in all, this game is very suitable for the strategically obsessive. The simplicity hides a very deep gameplay and it would do well to sit through the training session. It's a bit hard to know what to do from the get-go. But once you are well underway, the time can pass easily just watching your nukes soaring in the air and coldly, clinically, without fanfare, destroying those familiar cities. Epic.