{"id":2266,"date":"2013-03-14T10:04:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-14T10:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/archives\/2013\/03\/14\/recess-6-less-of-a-game\/"},"modified":"2015-01-04T17:06:56","modified_gmt":"2015-01-04T16:06:56","slug":"recess-6-less-of-a-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/archives\/2013\/03\/14\/recess-6-less-of-a-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Recess! 6 \u2013 Less of a game"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recess! is a correspondence series with personal ruminations on games.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Dear Niels<\/a> and Alper<\/a>,<\/span><\/p>\n

Just before writing this I was playing Ridiculous Fishing<\/a>. And by the time you read this, you\u2019ve probably played it yourselves. So you don\u2019t need me to tell you it\u2019s pretty great. As always with Vlambeer<\/a> games the feel is just right. The art style is refreshingly different. But most importantly, it does not try to guilt trip you into playing more and more of it. Or ask for your money so you can skip the tedious bits. There are no tedious bits. I would say its old school and honest in that way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve also played a bit of Year Walk<\/a>. Yes, most of my video gaming nowadays happens on iOS. Turning on a console to sit down and play a game for real is a big commitment. I hardly ever get around to it. As with Ridiculous Fishing I was enamored by Year Walk\u2019s brave departure from the usual generic art style. The interaction designer in me was also pleasantly surprised by its slightly odd movement controls. You pan left and right to explore a given area, and swipe up and down to move between them. It\u2019s a comfortable way of playing on a touch screen, plus it gels nicely with the layered, picture-book art style. The game\u2019s ominous atmosphere\u2014which I\u2019ll lazily describe as \u201cBlair Witch-esque occult goings-on in a snowy forest\u201d also captivated me.<\/span><\/p>\n

What put me off though, was one of the first actual puzzles I had to solve. I had to use a code I\u2019d discovered in one area to open up a door in another area. I had to grab a pen and paper and write that code down. It wasn\u2019t hard, but it felt like work. I quickly lost interest after that. I did not feel like doing more of these lock-and-key chores to progress. Come to think of it, this is what put me off FEZ<\/a>, too. I\u2019d rather just wander around and explore the story world. Similar to Niels\u2019s annoyance with the JRPG tropes in Ni no Kuni<\/a>, I wanted it to be less of a game, I guess.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kars<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recess! is a correspondence series with personal ruminations on games. Dear Niels and Alper, Just before writing this I was playing Ridiculous Fishing. And by the time you read this, you\u2019ve probably played it yourselves. So you don\u2019t need me to tell you it\u2019s pretty great. As always with Vlambeer games the feel is just … Continue reading Recess! 6 \u2013 Less of a game<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[983],"tags":[974,975,971,972,973],"class_list":["post-2266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tumblr","tag-fez","tag-ni-no-kuni","tag-ridiculous-fishing","tag-vlambeer","tag-year-walk"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2266"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2566,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2266\/revisions\/2566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}