I like Runner.

By now, the game doesn't need an introduction... well ok, maybe a little one. Runner, for PC, is available and introduced here in yesterday's front page article. If you haven't played and can, please do so. If you can't or won't play it, then you won't mind the "spoilers".



These are things I've picked up on.

There isn't much not to get

Runner is not about the atomic bomb.

In my experience with art games, I feel that burying a meaning in obscurity can sometimes take the place of creating meaning via what's actually in front of you. Unfortunately, once something is labeled an Art Game, the tendency of a user is to overthink what the game is and what its trying to say. Runner doesn't ask for too much outside knowledge to understand. I believe one simply needs to have understood or experienced a quest for love. Certainly, the story is a personal, and really specific one. But I think knowledge of Anthony and his relationships aren't completly essential to see what's happening.

Graphically sumptuous

Really the best word for the situation. Between Johnathan Holmes' sprite work and Ashley Davis' drawn images, there's a rock solid level of visual fidelity. The two styles help to differentiate between these past experiences and the current ordeal. Perfect styles in perfect situations.



Solid, Deliberate Design

From a directorial/design point of view, I think this game is absolutely rock solid and pretty triumphant. For me, I had an "Oh Wow" moment when I was thinking about this game while driving into work, after having played it this morning. While trying to form the words for the article, I said out loud to myself:

"Well, the overlapping thought images are pretty distracting, but they don't *really* effect the difficulty of the game...oh man!"

Maybe Rev will go into this in his post mortem, but this, I think, is a huge success. At that moment, I'd realized that the game was designed to make good on the idea of fusing gameplay and story meaning. The gameplay implies difficulty, evoking the Stupid Hard third level of BattleToads. However, in actuallity, its a very simple sequence. The game tells you what's coming next, and once you have the timing of the obstacles and the Runner's movement speed down, you don't need to see your character. However, the effect of obscuring your character suggests that what you're dealing with is meant to be difficult or unfair. But, once you've sorted out the situation, none of that obfuscation even matters. You're free to navigate. Isn't that what this runner's situation is about?

Whoa, man.

There's plenty of things like that that come up. Some are more transparent, like how writing or creating can make the run a bit easier. And some are certainly less apparant. Funny how difficulty takes a dip near the end...



Solid musical choice

Music shapes the experience of a game, whatever that music may be. The choice of score sets the tone competently. Its not so much about the action of the runner, but about what you can't see: the emotions of the Runner.

If you've said what you need to say, there's no need to labor on the point.

I've acquired an appreciation of shortform artistic expression. The fact that Runner doesn't over stay its welcome both respects the player's time (a point Anthony happens to make on a regular basis about games) and makes sure it doesn't tread over itself as an experience. Why repeat a chorus if you feel like it was understood the first time you sang it?

Art has no boundary: How my experience was unique

Everyone brings their own personal content to the experienece of a piece of art. However, I had the unique experience of a technical issue. After multiple plays, the sounds started to crackle out, and the framerate started to suffer. Easily something you can fault a game for as a product. Shouldn't it just work on everything? However, taking it in as part of the experience, it felt to me like the act of repeating this loop of introspection, and running from the phantoms of past experience, was having a toll on the process. It wasn't the madness effect from Eternal Darkness, but truly, the world for my Runner was falling apart around him.




The system is beautiful

Runner is a complete work. But it certainly implies a much larger game, via the systems that it presents. The very end suggests that we are experiencing a cycle of something. Where there were three girls, there ended up being four. Runner as a larger game could start with just a Runner and any number of fellow Runners that you link yourself to. Perhaps this Runner's cycle had gone over three times prior to the start of the game? In a larger work, there could be more runners to choose from. Maybe there's more than writing that elevates you above the run? Talking to friends, silent meditation, and maybe even religion, eh? Anything that can put the Runner into a state where the thoughts that once obscured him and his run and put them in some manageable state, right in front of him. While I don't NEED Runner HD Remix Plus Alpha, the systems of what Runner *is* is clearly defined within the work.

I lol'd

Art game, hardcore throwback, new indie cerebro wank: it doesn't matter what you want to call this.

I laughed when the blond chick ran into the wall in her memory bubble.

That's not even how it happened...

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All in all, Runner is great. It didn't have the gut impact that Passage did. It also hasn't opened me up emotionally or challanged me from a functional intellectual angle, like Braid. However, it stands as a manifestation of a game being a work of Art on almost every plane that a game should be able to.

Your mileage on the quality of that being may vary. But I think this is a success.

Anthony, Ashley and Johnathan, you nailed it. Congrats and thank you.