So, I just got back from my day at PAX. There was all sorts of delightful stuff on display, fun things to do, and some very impressive demos in the expo hall. The one game that I was utterly blown away by, however, was not LittleBigPlanet 2 or Duke Nukem Forever or Final Fantasy XIV, but a student game in the PAX 10 called Solace. Something that’s been on my mind lately is the fact that while games, as a medium, have certainly been explored as a vessel for expressive artistic statement, gameplay has not often been a part of that. If you take Braid and remove the text, you end up with a puzzle game involving time manipulation that is barely about anything other than puzzles involving time manipulation. On the other hand, if you took Solace, removed the text, and replaced all the beautiful graphics and superb sound design with rectangles and beeps, it would still be about the five stages of grief as represented through the gameplay of its levels – the message would not be conveyed nearly so brilliantly, but nor would it be lost.
Certainly, there have been games in the past that conveyed an artistic statement through their gameplay. Passage springs immediately to mind, for example. But the thing about Passage is that while it may or may not be effective as art, it isn’t really effective as a game. It merits exploration, and provokes thoughts, certainly, but doesn’t really engage the player on a visceral level. In contrast, Solace is fun, challenging, and engaging. The visuals, audio, and level design are all deliberately tuned to evoke within the player echoes of the emotion that they represent. Not just through sympathetic sensory associations, the way a painting or poem or piece of music would – though Solace uses these idioms as well – but through the nuances of the gameplay. The structure of the game expects, and at times effectively requires, the player to demonstrate an understanding of the level’s relevant emotion in order to successfully proceed through the game – and indeed enables the player to do so, with nothing more nuanced than a directional control and a fire button.
Solace, in addition to being a marvelous work of art in its own right, is a lesson to all game designers of what games have the potential to be. In my own game designs, I have often run into a tension between making my game artistically meaningful and having good, solid, fun gameplay. Solace, by being excellent in both regards, has taught me that this is a false dichotomy. If Portal is worthy of a place on a course syllabus, I believe Solace can be similarly instructive, to students and designers alike.
Personal anecdotes regarding the game follow in the comment section; as these may spoil some of the delight of discovery that the game can offer, I strongly recommend downloading and playing through the game before reading on.
This is the brilliance of the game’s design: while I managed to complete the game on my first playthrough, I was very close to failing about halfway through the second stage, Anger. And it was at that point, with the satisfying thrill that comes with figuring out how to beat a tricky portion of any well-designed game, that I had an epiphany: I was failing because I was trying to carefully avoid all of the intense bullet patterns (as any sensible, experienced shmup player would do). Once I embraced the feeling of Anger, and started simply plowing through the unfair streams of bullets to aggressively demolish the enemies as rapidly as possible, the rest of the level just clicked into place. By the finale of Acceptance, I was grinning and giggling with unabashed joy at the beauty of the game, and feeling ready to take on the world (let alone the rest of PAX).
The game’s website doesn’t mention anything about system requirements, but I’m guessing there isn’t an OSX build of the game in that download file.
I’ll check it out next time I’m on a windows machine.
I’ve seen the game before, I think I even checked a video but it never registered as something I should check it. Seeing you recommend it changed my mind though, downloading it now.
Before I read your comments, I wanted to say, Nathan, that your links sent me on long internet chase reading lotsa about academia and Portal.
Comment soon,
-John
Played it through. Pretty ballin’
I agree with what you say about Braid’s gameplay being independent of its narrative and theme. I noticed this a lot on multiple playthroughs when I was trying to beat the Speedrun. When you’re just gunning through the level, you’re forced to skip all the books at the beginning of each world. You completely ignore any metaphors the game might be hinting at and the game is just a fun puzzle. One thing I will say about Braid is World 4 where time only moves forward as you move forward; when you move backward, time moves backward. On a fundamental level, that gameplay mechanic is like grief; you can get past it if you move forward, but you’re stuck in it if you don’t move at all.
Anywho, Solace did an admiral job of weaving its theme into the gameplay, visuals, and audio.
I feel like every stage except the first one, Denial, is well defined. It’s a tutorial level so we’re busy learning the controls and observing the enemy patterns that we don’t look for any connection to Denial. Anger’s badass cuz your powerful and electric guitar plays as you fire bullets.
Bargaining is really creative cuz it’s like, how could they represent this? Fighting against a boss totally feels like your bargaining with God.
In Depression, I love how the enemy bullets stagnate, how the art scheme is black and white and occasional colours, and how your own shots are really pathetic. You barely survive in that level.
I felt like a God in Acceptance. YOU fire out insane bullet patterns, not them! Amazing!
With all the original ideas behind the latter 4 stages, I wish they had done something really outta the box for Denial. Frankly, I wish the whole game was a bit more outta the box. They do a really fine job of illustrating the different stages, but they only scratch the surface of what they mean. In Bargaining, why can’t we offer ourselves to the God-like boss? How awesome would it be to try that, and then the boss denies you? Very awesome.
This last comment should be taken with a grain of salt because I don’t fully believe it. I’ll share it with you anyways. The stark contrast between the last two stages Depression and Acceptance rubbed me the wrong way. The changed happened too suddenly. One moment, I was pew pewing out pathetic fireballs; the next, I was all confident and awesome. Getting over something doesn’t happen that fast in real life. I could resonate with the game much more if the transition from Depression to Acceptance was slower. I imagine the gray background of depression slowly filling with colour, your ship gradually getting faster and more powerful. That would sell it to me that I’ve moved past this feeling of depression.
Very cool game, though. While I didn’t resonate with the stages of grief very deeply, I was impressed by every design choice they made to make every stage appropriate to the emotional counterpart.
Thanks, Nathan! Sorry for the probable typos!
Maybe it’s reading too much into it, but Denial as the default introductory level works for me: isn’t Denial fundamentally saying “everything is fine”, refusing to acknowledge anything out of the ordinary? It makes a great deal of sense that Denial should be plain, straightforward, and indeed a bit empty.
I thought there was some clever nuance with Bargaining, too – the back-and-forth process of taking out the boss’s defenses, gaining ground with the powerups, and then the boss retaliating strongly while it’s vulnerable. Especially notable in that, in all the levels, the emotion is represented not just by the level or the player’s ship, but by both and the interplay between the two. When it comes down to it, who are you really Bargaining with?
Depression is excellent: the slow, fading shots of the player (that don’t even accomplish anything if you do hit with them, so why bother…), the way everything around you gradually dims and decays, and even the way the powerups are just kinda there alongside the bullets – maybe necessary to survive, at times, but not really rewarding. You just muddle your way through things, helpless to do any better than just letting everything wash past you, trying not to be in the way as your world collapses.
Pay attention to the way Acceptance actually progresses; the level transition is the turning point, but Acceptance is the process of actually getting over things. The enemy bullets are just as numerous as before, but rarely as threatening as they might first appear; in contrast to Depression, where rewards were rare and unpredictable, in Acceptance the enemies will sometimes present you with streams of powerups instead of bullets. And by the end of it, it turns out you’re not actually superpowered; just a healthy individual who is ready to move on with life. But that’s all that you really need.
I actually had a completely different take on anger. What I noticed was that the more destructive I attempted to be, the more harm I brought upon myself, as many of the enemies you kill explode and throw even more bullets towards you.
Depression resonated the most with me. Personally, it felt like the longest mission (I have absolutely no idea if it was). My character was lethargically going through the motions, with no real enjoyment or hope, expecting this go to on until I simply gave up and let the inevitable occur. This stage hit so hard because, as I played it, I saw myself and the many years of my life that I spent ravaged by undiagnosed clinical depression.
And then, suddenly, wonderfully, it ended. While I mentally applied a different name to acceptance, I found the same beauty and joy, as I awoke from the darkness to find a brilliant new day awaiting me, with all the pain and misery fallen away.
This is perhaps the most beautiful game I have ever played. I doubt even Roger Ebert could call this anything but art.
@Nathan: I replayed the game last night and noticed a few more things. As you mentioned with Depression, your bullets do nothing. That did a wonderful job of making your actions seem futile. Like you said, even leveling up is meaningless cuz you don’t get anymore powerful.
There’s one set piece in that stage where enemies fly around you and surround you with still black dots and red dots. Eventually, you’re trapped and the red dots starting closing in. It’s a terrifying moment like you’re in an iron maiden or something.
I agree that Acceptance has a wonderful progression to it ending with you being normal and stable. It cheapens the idea, however that your getting over depression in Acceptance when the final stage starts and the sky’s blue and the music’s all happy. If this game’s all about the gameplay, visual, and sound design being metaphors for emotions, I wished that Acceptance looked and felt like I was progressing through depression rather than just playing like I was.
Of course, I can criticize all I want but I have no idea how hard that would be too program. My bad if I come across silly.
@Krazinsky: With anger, the gameplay is balance of dodging the enemies’ bullets that explode when they die and collecting the powerups that they leave behind. I agree with Nathan that a more aggressive approach works because they’re are more enemies to kill and more health to pick up.
It’s really interesting hearing your opinions since you resonate so much with depression and acceptance. This game might not have resonated as strong with me because I didn’t experience the emotions as powerfully as you did.
Great game.
-John
I downloaded and played this, Thank you nmccoy for suggesting it! I don’t know if I felt these emotions as strongly as the rest of you, but I definitely felt them. I was aware of my amazement throughout the whole thing though, “Am I really feeling angry right now? whoah! yeah, I am!” … “am I feeling like I’m bargaining right now? whoah! yeah, I am!” etc, on through all the levels. I’m still feeling a little bit of glow from Acceptance. I agree that if Portal is enough to be put on a course syllabus, This game should be as well. This game should be required playing for everyone going through grief counseling.
I’m still amazed that such a simple game concept, a shmup, which has been used countless times throughout the history of gaming, can be used to evoke such emotions mostly just by level and ship design. This game is definitely something I will play many times in the future, to experience this again.
Sorry for double posting, but one thing occurred to me. A real improvement to this game, would be some harder difficulty modes. When you’ve beat it, and want to experience it again, It’s harder to feel angry or depressed, because you’re better at the game, (Especially if say, I get a no-hit streak in depression
) And then the joy of acceptance isn’t as strong when you haven’t felt the negative emotions first. I’d still recommend this game to everybody, but it’s not very replayable without a harder version.
Thank you for recommending this game, I downloaded and played through it today and loved it. Depression is particular was very powerful, as I felt myself getting more and more miserable as I progressed. Even the music that played when you fired bullets was less interesting and more repetitive.
I also loved the way that in Acceptance, when you got damaged some of your bullets turned black, but if you fought back they would turn white again – it was a great visual metaphor for how acceptance is about pushing to overcome your negative emotions.
To the above commentor, if you go to the Options menu you will see there are three difficulty levels. The default is Normal mode, so unless you changed that before you started you can go back and play it on hard.
I see no difficulty levels in the options menu. I can’t find anything like that. Just controls for changing screen resolution and audio settings. I’ll redownload both builds and see if it appears, maybe they recently updated.