Beautiful Games

The past month or so I've been playing a lot of new video games, because it's amazing what you can find for free if you know where to look. I'll go into some detail down below, but before that I want to say: it's amazing how beautiful you can make games in a short amount of time.

I'm talking here about a game called The Aurora Wager. There's very little story, it's an open world which you explore via balloon. Oh, and there's something about a race to the north pole. But you really stop caring about that when you set off, because 1) the world is so beautiful in its own, bleak way and 2) a hot air balloon is a surprisingly difficult thing to control.

It took me two or three games before I managed to land safely on another island. And you need to, because you only have one tank of gas and it'll take more than that to get past the first half hour of your trip. The world through which you are ballooning is not like ours; no, it is dotted with islands which seem more like balloon crash sites than simple islands, every single one is littered with crates (all empty - it was made in seven days!), skulls, gas canisters and a few more interesting items. Most of the things are still little more than scenery - re: the empty boxes - but I find it impressive that something of this magnitude was made in seven days. The screenshots I have really don't do it justice - you can't see the bleak beauty of the mountains up close, only the dark grey of islands far below, lost in a sea of deadly fog. And while it's not up to the "high-definition" standards of modern gaming, it focuses on setting and atmosphere in place of action as you drift lazily through the world, following the wind patterns.

But onto a different kind of atmosphere altogether. Because fear is something I've found video games to be lacking (except Alan Wake - I maintain that that is one of the best games I've ever played), but I do very much enjoy games which can scare me. Which is why I enjoy playing Receiver.

Receiver isn't a free game, unfortunately - I got it with Wolfire's Overgrowth Alpha bundle, which cost an eyebrow-raise-inducing $29.95 (which is just over £18 at the moment) and includes the Overgrowth Alpha, Receiver, and a game I haven't played called Low Light Combat. However, you can get Receiver on its own from the Steam store, for a paltry £3.99. And it is worth it.

I'll be honest, the reason I haven't been playing it is because the other two games are so immensely cool. Overgrowth's landscapes are huge and absolutely stunning - there are deserts and volcano craters and beautiful valleys - but the real atmosphere is in Receiver. The mazelike terrain, constantly shifting with each new respawn, is a sprawl of dark corners and high walls, spiralling staircases and rooftop labyrinths. And what makes it worse is, you're in the middle of a robot apocalypse and you have to load your gun yourself.

"Pfft!" I hear you say. "I can load a gun in a video game!" Oh yeah? You might be able to hit 'r' in a video game, but you've never had to take out the magazine, insert more bullets and return it to the gun. And you've only got two hands, so you can either shoot or reload; it's your choice. It gives you a good idea of how well you would survive given any of those circumstances you talk about with your mates all the time - would you be able to live in a robot apocalypse, even turn the tables, without a bandolier of ready-loaded magazines and a heads-up display?

But part of this is what gives Receiver its tense, horror-movie atmosphere. You become tightly-wound, a spring, waiting for the jump scare which you are certain is just around the corner. And on top of the artificially-intelligent machine gun emplacements - which will pepper you with bullets on sight, and it only takes one to kill - you have to avoid, or better, kill, the floating attack drones which seek you out and try to annihilate you with their crackling death-tasers. Yeah, you read that right: Death. Tasers. And you've got to deal with them whilst reloading each part of your gun individually, bullets in magazine, magazine in gun. And did you turn the safety off? Do you want it full-auto or not? Is the hammer down? All these things you're thinking about, and when the music starts - music which, I have to note, is splendidly atmospheric whilst at the same time blending in with the noise of the hovering robots - your heart rate rises as you peer around every corner, expecting buzzing metal death from above. Along the way there are cassettes which can help you, giving information about the world, but it all stays as cryptic as ever unless, one assumes, you can get all eleven of them and fully understand what being a receiver means. That is, unless you're killed by a sentient machine gun or a mad robo-bee.

So that's The Aurora Wager and Receiver. They are two of my favourite games at the moment, because they are so simple yet so artistic and so beautiful. They both have an atmosphere which really draws you in and enchants you, something most games just cannot do. Join me next time, when I'll probably be talking about The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and how awesome it was but why did it have to be a trilogy. Seriously, it's so short.

Adieu!