Filed under: Fun, Games, Kids, Time-Wasters, Web
Small Worlds is a stylish, pixelated Time Waster
by Jason Clarke Nov 3rd 2009 at 1:00PM
Small Worlds is a beautiful and uniquely relaxing pixel-art platform game created for the Casual Gameplay Design Competition. The point of the game is to move around exploring each level to find he exit.
Though Small Worlds uses the typical side-scrolling view of a platform game, what makes it unique is that you start each level zoomed in tightly on your very simplified character, and you can only see the area immediately around you. Moving about reveals more of the level to you, and the camera pulls back and back so that you can see the big picture of the level you are exploring.
Small Worlds is all about exploration. You're not dealing with the plethora of bad guys that most other platform games have. Instead the enjoyment of the game comes from discovering just where you are, in a relaxed, distinctly non-anxious state.
If most video games make you feel agitated, Explore may just be the game for you. It's a charming little distraction.
I don't know if this is a labor of love or merely the brainchild of four very gifted games designers, but Level Up is a really weird mash-up of gaming elements that you have probably never seen in a Flash game before.
Let's start with the premise itself: Groundhog Day meets Memento. The game experience revolves around 'days': you explore the world and the clock slowly ticks towards the evening. You bounce around picking up gems and talking to the denizens of 'Level Upland'. Eventually you feel tired and head back to ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
MarkyB86 said 1:18PM on 11-03-2009
This game is actually pretty sweet
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foolishwolf said 2:46PM on 11-03-2009
Fucking genius. If they made this into a full fledged game with hours of exploration, I'd buy it in a heartbeat
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jax sedrin said 2:54PM on 11-03-2009
Um, potential [SPOILERS], I guess...
I got pollution and nuclear winter... what were the other two worlds supposed to represent?
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dastardlylemon said 7:45PM on 11-03-2009
[SPOILERS]
They represent the four horsemen of the Apocalypse: War, Death, Pestilence, and Famine. The other two are an explosion and a mangled corpse. You can do the matching from there.