Categorical Aperitif

While browsing Today's Papers this morning I came across an interesting article about a wacky young Finnish computer-game designer, Petri Purho, who just won a fairly prestigious game developers' award for a game called Crayon Physics Deluxe (free simpler prototype version here). That one looks like fun, but what really caught my eye were a couple of his other simple-themed, made-in-less-than-a-week games:

But many of his experiments are wickedly funny and original. There are many games based on the exploits of Indiana Jones, but Purho's version is the only one that tells the story from the boulder's point of view, letting players control the rampaging sphere and smoosh wave after wave of attacking archeologists. Another game, Grammar Nazi, is a literate twist on shooters like Space Invaders. Players fire upward at swarms of enemies, but the ammo in Purho's version is the letters you type on the keyboard, and the longer the words you spell, the more damage they do. (Tapping out indie has some impact. Autodidact causes a massive explosion.) Purho made it in a single day.

I'm not a big computer game player—aside from good old Windows Solitaire, I have an old poker CD-ROM and that's about it—but there's a certain subversive appeal in something like "A Tribute to the Rolling Boulder":

Instructions
You play as the infamous rolling boulder. Roll over the archeologists and protect the honor of the golden idols of fertility.

If your honor drops to zero (honor is indicated by the bar in the bottom of the screen) the game is over. The honor will decrease if there are archeologists touching the golden idols.

I'm thinking that Orson Welles's movies might be a good source of similarly decentered games. Perhaps one where you chase Harry Lime through the sewers of Vienna, or one where you play a fly that has to stay out of the way of Kane's room-trashing rampage? Hmm.