My pretentious little art-game Small Worlds is finished, and has been entered into the Jay Is Games Casual Gameplay Design Competition #6! Voting is open right now – you can play and rate all the games here.
There are some really nice games in the competition aside from Small Worlds – here are my picks:
 How My Grandfather Won The War (By OneMrBean)An absolutely beautiful side-scrolling shmup. Don’t be fooled by the relaxing aesthetic, though, it’s pretty punishing in places. |
 Hell Tour (by NOB Studio)A very slickly produced strategy/rpg sort of thing. Finishing the game isn’t difficult, but there’s a surprising amount of depth involved in trying to max out all your stats before you get there. |
 Full Moon (By Bart Bonte)A hugely likeable point-and-click puzzler with a satisfying degree of variety to all its single-screen challenges. |
 The Fantasy of the Sord (By Klint Honeychurch)A defiantly retro metroidvania with some lovely chiptune music and an absolutely impossible final boss. |
So there you go – if you have a moment, please give some of the games a play, and vote for any you think deserve to win.
I’d like you to know how much I love Small Worlds. When I finished it, I went right back in and played through it again. The worlds are gorgeous and otherworldly, and the zooming-out is inspired. Beyond that, I appreciate that you kept it a pure exploration game, and didn’t try to shoehorn in other kinds of gameplay that aren’t relevant. In my book, that puts you head and shoulders above most professional game designers in terms of knowing what the heck you’re doing. I dislike the feel of the jumping, though. Jumping which keeps going as long as you hold the button always bothers me. It seems like you programmed it that way just because it was easier, and not because it added anything good to the experience. But that’s a small gripe, and otherwise I really do love the game.
Now that I’ve played this (and Chasm Spasm, which is hilarious), I’m going to keep an eye out for the name David Shute; if the next game you make is as distinctive and focused as these two, I can’t wait for it.
David,
I just wanted to echo Mory’s comments. This is a really really beautiful experience. Colours, artwork, framing, game dynamic, music, scene setting, pacing. All just beautiful.
The gradual progression through playing the game teased out a very specific and curious feeling of vertigo and comfort when I was playing it and the growing sense of creating purely by discovering (or rather ‘exploring’ which I think epitomisies your success in the competition – not to jinx it at all) is wonderful.
I think I can understand Mory’s comment about jumping (and by his own admission it’s a small gripe) in that as a purist piece where every aspect is balanced towards the more mature artistic game it ever so slightly brings a ‘game’ barrier into play I personally thought in terms of accessibility I appreciated not having a barrier of frustration that I would think having a single jump in there might well bring.
I look forward to playing Chasm Spasm when I have a moment and equally look forward to seeing more of your stuff (not to pressure you into having to make more and more but *make more and more*!!!!)
Hope all is well with you
jim le fevre
http://www.jimlefevre.com
Thanks a lot, both of you!
To Mory: To be honest I didn’t really give the jumping mechanism much thought – I just did what seemed natural to me at the time, which was a ‘hold the button down and jump multiple times’ sort of system. I made the whole game in three weeks of evenings and weekends, so I didn’t get many opportunities to sit back and really analyse what I was doing. Thinking about it now, I’m not sure which mechanism I prefer. Hmm.
To jim: Hahaha, don’t get your hopes up too high for Chasm Spasm, it’s very silly indeed.
WOW. I just played through Small Worlds. What an amazing game. Brilliant piece of art. Loved every minute of it.
Dear David,
I must compliment you on your wonderful game. It a piece of art that is of high quality. You’ve used the explore mechanic in great way, and got away with it (I a sense that its a tiny little piece of gameplay) by combining it with very nice aesthetics of a kind of high quality paper print type, the effect of using a special type of paper with texture combined with the simple camera zoom. The music is well composed and fits the environments. I believe this game experience has an attention span that won’t hold very long (which is fine), therefore the duration, being short, is perfect.
All in all a very nice, focussed, art game. I’ll keep an eye on your other and future games, keep it coming.
Regards,
Thomas Papa
ps. What are your reasons for picking these specific level environments?
I seriously enjoyed this game. Really, wonderful job.
Two things also:
1. I would very much like a link to download this soundtrack. It was really awesome.
2. I like the implied story bits that may or may not have been on purpose. The way I saw it, your character was the last man alive. Might be sane, might not. He is in the space station that either activated or witnessed the nukes that ended the world below him. The portals, in my mind, have a chronological order and take place in different times and locations after the end of the world.
1. The City. Possibly where your character grew up. Resembles ancient Greece or Rome, although it also looks more high-tech. Can’t explain the green toxic goop aside from something that simply broke in a building. This is right after the nukes went off, but it avoided the direct blasts. It feels empty, like right after a tragedy.
2. Winter. Possibly where the Nukes were launched. Other weapons fire or simple decay made the launch base and the silos visible, with their undetonated cargo left in plain sight. Whoever was left here didn’t make it out alive, maybe they escaped after the nukes went off, maybe they were killed before or during the launches. Might have rotted away by the time you reach there. This takes place a few years after Nuclear Winter sets in. It also feels empty, but like the world is being preserved in case anyone comes back for it.
3. The “Microbe.” It resembles some giant beast, semi-recently dead. Could be a microbe, could be something else. For whatever reason, you’re inside of it. The music here made me uncomfortable; although it was pleasant and reassuring, it felt to me like this was the corpse of the last life on Earth. The music felt like a “there there, it will all be better soon.” sort of cheery tune being played to the last remnant of life there is. Like the world is refusing to catch on that it’s all over. Or worse yet, that it realizes this and the music is not for the benefit of the creature. This takes place a long time after the nukes. It feels totally empty and alone, and I can’t tell if the song is to reassure the dead creature, or something else.
4. The Implosion. Some people think that the universe is the way it is only because we are here to observe it. Without observers, reality loses meaning and the universe implodes into this final state before collapsing in on itself entirely. While you aren’t there, it phases in and out of this state randomly. It only becomes stable as your character reaches it, and I think that when he leaves it collapses entirely. This takes place many years after the nukes, at the end of the universe. It feels… unreal.
After seeing all of this take place, your character launches himself into the sun because he has seen for himself that the species is done and gone, and he is tired of living with the noise (again, possibly mad with guilt or fear from the nukes).
So there’s my humble take on the backstory to the game. But again, I really loved the whole thing.
I had technical problems posting this on the CGC page, but didn’t want to let this go unsaid — I loved _Small Worlds_. It evoked the sense of richness and wonder that I remember from playing the best games of the 80s and early 90s; despite the dark circumstances and eventual fate of the character, there was a sort of innocence to the game. The first transition between the “ship” and the other worlds really felt like stepping into a profoundly different space; the music and the art very beautifully and efficiently convey tone, and the hints of interlocking storyline woven throughout each world made the game all the more captivating. I wanted to linger on those stories, get a fuller sense of what had happened, but on reflection it’s almost certainly best to leave the game very spare, provide zero explicit story information, and let the player’s imagination do the work. Great work, Mr. Shute. You get my vote.
There’s not much that I can really say, beyond echoing what other people have said already. But I too felt very strongly affected by this game, which always amazes me and makes me feel great about games when it happens (which is all too rare).
The one thing I would really like to ask is: do you have a version of this game that could be downloaded? I would absolutely love to play this full screen.
Thanks so much for making Small Worlds!
David,
I know you’ve been getting all sorts of awesome feedback from you game “Small Worlds” and I do want to echo this applause.
A more important thing for me though is how it tells its story.
I’m a film student currently studying in Red Deer Alberta, and I am always looking for stimulating and creative new ways of telling stories. Small Worlds is an amazing example of telling a great story, with no dialouge. Nothing at all is told to the audience, its a film makers dream come true to get the audence to understand the point and progress of a film without really telling them anything blatently.
You’ve done just that, with simply exploring landscapes.
Once again I applaude you. I hope to see a lot more art from you in the future!
Scott Glasgow
Fantastic game! I enjoyed a lot playing it!
Have you think about making a extended version or something?
Congratulations
i’ve just finished Small worlds! this game is amazing and very emotional!!! i love it.
Thank you very much for doing such a beatiful art like that
Maybe it’s a film-student thing but I’ll have to agree with Scott Glasgow’s comments above: absolutely brilliant way of presenting fragments of a story and letting the player reconstruct it in their own mind. I haven’t had a videogame narrative affect me this strongly since Braid. Amazing visuals (both the images and the excellent zoom-out trick) and fantastic soundtrack. Honestly, I’m fairly certain this beats every single film I saw and every single book I read this past year. Thank you
David,
Let me to congratulate for this really awesome and impressive game. This is the only kind of games, what I could play for anytimes and it’s still gripping for me. The gameplay, huh…:)
Best regards and greetings from Hungary,
Attila Ujvarosy
P.s.: Merry Christmas!
I’m sure it’s a fine game, but you really needed to pay more attention when choosing a name for it.
I mean, really, all you had to do was Google.
I can imagine that you are assuming that indie game developers such as David care about titling their work to avoid other things already established out there (networking sites aimed at kids, networking sites for business adults (the first two or three results) or board games (only found this one by searching ‘Small Worlds’ and your name, apologies, you may have hit it earlier on your google search)).
I suspect the phrasing that could have expressed your thoughts would be “Oh, here’s something that’s titled the same as something that I am into, how wonderful!”
Still, the Small Worlds board game looks really interesting as does the site I saw some of your posts on – http://www.boardgamegeek.com/ . If anyone wants to have a look I’d encourage them. Equally, perhaps, you could spread the word about David’s game too as at the end of the day there is a very similar mindset that would appreciate both.
David…. i.. don’t even know where to begin with this…
i was on rathergood.com just looking around because things seemed pretty funny to me, then i stumbled upon this… beauty…. at first, it was fun, sucked me into the game… really did..
and as i progressed through the game, the soundtracks kept me in awe…
i just have something to ask from you…
the last place i teleported to… a spiralish level with what seem to be fossils coming from the ground… “small_worlds_sound_00082.mp3″
that song.. i extracted it from the flash, because its just…. amazing.. please, can you give me the name of the song, or higher quality version.. any kind of information on it…
Thank you in advanced..
and Thank you for this wondrous piece of art.
Cheers! All the music tracks from the game are by Kevin MacLeod, and are freely available in high-quality format on his site. I linked to the individual tracks in this post. Enjoy!
This was a really excellent game that certainly got my vote. I must ask, is there a downloadable version of this? I’ve got a small collection of environmental games going, and this truly deserves a place of honor…
Thank you, again, for making this wonderful, imaginative piece of art.
This is the best game i see in last few years
It reminds me on another world back then in early 90′s.