I played around 30 games during this judging period: a modest number. It should have been easy to choose just 3 to “take the cake”, but I couldn’t do it! In light of this I’ve decided to post three top-three round-ups, grouped into rough themes. Today’s theme is “Deep Feels”, the games that best punched my heart-guts.
Separated, by rxi, established its lonely mood from every angle. The monster’s slow pace and sad eyes, its inability to speak, the lighting, drifting fireflies, and sound design all contribute to a very touching setting. The author draws special attention to the monster’s isolation by giving us an action button that is clearly the pitiful creature’s best attempt at communication… alas to everyone else it is terrifying nonsense.
Alice & August, by nic, is something like Dear Esther in its design. We are given a series of rooms to wander between, with each one bringing us a little closer to understanding our relationship to the absent other. Another very interesting choice is the lack of animation: the avatar is a still sprite, sliding through a maze. At times, however, we have to cross a long, featureless hallway and without animation to give us a sense of the passage of time we become anxious. Our anxiety — as to whether time is passing in a meaningful way at all, or whether the game has crashed — mirrors the protagonist’s anxiety after their own life spiraled out of control.
The Fifth Apartment, by Bruno Poli, Klos Cunha, and Ricardo Bess, is a strange thing indeed. If I had to give it a genre I might say point-and-click, but honestly I think that would be a mistake. It is a psychological horror that explores themes of loss, mental illness, and age. In the game we occupy the body of an old woman alone in an apartment, surrounded by her regrets (by, as the team puts it, her monsters). We are forced to wander back and forth in the apartment, day after day, watching strange alienating television to pass the time or just standing on the balcony. The game is littered with occasional flashes of something darker, eyes watching from beneath the bed, or the conspiratorial whispers heard through the pipes. The game certainly takes a page from Polanski’s The Tenant (Roman, not Lana).
These three games each impressed me, but I honestly can’t say enough about The Fifth Apartment: this is a candidate for my game of the year. It is certainly my most highly rated game of LD33, but it also goes above and beyond in terms of presentation, subject matter, lack of clear genre, and just being sophisticated. This is the kind of game.
— Ziggy (the Z in ZNCatLaw)