The Pop Aesthetic

Any good artist or reality show contestant will tell you that the best, most inspiring and innovative works come from restrictions. Craft an amuse-bouche using only the contents of a gas station vending machine and a roll of quarters for your budget. Design a dress for a garden party using only flowers and planting materials. Make a video game in 48 hours using the theme “It’s Dangerous To Go Alone! Take This!”

This past weekend hosted the 20th Ludum Dare competition, which gave independent game designers that exact challenge (the one about the videogame. The other two were from Top Chef and Project Runway, respectively). Over 350 games were submitted, and while we haven’t had a chance to play them all yet, here are three that caught our attention. All three are about lone heroes escaping against impossible odds and two of them, curiously enough, are tinted in shades of blue. The third one? Oppressively difficult. Smash your keyboard and mouse in anger difficult. Let’s take a look:

Officer Alfred is a monochromatic platformer about escaping from a research facility that has come under enemy attack. All of the dangers are environmental, however, and not from enemy combatants. Alfred has the ability to freeze time at will, allowing for some entertaining puzzles involving crossing pits of spikes by jumping on suspended drops of water from the sprinkler, climbing to tall platforms by leaping across exploding bits of shrapnel, and repeatedly freezing the same heat-seeking missile to create a rising platform. Did I just spoil some of the solutions for you? Yes, but that doesn’t make them any less challenging/fun.

The Last Survivor is another blue-tinged platformer, this time of the ultra-abstract single-screen variety under the pretense that there was an error reconfiguring your DNA. Whatever, the important thing is that you still have your telekinesis. Using the mouse to drag yellow objects around the room, either to block lasers or build stairways over obstacles, you must make it to the exit of each room in order to repair your DNA and reveal your true form.

The Legend of Mulida goes in a slightly different if not obvious direction by riffing off the original The Legend of Zelda (“It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this” are the infamous words the old man at the very beginning of Zelda says when presenting you with the wooden sword). Using only a mouse, you lead a familiar tunic-clad hero through a cave to rescue a princess. Navigating the cave, of course, is crushingly difficult thanks to an endless torrent of swords raining down upon you like your name was Seattle.