LogFAQs > #967943095

I am promising to myself that I will finish this list before the end of September. So, I'm back! I'm feeling better! Let's get this done! Back on the wagon!

#14: Ynglet

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/9/2/AAA-H0AADqZc.jpg

There's a cool little museum called the Museum of Pop Culture, or MoPOP for short, that sits in Seattle Center right in the shadow of the Space Needle. It originally opened as the Experience Music Project a couple of decades ago, as a popular music-focused (especially Seattle-related acts like Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana) museum that featured an interactive section where you can fuck around with digital instruments - that still exists, but they've branched out since, now also hosting a pretty good collection of movie props from genre-fiction movies of the last 50 years or so. They also have a giant, three story tall sculpture made up of like 300 guitars. It's a pretty chill little museum.

One of the other exhibits that's become a semi-permanent fixture is the Indie Game Revolution, a showcase of... well, indie games. It's basically just a room full of PCs showcasing indie games that you can play. It's pretty cool and weird to see these games in a public art exhibition like this; this is how I first discovered Night in the Woods, actually, and I know I've seen stuff like Minit and Inside there recently as well. Actually, there's a whole list right here:

https://www.mopop.org//exhibitions-plus-events/exhibitions/indie-game-revolution/

A mix of stuff I have and have not heard of. I think the exhibit is kinda missing something, though, which is that most of the games don't actually work very well in this format. A lot of these games are very much meant to be played sequentially, starting at the beginning, with the game gradually teaching you mechanics and revealing the world bit by bit, or telling a story in a linear fashion. So, when you roll up to a PC that just has one of these games loaded up, you can't really jump into playing it that effectively, which means you can't really understand it or appreciate it, which means it completely fails as an art exhibit, and it doesn't even really work as an effective advertisement. The only games that seem to really work are the crowd-pleaser multiplier games that they put up on one of the big TVs in the back. But can you really appreciate Night in the Woods in any meaningful way from fiddling around with it for 30 seconds in the middle of the game? You can go 'oh, the art looks neat' but that's about it.

In my opinion, the exhibit needs a better focus on interactivity; stuff you can actually play and get a feel for within moments of picking up the controller. If I were going to build an exhibit like this, I would want to showcase games that display a dazzling world of art and sound, that you can pick up and immediately interact with with the touch of a button. I would start with Ynglet.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/9/3/AAA-H0AADqZd.jpg

Ynglet is a sort of platformer-without-platforms, in which you play as a strange, fish-like microscopic organism. You swim around in bubbles and have to hop from bubble to bubble, gravity affecting you on a 2D platforming plane as you leave the water, eventually gaining the ability to launch yourself in midair, bouncing off and piercing through obstacles. As a platformer, it's extremely well polished; the controls feel smooth and launching yourself into the air feels satisfying. Unlike the many infinideath platformers out there, this one is very forgiving, allowing you to create a checkpoint anywhere safe, so you're able to play around a bit and launch yourself through the air as you please, and it feels extremely satisfying to bounce off of stuff and use those bounces to redirect yourself into another mid-air launch, hopping from one wall to the next, moving through levels by catapulting yourself rather than conventional movement.

But the audio-visual world is the real selling point here; the reason I want to put this game into an art exhibit, which is where it should be. Ynglet is a game that I consider to be truly immersive in the way that immersion means to me. I think that most people, when they think of an 'immersive' game, imagine something that's so close to real life that the line between the two blur, and being within the game world feels as if you're experiencing something real. That can be a powerful experience, for sure, but Ynglet offers something else; a completely unique visual and aural world that completely draws you in and surrounds you, enveloping you to the point that the real world is forgotten, no distractions separating you from submerging yourself entirely into this other world.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/9/4/AAA-H0AADqZe.jpg

Right from the get-go, Ynglet looks like no other game I've ever played. Shapes and colors draw themselves into existence and sprawl out in every direction, glowing and pulsing and expanding and breaking apart, always in motion. Everything is something to look at. Every still frame looks like a modernist painting, but when animated it becomes truly mesmerizing. I can't take my eyes off of Ynglet. It's just so damn pleasing to look at; it really reminds me of how much visual appeal does actually matter in a video game. As a piece of visual art alone, Ynglet demands to be seen.

Ynglet's secret weapon is its music, though. It doesn't really have music, so much as it has a sort of sound world that unfolds around it. Actions taken and visual elements on screen get accompanied by electronic sounds that kind of fade into existence and gradually build a sort of musical tapestry. I really love abstract, sort of avant-garde soundscapes like this, and the way Ynglet's sort of reacts to the world around it is so subtle, but I greatly appreciate it. It really adds to the immersive feeling of this world, that the music always feels alive, created out of the game itself rather than a looping music track.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/9/5/AAA-H0AADqZf.jpg

This game started out good, but got really incredible at the first 'dark' level; when the background goes dark and the colors all light up in neon and the soundscape comes in with these jazz drums. I was already into the game before that point, but once I got there I was just blown away. Totally jaw-dropping. I was just completely sucked into the game for a short time there where I forgot I existed in real life for a bit and just kinda... experienced the game for a bit.

Problem is, the experience is pretty short lived - you can probably 100% this game in one sitting, shouldn't take more than 2 hours max, even including the bonus levels. You can play the game on the bizarre 'reverse' mode which inverts the colors and mirrors all of the levels vertically, but that only adds so much more. It seems like a really good game for speedrunning, but I didn't get into it. So I played it for a couple hours and then I was done - I probably have less playtime in this game than anything else on the list.

But damn, if it wasn't a great two hours. Ynglet's a work of art that really demands to be experienced. It's in the Ukraine bundle so you probably already own it. I urge you to check it out - it's gorgeous and extremely playable and I promise it won't be a waste of your time. Please give it the full attention it deserves and play it in full screen, with the lights off if possible.

Next up: One of my wildest dreams for a particular game finally comes true after 20 years of hoping they'd do it someday.