1 Year, 12 Games, Countless Friends - Curating a Book Club for Games

It’s not easy to make friends at any age – especially if your birthday year begins with a 19.

The Game Club came together with the idea that if everyone had something in common to talk about that friendship would soon follow. Awkward silences fade away once you know that the person across from you was playing the same game earlier that month. A host keeps the conversation going but it's the people in the group who fill in the void. You can read more about it here. 

But a game club needs games, so that’s where I come in.

I find games for people. 

There are some baseline rules about what kinds of games to pick out.

• You need to be able to get through most of the game in a weekend. When you need to start and (mostly) finish a game in the span of a month, no one has time for a 60-hour open world title.
• The games need to be rare. The beginning of every month needs to be a kind of gift and there’s nothing worse than getting something you already have in your backlog.
• The game needs to contribute to a conversation. Maybe it’s an emotion, a narrative, a character, or how the game plays out; but there’s something in that digital world you want to talk to someone about.
• And finally, it needs to be good. Some of the clubs may argue that I have yet to pick out a great game, but they have all been good for one group or another. There’s something for everyone from action to deep narrative. I have yet to send the teams something too out of left field. (Though, I am tempted every now and again.)

There’s an accompanying podcast – most of the time – talking with the developer about how the game got made, some of the themes, and how they feel about it now that it’s out in the world. The Midpoint Save focuses on the middle of games for those who already started but need a little push to make it that final mile. 

It’s been a year of games covering everything from personal loss to causing mischief. Few people play more than 3 - 4 games in a year, let alone a dozen. Here’s a look back at The Game Club’s first season of games.

24 Killers

Maybe the perfect kickoff to the series. Overlooked, strange, narrative-focused, and made to be beaten in a weekend; 24 Killers is one of those games that come up time and time again when people talk about hidden gems. Kickstarted as more of a mystery game with 24 murders to find, the developer sat down with Moon-like games and fell in love. These titles focus on cooperation instead of competition between characters.

As the player, you wake up on a deserted military base and in the body of one of the dead men left behind. The few monsters left on the island make a deal with you to get you off the island if you can free the rest of their friends in the underground bunker. Through digging for sand dollars, befriending the locals, and learning how to use their powers; you’ll be able to save all of the monsters and uncover the mystery of the island.

In the podcast interview (everything’s a podcast, did you know?!), the developer told me about having to go out to his Kickstater community to convince them to change focus. And they said yes. With many of the characters already completed, the monster killers turned into the victims of a government trying to keep them hidden in an abandoned bunker. Gameplay draws on idle games, puzzle solving, a little action, and an economic system that players need to break to buy all the items. 

RE:CALL

Re:Call came in as a suggestion, a narrative-driven time manipulation game where the way people tell the stories of the past changes the future. The game presents some good puzzles requiring you often to die in order to find the right solution. Check out the podcast and you’ll find that the developer ran out of both time and money in the middle of the game. What you get is a rushed story that doesn’t feel like the rest of the title.  

The game presents both a twist on the time-control mechanic that makes the narrative the puzzle while also showcasing the pitfalls of development. Either way you look at it, the game gave our teams a lot to discuss as we learned about game production and talked about the stories we tell.

Anodyne 2: Return to Dust

Imagine fighting monsters by cleaning all of the dust in their heads like a Zelda-style dungeon. That’s Anodyne 2. Your task is to clean up the dust clogging the minds of monsters and build out a tower to help you reach new areas and new patients. But maybe – you’re not doing the right thing.

Anodyne, much like the previous game, plays around expectations, fate, and being able to determine your path in life. While the second title still contains the 2D Zelda dungeons of the first game, Anodyne 2 balloons out into a 3D polygonal world where every dungeon reflects a story of the person suffering on the outside. We were lucky enough to talk to the developers about building out all of these stories as well as getting more info on their next game, Angeline Era.

Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom

After three games about heavy subjects, the team wanted something lighter – like a platformer.

The finger on the monkey’s paw curls.

Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom is a platformer without a jump button. As a spring-work car, you need to help a person who’s not Mario stop a person who is not Elon Musk from taking all of the resources by finding gears scattered throughout different worlds. The game pulls from many of the Nintendo 64 titles such as Mario 64, Mario Kart, and more. At its heart, Yellow Taxi is a game about level design as you try to figure out where to go next through ramps and well-timed boosts. 

Just Crow Things

Finally, a cozy game about being a menace. 

Just Crow Things lets you do all the things you want to do as a crow such as stealing, escaping the people you stole from, and pooping on everything else. Each of the sections you poop through comes with a different story that unfurls from your interactions. Sometimes you are taking on the big city, helping armies take on the castle, or ruining a birthday party. 

Farewell North

With two happy games in a row, I needed to remind people about their sad feelings again.

Get your rubber boots ready as we row our way to the Scottish Isles to say goodbye to a loved one. You’ll be following the main character as she moves between islands, remembering the past, and seeing how everything has changed in the present. You – play as her dog.

Run, jump, chase strange glowing creatures, and herd sheep through this quick trip to the past. It’s a chance to check out a place few visit as well as a culture not everyone knows about.

Roadwarden

In my head, I have a list of games I want other people to play because they do something so well and often get overlooked because of one thing or another. Roadwarden was one of those games.

It’s the kind of game that makes you sweat every choice you make because there’s little time and so much meaning behind every click. With only a month of time, you contend with the mystery of what happened to the previous roadwarden after you have taken his place. Your work in this fantasy setting deals more with diplomacy than fighting. Though text-heavy, every page of your adventure fills the screen with interesting characters, clever choices, and a mystery that gets deeper the further down you go.

Wuppo

This action-adventure title about finding a new home after getting kicked out of your apartment has been floating around the top of the “hidden gems” pile for some time. Play through the first section of the game – and then forget about it. The start of the game makes you think that the rest of the game will be a maze of platforms and well-timed jumps only to deliver these areas with quests, mysteries to uncover, and worlds that run on their own systems. 

In the podcast, the developer talks about changing direction as he built out the game. 

Welcome to Elk

Something a little more introspective this time around. Welcome to Elk is a narrative about story telling. You play through a series of events on an island about the community there only to learn later that each of the stories come from real world events. People sing about loss, get into physical fights, and even die as you work your way through the day-to-day events. Ultimately, the game dives not only into what happened but how these stories get passed down and change the people who tell them.

If you are interested in learning more about the process of picking out the right stories to tell in a game like this, you can check out the podcast about it.

Valley Peaks

Can you have a tense cozy game? 

Valley Peaks puts you in the webbed-feet of a mountain climber who is looking to complete his father’s work for the corporation by installing transmitters at the top of each structure. Get to the top one handful of dirt at a time with buttons corresponding to each hand. As long as you can hold on to the button, you can hold on to a mountain.

Explore this wide world of climbing frogs needing help and you’ll find more than you can handle in one game. In talking with the devs, they mentioned that they wrote more than 100 different characters to interact and talk with in the title. 

Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengeance of the Slayer

I’m all for Boomer Shooter and think we’ve entered a golden age where any flavor of shotgun can be yours for the taking. However, running around and clicking on heads often leads to little discussion when you want to get to the meat of the narrative. To find the real story, you need to dig a little deeper.

Slayers X is a game made by a fictional developer from the Hypnospace Outlaw game. Heavily influenced by 90s/early 2000s NuMetal culture, it’s up to you to live out your Last Action Hero dreams as you take on hordes of enemies with glass launching shotguns and rat-infested rocket launchers. The story comes from not what you are doing but where you are going as you explore the worlds the developer remembers such as a trailer park, strip mall, and the suburbs. 

To find out more from the real developer behind the fake developer, you can check out the interview here. 

Ctrl Alt Ego

I wanted to end on one of the best examples of one of the least liked genres – immersive sim. 

Ctrl Alt Ego is a game about possessing the bodies of robots on a rogue space station to find out what happened to everyone and hopefully, stop whoever did this. In a game where you can pop your spirit into nearly anything, the game plays out more like a puzzle than an action title. Yes, there are plenty of boxes to stack and vents to crawl through but you can also pop in and out of security cameras to get to your objective.

The game spoon feeds you smaller puzzles to work around before letting you loose on the whole facility. Also, death is nothing more than having to wait for your body to get reprinted. The fact that you’re not having to save scum every few choices and keep what you’ve acquired makes the experience more freeing for players.

... And Beyond

The Book Club continues into Season 2 with The Holy Gosh Darn, a comedy point-and-click adventure with time travel elements that make every loop a bit quicker than the last. 

For all of this writing about games and the deeper meaning of some of the most overlooked gems, The Game Club is about connection. Guy and Shay focus on the person to person interaction of the different clubs started around the world. The games are the talking points that players leap from before diving into stories, memories of the past, or their thoughts of the present. The small groups mean that everyone gets a moment in the spotlight or feel like they have a chance to talk. Writing and talking about games can be two different things – and I’m glad I have a chance to do both.

You can find my club (The Hollywood Squares) online if you’re in the area or find a club near you today.