nano_moose: Black Plague. Philip shines his torch over what may be a corpse. ([BP] if fate frowns)
Extremely Small A. Alces Sighting ([personal profile] nano_moose) wrote 2011-02-23 06:35 am (UTC)

She is as dumb as a box of rocks and a hundred times more cuddly. I'd tell you she looks so scrappy because she's going grey from the nose down, but actually she was always that scrappy, it's just now she's grey too.

Also, it looks like she has a stubby tail in these photos because she was wagging so hard it blurred.

Penumbra! ...I don't actually think you'd like it that much. It's...not really very fun, at least in the traditional sense (and sometimes it wasn't even fun in an unusual sense, just dull and impenetrable) but it's a very interesting idea. Basically, you're an average dude who's wandered into an extremely hostile environment (a partially-collapsed mine in Greenland during a blizzard) using the very scanty resources available to investigate and survive. The physics usage is absolutely intriguing. The mouse is, essentially, your hand. You have to grab drawers and pull the mouse backwards to open them, pick up rocks and physically knock them against certain things to break or open them, and one puzzle relies on you holding the mouse as still as possible to avoid agitating an explosive chemical. It's weird how quickly it sinks in.

What's also unusual is how unflashy the game is. The mine is a mine. It's dark. There's a lot of dirt and rocks. The sound's almost entirely diegetic - drips and rumbles and wind howling and your feet crunching. Your enemies, minus a later exception, are pretty unspectacular (though they can kill you easily). And yet it's terrifically creepy.

It's given me a lot to think about, and it's amazing how much it reminds me of the first Thief game pared down to nothing but the concept of creeping in the dark. Hmm.

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