Week 8 - Quick Analysis

Epic.

Canabalt – Every once in awhile a game comes out that changes the entire landscape of indie game design and inspires a completely new style of play and possibly innovation; that day is not today, and this particular game has been out for more than a year. Canabalt is a game about one thing, survival. Story? What story? Art? Tiled in a way you don’t ever even notice? Music? You mean that one great song looped over and over?  Gameplay? And that’s essentially where things get more complicated than they appear. </sarcasm>

You control a single character; he is unnamed and he has no established goal. Adam Atomic, the game’s designer (and essentially everything else sans music) gives you one button to play the game, and control is actually rather simple. You press a button (or touch your screen) to jump and avoid falling into endless abysses and/or running right into a wall and dying. A quick analysis of the actual gameplay shows that the game is really very simple; you jump at varying heights over and over and over until you ultimately fail…and you will fail, it’s inevitable, the game is rather hard. However, the game is so dreadfully simple that it draws you back in regardless of how many times you die. Overall, Canabalt is just a game made for people; people who aren’t looking for an extremely involved experience, yet one that is fun. That is what games are all about: fun and Canabalt nails it.