One of the more interesting indie releases of last year was Tomorrow Corporation’s Little Inferno, a puzzle game, a parody of casual gaming, and an opportunity to burn everything in sight.

The game has been interpreted as a critique of capitalism, an environmental warning, and as a consideration of childhood and its endings.  This week Nick, Eric, and I trot out our own personal theories about and personal experiences with the fireplace that burns at 100 billion degrees.

This post contains spoilers for Dead Space 3.

Dead Space 3 isn’t a horror game in the traditional sense. It’s not about isolation or helplessness or any of the things people have suggested good horror should be concerned with, but there’s still an undeniable kernel of horror at its core. In the end—and only in the end—does that kernel manifest as a tricky but brilliant kind of mythic horror. Like the most memorable stories of H.P. Lovecraft, Dead Space 3 is guided by a philosophical horror that wants to remind you that mankind is insignificant compared to other forces in the universe.

The new Lara Croft has arrived, and she is dirty, vulnerable, and violent—a far cry from the classic, clean, and busty super-heroine that has never left our popular consciousness. It is no understatement to say that Square-Enix and Crystal Dynamics have revolutionized Lara Croft. Of course, a lot of credit is owed to Tomb Raider Lead Writer Rhianna Pratchett, who captures Lara’s strength and courage, even when breaking her down again and again. But I also want to specifically spotlight the game’s excellent motion capture and exquisite use of character animations that map Lara’s abilities, frailties, and the world around her with touch.

If there were one theme running through the entirety of Tomb Raider, it would be survival. Lara Croft suffers so much physical trauma and abuse in the first hour of the game, she makes Nathan Drake look like a prop in some poorly acted set-piece of a film (maybe that’s a little too close to home). She gets impaled, shot at, choked, stabbed, nearly drowns, and tossed around like a rag doll, all within the first hour or so of the game. Yet she still stands up, keeps moving, and overcomes. It’s hard not to find Lara an awe-inspiring character.

Winda Benedetti reports that Mike Mika “didn’t have an agenda when he changed Donkey Kong” by hacking an old NES ROM and turning damsel in distress, Pauline, into Mario’s potential savior in what he has dubbed the Pauline Edition of Donkey Kong.  No other agenda, that is, than to just “keep my daughter playing games with me” (“Damsel (not) in Distress: Dad hacks Donkey Kong for his daughter”, NBCNEWS.com, 12 March 2013).  Nevertheless, clearly the alteration that he did make to the game, the role reversal of the game’s protagonist and the game’s object, has an effect on how one sees the game and what it communicates. 

After all, Donkey Kong is in many ways the proto-damsel-in-distress, the proto-saving-the-princess game.  It would lead to the “plumber saves princess” motif of Super Mario Bros. (and, yes, yes, I know that he was Jumpman before he was Mario, but, yeah, same guy), to saving Princess Zelda, and to the general tone that Nintendo struck with their boy friendly foray into the console market back in the mid-1980s.

Leene’s bell chimes three times from the town square and a teenage adventurer is awakened by his mother, a cadet at Skyloft’s knight academy throws together his belongings and dashes to his practicum, a busty archeologist hones her skills on an obstacle course in the gardens while her gremlin of a butler scuttles behind her carrying a light midday meal. These are the first scenes we see of three characters in three different games. In these opening scenes, we meet the star characters in their homes, seeing how they live day-to-day when they aren’t adventuring. Games have long been good at world-building through locations: towns, monuments, castles, skyscrapers, markets, schools and squares are structured to illustrate a sense of setting that often carries over to character building, but surprisingly few games explore their protagonist’s home.

In the openings to Chrono Trigger, Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and the tutorials of the early Tomb Raider games, the protagonists’ homes establish the status quo. We know from the first frame that we see them that Crono and Link are well behaved, well off, slightly slothful, mute teenage boys off to enjoy another day in a good life. We know that even though Lara Croft enjoys every luxury of a British manor, she’s dedicated enough to her physically demanding job to dedicate a substantial portion of her property to maintaining her strength and ability. When these characters answer their calls to adventure, the player has an immediate sense of their motivation and the kinds of lives that they’re trying to protect. It makes sense for them to run off to save the world because we’ve seen that their day-to-day lives are worth defending.