In our present day we are submerged in digital experiences, from those following a more artistic profile to the more commercial ones.
Evolution has moved this medium from cartridges to digital download, managing to devote more and more bytes to our beloved games. The characters living inside these worlds have gone from a heap of pixels to photorealism, the soundtracks from loops of a few notes to orchestral compositions. Nevertheless, not everything follows the same path: even today there are plenty of newly released games that manage to be summed up in a few MB, an economical choice, but also a hallmark of style.
The expanded game is thus opposed by the compressed game, with an infinite charm poised between the retro and the contemporary. Once the space limit lay in the medium and allowed the soundtrack only a few bytes, forcing the player to live in an obsessive acoustic loop. Almost everyone, even the youngest, has tried playing Tetris and has experienced what it means to play for an hour alongside a loop that repeats at an interval of less than a minute. After the first quarter of an hour the habituation begins, and after an hour the obsession, almost nervous, which personally starts making me slip up and leads to a slow decline of my tower of bricks.
Before, the choice was bound to the available storage space; now there are those who make it a matter of style. Many games aim to trigger the loop effect, the addiction effect or the explosion of nerves (rage game). Very repetitive soundtracks, specific to certain levels, or that reset at every game over. Accompaniment to countless cyclical acoustic experiences spread over many hours of play, imprints in the player's brain, somewhere between affection and contempt.
A recommended experience, for those who have accepted the loop and want to embrace it completely, is Minit, a peculiar game with sparse graphics, which offers an adventure in which you die every sixty seconds. A game made by Kitty Calis, Jan Willem Nijman, Jukio Kallio and Dominik Johann. Here the loop, though present, bends to the rules of the game's progression, and the lovely themes of the soundtrack (not repetitive in the manner of Tetris) will penetrate the minds of players, creating a perfect blend of all the typical triggers of the loop: addiction, urgency, nervousness and, for the most susceptible, rage.
You can find Minit on Itch and on Steam
English translation of the Italian original. Read the original →