Last month I curated a selection of nine games at the AGO, one of the largest art museums in North America. After the audience had a chance to play them, I went around to each game and explained the cultural value I felt it offered. Seven of the nine games had creators attending them, so I was able to ask them a question about their process. This format encouraged the audience to engage with them afterwards, sometimes their first time talking to a game artist — I was happy the audience was a broad mix of game-curious art patrons, students, kids, and game community members. I’ve documented my selections and rationale below — for further context, feel free to read the AGO’s Foyer piece.
Electro-Vivisection (Luis Hernandez, Canada, 2024)
Luis previously co-created indie hit Jazzpunk ten years back, but this project is wildly different. He’s taken some classic consoles and modified them physically almost to the point of breaking, but still able to run playable games that have become abstracted ghosts of the originals. (Artist in attendance)
Untitled (Jessica Mak/Annapurna, Canada, Unreleased)
Jessica’s first game Everyday Shooter was very much an auteur game with her doing the programming, music, art and design. On the strength of its success, she was able to start a studio with collaborators to make Sound Shapes, which came out for all the consoles and featured a track by Beck. Now she’s back to solo development by choice, as it was a better fit for her. She has been working for the last ten years on a project which will be published by Annapurna Games and she’s been kind enough to share video gameplay as a preview which features its truly stunning procedural imagery — art starting with simple primitive shapes and modified by math equations. (Artist in attendance)
A Short Hike (Adam Robinson-Yu, Canada, 2019)
In this game you play a bird going on a short hike, with gently comedic writing that respects the players time and a dreamy flying feel. It’s a lovely homage to a simpler era of cozy exploration games but is much more than a slave to nostalgia. (Artist in attendance)
And Other Stories (JohnLee Cooper & Austin Heller, Canada, 2020)
There is a vibrant scene of people making narrative autobiographical games with accessible non-coding tools like Bitsy and Twine. I found out about JohnLee’s games through the Paradise Discord community started by Alexander Martin, and was really intrigued by the way he chose to link the controls to move all the characters simultaneously through four different — but thematically overlapping — game environments. (Artist in attendance)
Été (Impossible, Canada, 2024)
In this game you paint your way through Montreal in the summertime. As you paint objects in the game world, you’re able to use them in your compositions. You’ll find yourself making abstracts to sell in the cafe to make money, or you might do a painting for a guy you met in a trainyard who wants a flag for his anarchist vegan commune. And while you’re given some constraints — you might have to use vegetables in the flag, for instance — there’s a broad range of creative choice that the player has in the composition. It matches its mechanic to a good degree of expressive agency. (Artist in attendance)
Unleaving (Orangutan Matter, Canada, 2024)
Unleaving is a melancholy puzzle platformer made by a husband and wife team that uses acrylic painting on canvas to create its visuals. They brought a collection of the original artwork to give people insight into their creative process. (Artist in attendance)
Cuphead (Studio MDHR, Canada, 2017)
One sign of a medium’s maturity is its ability to engage in conversation with other mediums, and Cuphead is a great example of this. Its mashup of this golden age of animation with a challenging run-and-gun shooter was hugely anticipated and executed with an unparalleled level of skill, engaging a wide variety of arts professionals from multiple disciplines. (Artist in attendance)
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy (Bennett Foddy, USA, 2017)
I chose this game to because it pushed back against the monolithic view that games should be fun. It’s a punishingly hard, frustrating, unforgiving, but undeniably engaging game that is part of the masocore (masochistic hardcore) genre alongside the Dark Souls series. In the first minute of the game, the creator’s voiceover admits. “I made this game for a certain kind of person… to hurt them.”
Nothing Good Can Come of This (Cartwheel, USA, 2024)
So on the surface this is a fun competitive game with tight controls and nice gamefeel. Players race for the gun that drops and try to murder each other. But what happens if you resist the gun? After a little while, a secret door opens and the players can escape the cycle of violence. An interesting meta-commentary!
Special thanks to AGO organizer Nathan Huisman. Thanks also to Paolo Pedercini, Marie LeBlanc Flanagan, Alexander Martin, Raigan Burns, Get Set Games, and Lynn Hughes for their thoughts.
Photos: David Hermolin (top), Paul Ayers.
It was such a lovely night and brought art and gaming enthusiasts together!