Raph Koster revisits his book on A Theory of Fun as he points to Loodo’s Calabouço Tétrico, a highly-polished, deeply disturbing Flash-based Tetris variant that replaces colored blocks with human beings in different states of distress. Speaking of it on his website, Ian Bogost points back to his text, Persuasive Games (wherein he rejects as inferior those games whose mechanic is not “tightly coupled” to its narrative) (see also this post).
In short, Calabouço Tétrico demonstrates how narrative can overdetermine the mechanics of gameplay — no matter how familiar those mechanics may be: As Tetris becomes a dark exercise in body stacking, the pleasure of closure that should come with every completed row quickly dissipates.
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[…] institutions and organizations.“Garrison comments on a new haunting Tetris variant, considering the relationship between narrative and the mechanics of gameplay: “No matter how familiar those mechanics may be: As Tetris becomes a dark exercise in body […]