Sluggish Morss

Yesterday afternoon, and this morning, I played through two games in a series of indie games - "Sluggish Morss: A Delicate Time In History" and "Sluggish Morss: ɯnʇıuıɟuı p∀" (which are actually the second and third Sluggish Morss games).

Then afterwards, I found the games on Gamejolt: http://gamejolt.com/@jackspinoza/games (huh, Ad Infinitum is free there... I already paid for it on itch.io.... oh well, it was just £1, I don't mind...), and then I found the first game - Sluggish Morss, and played through that too.

It's a series of very strange games. Games? Experiences. Let's call them experiences, that almost tell a story.

I felt that the first Sluggish Morss game - the one I played last - was pretty worthless, compared to the other two. It just seemed like... the only thing the creators really want to express is that they like things that look weird, and like to smoke a lot of pot. To me, it didn't feel like it has a lot of depth or insight. But... well, everything has to start somewhere. Maybe I wouldn't feel this way if I had played the games in chronological order.

So, onto "A Delicate Time In History", which was the first one I played. At first, it struck me that the game wasn't very good. It seemed enormously unpolished, and at first, there didn't seem much to latch onto - there was so much that was unfamiliar, but after a while I started to get it. It uses a lot of low-resolution digitised photography and synthesised voices, and human voices altered to sound synthetic.

The third game, "Sluggish Morss: ɯnʇıuıɟuı p∀", kept crashing, the first few times I played it - but that turned out ok, because as a little Easter egg, you get a different quote or image every time you start up the game, and I wouldn't have known otherwise. (I just closed lots of applications and it started working ok, no crashes). This one is much more polished and the artwork is much better, using a combination of glitchy pixel art and claymation. It seemed much shorter than "A Delicate Time In History".

Overall, I felt that although "A Delicate Time In History" wasn't as "good" in terms of game / art quality, it had more impact overall, mainly through its dialogue and songs.

It's all very experimental and exploratory. I especially enjoyed the philosophical musings on the subject of just how meaningless a person's life is in terms of space and time, demonstrated by making the people on board the Sluggish Morss travel at FTL speeds, which makes them forward-only time travellers. How even what we normally think of as immortality would be meaningless on the scale of stars exploding and galaxies imploding.

I feel like "A Delicate Time In History" was definitely worth the time invested in playing through it, and "ɯnʇıuıɟuı p∀" was a feast for the eyes. Interesting stuff. If you're ever feeling like your gaming palate has become too samey and are seeking a "different" experience in gaming, take a look at this, bringing along an open mind.