Culture

Platforms: PC, OSX (4/5)

Very few games are “by” one guy. Novels are by an author, songs and paintings by an artist, films are scaffolded by a single-minded vision, i.e; “directed by”. But videogames, feats of virtual engineering, are by necessity often created by innumberable disparate souls labouring for months to code a space-marine's visor. It's understandable how triple-A developers get caught up in production values, churning out products that are impressive as artifacts of technology but not as interactive art. An individual creating a game needs something special; the easy flash of graphics and CG cutscenes must be ignored to distill the essence of interactivity.
 

Inside a Star-Filled Sky by Jason Rohrer is one such game. Put bluntly, you should play everything that's flown from his keyboard.  In Passage, using only six megabytes stretched over five minutes, Rohrer managed what no blockbuster had achieved; he reduced some players to tears. If you cried when Aeris (ironic spoiler tag) was killed by Sephiroth in Final Fantasy 7 then that's lovely, but it doesn't  count because it's a cutscene; a clumsily wedged movie. Last year Rohrer redefined what multiplayer gaming could be with the storytelling piece Sleep is Death, providing complete freedom without the clammy awkwardness of pen-and-paper roleplaying. I'm not ashamed to admit that I’m reviewing his latest game as an excuse to get you to play the rest, which range from free to very cheap.
 

Rohrer, belying his role as a programmer, doesn't own a car and his family live off less than $14,500 US per year. He practices simple living, an almost Amish lifestyle, and his games reflect his frugality. They're very beautiful. I understand why other indie games (like the brilliant Cave Story) are so pretty despite being wrought from pixels. It's because those games have good art, the pixels are arranged stylishly. Inside a Star-Filled Sky doesn't have good art, at least not in an obvious way - each unit resembles an alien from Space Invaders - but somehow it's evocative despite being so clearly budget and pixelated.
 

Rohrer made his name with games like Passage and Gravitation which are metaphors for human nature. You didn't kill or solve puzzles; they were engaging because they represented something, not because they were conventionally fun. Inside a Star-Filled Sky differs because, at least superficially, it's a simple shooter. You control a pixellated piece of brightly coloured geometry that moves around a map full of right angles, shooting other polygons with a slow moving square bullet. Clichéd powerups provide larger bullets and greater motility too.

 
The game only becomes interesting once you realise that the bonuses aren't actually doing anything. You know the arena you're moving around in? That's a character as well, battling foes inside its own living arena. In fact, a war of microflora is waging inside you right now and inside your enemies. Powerups alter your world, not you as an individual.
 

If Inside a Star-Filled Sky has meaning in the same way as Passage, it’s not as poignant, though perhaps it could be open to interpretation. Is it our relationship with the bacteria that cover us and the land we cover? Maybe it's more subtle than that. The game carries on infinitely in both directions; up as we possess our battlefield and down as we enter our bodies. Maybe it's just a really strategic shooter, allowing you to enter a difficult foe's body and trade tough powerups for weak ones. Whatever it is, it's available from Rohrer's website for pay-what-you-want plus $1.75 to cover the server costs.