This Week's Waste of Time

Now that everyone is making games, there's a cavalcade of mediocre titles all over the web. In the case of this week's waste of time we have a graphic artist trying his hand at game-making and largely (although not entirely) succeeding. Platform games, no matter how arty, need a decent jumping mechanism. How else are you going to get to that platform?

This week's browser game is from Alexander Ocias who has a lot of beautiful digital videos to attest to his artistic prowess. The man doubtless has programming skills but making a game is probably only accessible to him via the latest tools on the web (like Flixel and FlashPunk). The way you can tell in his game Loved is that controlling jumps is like tap dancing in molasses (which is hard if you haven't tried it). There is a fine line between unresponsive controls and a serious challenge. The former is exemplified in Loved. The latter is best experienced in Super Meat Boy which is arguably the hardest Flash game I've ever played, but I never fault the controls for my repeated deaths (I do fault the Meat Boy creators for making teeny-tiny platforms). It's the difference between wanting to complete a game regardless of the effort and turning the computer off and never wanting to play again.

Luckily for Loved (and us), the obstacles put in front of your chubby character are pretty simple, keeping frustration to a minimum. Aside from that, the game is a creepy, lonesome jaunt. Made creepy mostly through the GLaDOS-esque omnipotent being (minus the sense of humor) who interjects discouraging comments now and again and the consistently jarring sound you make when you die.

Click here to play Loved.