Hey guys, welcome to my crib

My plant crib, yeah that’s right, this is a nursery, keep your voice down

I don’t really consider Viridi to be a “game,” because it absolutely doesn’t feel like one. As pretentious as this’ll sound, you don’t exactly play Viridi; it’s more a place to go to.

If you haven’t gone there before, Viridi centers around growing plants in a little pot. Mostly succulents, I believe.

That sickly brown color means I’m killing them 😀
I don’t deserve my poor plants.

Players can grow and organize their own collection of plants, each of which can have some drastically different colorations. Each pot comes with a snail that guards your plants by circling the rim, because of course it does. Can a game be legit without any snails? I don’t think so.

The plants need to be watered and any stray weeds that appear need to be pulled. Oh, and players receive a free seed once a week. Annd that’s it. That’s Viridi in its entirety.

It isn’t exactly multifaceted, but it still scratches a niche itch in my brain. It’s great for decompressing or taking your mind off something.

I really only got it because a friend told me about it and immediately followed up with, “Also, it’s free.” So, it seemed like there was no reason not to give it a try. And, well, there are ingame items you can purchase, like more seeds, but they aren’t necessary. I’ve never felt compelled to put any money into it.

Viridi is heart-achingly charming, especially with the ability to sing to your plants or water your snail.

Or combine those and sing to your snail, which makes way more sense.

I try to check in once a week for my free plant seed but lately I’ve been slacking, checking in as far as once a month. When I first started playing, I felt a sense of urgency to make sure my plants didn’t die when I forgot to water them. This feeling quickly dissipated; I’ve gone at least a month and a half without watering, and I’ve been playing since 2016 without having anything die on me.

So rest assured, unless your goal is to kill the plants, you probably won’t kill the plants.

But if you’re worried, you can turn on a “vacation mode” which will keep the plants from needing water, but also keep the plants from growing.

Viridi feels like an environment made for relaxation, and I think that’s that one thing about it that makes it great. Tending to the plants generates this great calm that I find myself seeking out sometimes. It’s a really nice feeling.

Viridi also tells you how your plants are feeling so you don’t accidentally overwater.

It’s a sweet place to go; your own small world, full of green babies you’ve carefully watered and sung to. Viridi has a calming soundtrack that I could listen to and have listened to for hours, or, if you want, you can just mute Viridi and have it running in the background.

That’s how, even without an endgame or plot, I currently have 33 hours on it. So yeah, something about it definitely kept me coming back.

Sure, the game is compact, the concept is simple, and it doesn’t have any degree of excitement. But what it has in absolute spades is an easy tranquility. There is no winning or losing, just growing your plants until they’re big enough to be moved from the pot to the big garden in the sky.

Even if you’re not someone who commonly plays games, which, I don’t know why you’d be here, at a blog directed primarily at talking about games (but whatever), you might find some solace with Viridi.

She talks in stereo

She sounds so good to me

I don’t know why it’s called Oxenfree. I really don’t. There aren’t even any oxen.

If you haven’t played it: I’d really recommend playing it. It’s hard to justify not trying it out. Oxenfree is short, but completely packed with rich dialogue and characters who feel real. It puts so much care into story and interactions, and so much of it is story and interactions, that I’d rather recommend playing than spoiling anything.

I toiled over how to present this, you know. I went into the game blind and the introduction of–well, I’ve already spoiled it. I’ve already spoiled that there aren’t any oxen in the game. It’s a total scandal.

Simply put, that one thing that makes Oxenfree one of my favorites is an element I wasn’t aware of from the get-go. I wouldn’t say it’s a spoiler exactly, considering it’s written on the Steam page, but the reveal is much better if you don’t know what’s coming. Thus, I recommend playing the first 20 minutes? 30 minutes? That should be enough time to see what I’m talking about.

To talk about Oxenfree, I want to not talk about Oxenfree. I want to talk about horror movies.

I have a complicated relationship with horror movies. I’m not a huge fan in practice, but I like it in theory. I tried to watch Evil Dead with a friend, tapped out a quarter way through, and scoured the wiki page to sate my curiosity. Repeat every year with a different horror movie. So on paper, yes I’m a horror fan. But put it on the screen and no, no I am not. I wish I could be, but I can’t.

So when I say certain ideas or designs anchored in horror are inspiring and transcendent of the genre, I’m speaking as someone who can’t handle or stomach the genre.

I’m talking about the panic-inducing theme song of Jaws; the tock sound Charlie makes to accentuate the stilted, uneasy tone of Hereditary; a little girl saying, “They’re here,” in a movie I have no plans of seeing anytime soon, Poltergeist (guys, it’s cursed, I can’t watch it, it’s cursed). These design choices, coincidentally all auditory, can be recognizable even by people who don’t watch horror movies.

I sound like I’m building up Oxenfree to be this massive horror game hit, but I wouldn’t actually class it as horror. I’m just saying that the game dips a toe in horror every once in a while, and when it does, it’s amazing.

Just to be safe, consider everything from this point on to be a spoiler.

The horror element that transcends the game, that one thing that makes it amazing, is The Sunken. The Sunken is/are an amalgam of ghosts that died in a submarine wreck, a total of 97 people fused into one being. They aren’t a constant presence in the game, but every once in a while they’ll come and steal the show.

It’s hard to tell how your exchanges with them will go or when they’ll show up. The thing that really gets me is how they talk, which might sound weird if you haven’t played the game or don’t remember. Their voices fantastically convey a numb, uncaring tone, as well as the sheer number of people who comprise the entity.

Radio is a huge part of the game and essential for The Sunken to communicate. Something about the radio draws them out in all their triangular glory, and they use it as a voicebox to demand things of you. There’s nothing I like more than listening to them speak but boy, does it make it hard to sleep at night.

Of course, they have other tricks. Things that span multiple playthroughs of the game, and they know you’ll keep coming back.

They talk about if “Leave. Possible.” Or, “Another round,” at the beginning of a playthrough. I don’t remember that happening the first time I played. Do they know they’re in a game?

Granted, I’ve only played twice as of writing this, but I swear different things happened. There were new scenes that I didn’t remember and weird images that would flash across the screen rapidly, both of which scared the pants off of me. But at that point, I was compelled to replay it.

As might be expected, I have a complicated relationship with Oxenfree. I’ve never played another game like it yet although they probably exist. But there is nothing that I’ve met that can come close to The Sunken. The Sunken aren’t just compelling horror antagonists or spooky ghosts–they’re something that once you see and hear, you don’t forget.

It’s a big desert

What are the chances?

There’s this elusive idea of a perfect game. The 10/10. In reality, the decision is completely subjective. It entirely depends on where you were when you first played it, what you were doing, how old you were, and so on. Every aspect of your life that bled into the game or made it personable to you influences a hidden nostalgia meter that can sway a perfect rating.

But I’ve found that perfect game, and I’ve found it in Journey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MnpIi7rLnA

If you haven’t played it: Journey is a relatively short game, something you can bang out in just one session, but what it lacks in length it packs in clarity and atmosphere. The substance of the game isn’t about telling the player what to do but rather evoking a feeling in the player.

A great example of this is 3 minutes in: instead of telling the player to head towards the mountain to progress, the game simply focuses on the mountain looming in the distance. For the next few levels, the mountain is constantly present, and curious players are drawn to it naturally without needing a push.

In fact, putting the effect of the game into words feels like an injustice. Considering the game itself is totally textless, (except for the title card), I’ve become an unreliable translator trying to decipher the wordless emotions into their natural enemy.

In the end, this is what led me to my choice for that one essential thing that makes Journey different from others like it. That one thing is the multiplayer element. In a game made of diamonds, why does the multiplayer–which is completely unessential for finishing the game–shine brightest?

As I mentioned, Journey is a completely wordless game, which extends to conversations between players. The only tool you could use for communication isn’t made for communication: you can let out a chime, which is used to gather scarves to refill your glide. Unless you both know morse code, there’s not much to be said with it.

The game encourages you to stay close to a second player in a couple small ways. One way is that it’ll direct you towards another player with a white blur on the screen. If you can see the other player, the blur isn’t there, but the moment the player leaves your sight, the blur will point you in their direction. In this way, the game is shepherding you two together.

Another way the game pushes two players together is by rewarding proximity: if they’re standing close to each other, the players’ glide ability is recharged. This means if you stay close enough, you can fly forever.

I went through the whole game with this player and we got pretty good at it.

You don’t know when another player will drop into your game, but their presence changes the experience greatly. Moving through different environments, helping each other find hidden symbols or fly, the inability to speak makes every person you meet infinitely charming because they don’t ruin it with words. You’re like two ships passing in the night, and in my experience, you become attached to each other fairly quickly. I’m always sad to see them go.

This tender, wordless companionship is what really makes the game fantastic in my eyes, and without it, the experience wouldn’t be nearly the same.

Similar games: GRIS and ABZU