The unpretentious little video game with primitive graphics in a 256 colour screen took me by surprise. The game is beautifully made. For someone who doesn't enjoy gaming so much, I found just exploring the Heian world unusually refreshing. The ancient city of Heiankyo - with its vibrant people, culture, beliefs and its reality, is so deeply enthralling, it makes you want to meet more people, hear them out, read the references, the literature, their legend, the philosophy and understand their religion.
I guess it is one of the oldest games of its kind. I do not know the complexity of the game yet, but everytime I have played, I have had a different experience, each of which succeeded in keeping my interest alive.
The game has no winners and losers or even a visible scoring system! I guess you collect 'karma' points as you make decisions and choices along the way. After you die, you are reborn depending on your karma. The first few times that I died, I could almost feel the pointlessness of existence as I was suddenly reborn as a random naked person collecting clothes from a corpse nearby!!! Later the life and death begin making more sense as you are forced to see it through Heian eyes. The wealthy, the downtrodden, the diseased, the happy, the distressed - all exist in this world. The whole experience makes you see the importance of religion and a belief system, and see how beautifully it all is woven into the fabric of a society.
The game however, is slow and I wouldn't have the time or patience to play it too often, although once I began, it has been hard to stop (this is in itself extremely unusual!). I would like to experience all that this game has to offer with lesser effort! I am not a game-savvy person, so let me know if there is a newer, equivalent game that captures the history, culture, ethos and beliefs - moral and spiritual of a place and lets you experience it without an explicit scoring system, the way this does?
That said, there is no better way to learn, experience and APPRECIATE an ancient culture than this. Couldn't we build one like this to experience our own very ancient history?
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Wednesday, March 4, 2009
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5 comments:
It is so true that efforts have to be taken to understand the culture, before going all out to protect it. All that what remains now are mere symbols and most of us have very little clue about what they actually signify.
Sounds very interesting! Didn't know there's a game that has so much of all that you've mentioned including philosophy and religion in it! I'm going to try it soon as I find the time for it. Good you wrote about it, for I got to know! :)
@sandhya
yup symbols exist. maybe for our part, we must attempt to understand what the symbols mean or or could have meant. It would not just be interesting but possible could provide valuable insights?
@meens
did you get to try it out?
I'm yet to try out the game. I call for excuse none other than laziness! :-/ I remember having some problem while trying to download the game and didn't get back to fixing it.
Btw, I had to finally give up my 1100! the battery was draining within, say, a 5-10 minutes of talk itself! I researched a lot and finally settled for a SE Walkman W595. I'm a Nokia fan and was bent on getting a good Nokia mobile, but finally decided on SE, for various reasons.
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