Passage is a lifetime in five minutes

by Scott Jon Siegel on Dec 11th 2007 11:30PM

At this year's Montreal International Game Summit, the game development collective Kokoromi held their second annual Gamma event, challenging designers and coders to create games under strict guidelines. For this year's event, games had to be a maximum of 256 x 256 pixels, and be fully playable in around five minutes.

With these constraints, Jason Rohrer designed Passage, a tiny game that has been making tiny waves in our tiny community.

There's not much to say about Passage. The game is available for Mac, PC, and Linux, and lasts exactly five minutes. In short, there's no excuse not to play it.

[Via Raph Koster]

Source

Tags: gamma, gamma256, kokoromi, Mac, migs, migs07, montreal, passage, PC

Reader Comments (43)

It's the music that sets the mood. If not for it, I don't think people would react that much.

WTF?! Everytime I try and open it, it just minimizes itself.

Kind of fitting that that was 5 minutes of my life that I'll never get back.

Walking right while an Atari styled pair of people grow old doesn't do a damn thing for me either. I could care less what people are reading into this...it is just dull. The "Video Game As Art" crowd needs to get laid in real life, then they'll see stuff like this for what it is: trivial fluff.

The game does not just go right. It's "infinite" (i.e. has places you can never get to). You just missed all of the fun in life; kind of like how you missed all the fun in that game.

It's cute actually.

[and the game is fun and interesting, but it aint THAT deep]

Not much to say about Passage? Then you have no idea what in the hell you're talking about. An incredibly INCREDIBLY deep piece of art that should be played by everyone.

Anyways, I played a long while ago when it came up on Kotaku.

Do I sense a hint of pretention? I don't want to sound like Robert Ebert, but it was a five minute game...And we are all glad to hear that you know about other gaming sites...please leave your name and address so you can get your prize for being the first to play it on Kotaku and mention it on Joystiq.

*Roger

I thought so too, I played through it a couple times and it tugged at my heart a bit.

Theres a lot of things to think about here, like how the progression through time never stops, how you can easily miss the depth of your little world on your path that you choose, how most of the treasure is just moths, (i think all of you don't get the girl)

Theres a lot more than a 5 minute Atari grade game here.

teenagertc,

is your avatar from are you afraid of the dark?

if so, you = winner

No, it is Chris Turk from the TV show , "Scrubs".

That was crazy.

Man.

I like it.

Thats all.

I enjoyed my first play through of Passage - definitely wait to read what Jason Rohrer wrote explaining the game until after you give it a shot yourself. I am going to it again right now.

where can i find this?

Anyone who says this game is worthless really isn't mature enough to understand the concepts it portrays. I got chills the first time I completed it.

That really affected me. I don't want to ruin anything, but the most moving part for me was, towards the end, I looked back and saw that the right side of screen looked like the left side of the screen at the beginning of the game. I was embarrassed that I had been so focused on moving forward that I didn't notice this until the very end. Great little allegory

That was the most depressing five minutes of my life. Thanks for ruining my day joystiq.

How the fuck do you quit out? Alt-F4 and escape key both failed. I had to control alt delete that shit.

PS: I agree with most people that this is stupid. Wow, look it's so deep, oh my god they grow old and die ooohh..... whatever :P Yuo guys are lame.

Hit 'F'.

Joystiq seems to just lurk on NeoGAF, wait a few hours, then post the 'breaking news' they found there.

The only thing I like about this game is the nostalgia it gives me. It reminds me of a ton of old atari and commodore 64 games. You know, back in the day when all you needed were a couple bucks, a basic knowledge of coding, and an idea to get a game published.

The game I miss most....Caveman Ugh-lympics.

Caveman Ugh-lympics! God that brings back memories! I'm pretty sure I still have the 5-1/4 floppys for that game buried somewhere, I'll have to dig those up.

Content aside, I feel this hardly qualifies as a game. Holding the right arrow down isn't exactly playing.

"Content aside, I feel this hardly qualifies as a game. Holding the right arrow down isn't exactly playing."

That's exactly the point, my friend.

That's exactly the point.

you can go down.

i agree, this is not so much a "game", but the artistic value of this is greater than any "game" you have played this year ...

the brilliance:

early on, you aren't sure that your character is changing and you walk backwards a while to see if you can go back and notice the change. nothing happens, you stay the same.

when your girl dies, and you try to go backwards to see it again, she stays dead.

you are powerless against change. just an observer, passing by. no matter how hard you try to step back, you can't.

... plus more

this is pretty powerful in its symbolism. if you don't think so, you will understand later.

but its still not a game.

Neither is Final Fantasy VII.

I modified the gameart so that the tombstones looked like lollipops.

And for those of you remarking that going right doesn't make a game...try pressing down.

I think you have touched on half the problem. I originally tried pressing up, and nothing happened, so I thought I could only go left and right. All I did was go left and right, then I hear talk about treasure, I'm like huh?

My only issue with it, is that having the girl only made it more difficult to navigate the obstacles. This just ruins the mood of the thing for me, but it could easily be offset if things were tweaked so she could make it easier to navigate obstacles in a different way, or made it so that the treasures you did get to were more likely to be good ones.
As it is now, she's basically just dead weight.

Go down immediately at the start of the game and then start traveling right. You won't meet the girl, thus you can navigate and explore faster/easier. There is a plethora of choice in this 400k game.

Low-budget game maybe, but excellent art nonetheless.

It's so simple, but it really makes you think about it. Colin's comment was dead on.

Thanks!

wow, i just realized that you can go down. but if you go down, you start getting preoccupied with snagging treasure. your points go up, but you die alone. and some of the treasure is just a bunch of flies.

also of note, in the beginning, the future is a blur, later on, your past becomes the blur.

if you just walk straight across, you make it to the end, if you go treasure hunting, you don't. you die in the middle of the screen.

and also your character walks slower after your partner dies.

man, i wish i had a class that i could discuss this in. this is a lot deeper than i initially thought.

Uhm.. that took way longer than 5 minutes, I was exploring.

863 was my final score

This is the best example of "Video Games as Art" I have seen in a very long time.

To all the people out there complaining about this being shit and then jumping into another game of Call of Duty 7 (or whatever they're up to now), you're the reason video games, after over twenty years of evolution, still have trouble being taken as anything more than a nerdy pastime for thirteen year old social deprived boys. I applaud you for your efforts to keep the stereotype alive. Enjoy your murder games.

I understood exactly what it was trying to convey on my first play through and still thought it was lame.

We're really not exactly talking about deep, un-thought of symbolism here. Really surprises me how many people are claiming to be deeply moved by this. I had a eureka moment when I realized what exactly was going on, but was I MOVED by this?
Hell no. If you pay even the slightest bit of attention to the art world, you've seen this purpose before.
Maybe I'm just jaded.

That said, it's miles beyond anything on the Wii, PS3 or 360 in terms of intellectual motivation...which is just sad.

So people live, love and die. Great symbolism? Sorry. Not.

Ico was better.

Something I thought was very interesting was the fact that the girl will give you more points, but she becomes an obsticle to getting treasures or going a certain path...

Think about it, if you get a girlfriend/wife you instantly close yourself to some options in life, some things you will never obtain because they are with you. This is reflected in the game.

Amazing.

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Passage is a lifetime in five minutes

Reader Comments (43)

Posted: Dec 11th 2007 11:44PM RDX said

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