We’re releaseing Matajueguitos, a space for highlighting the small, weird, personal and/or experimental games that aren’t usually talked about in bigger media.
Video transcription
Welcome everybody to this virtual videogame exhibition, located in the Matajuegos wing within the vast Museum of the Internet. Entrance is free of charge. The theme of today’s exhibition is “everyday life”, and we’re showing off 7 games we think you’re going to love.
Rise and Shine Professor Miggles
Rise and Shine Professor Miggles is a game made in Pico-8 about getting up in the morning, grabbing your things, and going off to work, but it’s also a game about not doing any of those things and staying in bed.
The only way to keep your day’s score is leaving home in time for work… but, the only way to get points in the first place is to stay in bed. The game rewards you for getting up as late as possible, while you plan how to leave your house as fast as possible.
I’ve said it a thousand times and I’ll say it a thousand more if I have to: mechanics convey meaning. If this game solely rewarded you for how quickly you left your home, it would be entirely about being functional to the system that employs you. Instead, the game rewards you for how many seconds of personal enjoyment you manage to squeeze out of the system.
Good Impression
Good Impression is a game made in GameMaker about the universal experience of fooling your family into thinking you’re a functional, responsible adult.
Your new apartment is an absolute mess and your mom is about to pay you a visit. You can’t let her witness the filth you live in, so you have to remove every stain, do every dish, throw away every piece of trash, and put all the food and clothes where they belong before the bell rings.
COMPETITIVE CUDDLING SIMULATOR
Competitive Cuddling Simulator is a game made in Construct that dares to ask: what would happen if cuddling on the couch with your girlfriend watching TV were an Olympic sport?
One player moves their arms and legs with WASD, the other with IJKL, and both try to contort into complicated positions before the other in order to obtain the eternal glory of cuddling.
Where is cat?
Where is cat? is a game made in Flash that asks you to find the black cat that keeps hiding around the house. Like in so many other hidden object games, after finding the cat we have to find several other objects of different kinds that end up contributing to a modest narrative.
Not only is the theme of the game homely, the game’s developers are a French designer and his three children of 5, 8, and 10, who proposed the idea and drew many of the assets. One of the most effective elements here is the music, written by a Russian developer called Tchaikovsky, in the 19th Century.
Grunt work of the revolution
Grunt Work of the Revolution is a game about those Monday nights where you get together with friends to overthrow the establishment. Then you wake up on Tuesday morning with a hangover and remember that in the heat of the moment you went ahead and established a new government.
Faithful to the traditions of games about social uprisings, the mechanics here represent collective action. The graphics are pretty abstract but you can still see crowds of people, which are more or less dense in each square, and the monoliths which represent the dominant institutions.
It’s made in PuzzleScript, unlike the next entry in this exhibition, which only happens to have been made by the creator of PuzzleScript.
Blackness and Stars
Blackness and Stars is a game… or it isn’t , depending on your definition of “game”, but, as everyone knows, here at Matajuegos we try to be as inclusive as possible.
The only real interaction the game allows is placing glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling of a room. The writing is very good. Let’s take a few seconds to appreciate works of art that are exactly the size they want to be and not bigger.
Little Party
Little Party is a game made in Unity about a group of young artists who get together one day at a cabin in the woods to let their creative impulses go wild, each one in their respective artistic discipline. It’s played from the point of view of the cabin’s owner, the mother of one of the artists.
If you don’t get dizzy from the way the camera moves, you will find a very small, very human story. There are interesting time transitions, conversations about creative process, atmospheric music, night walks through the woods, and a beautiful dog called Mewtwo.
Ending
And there you have it! 7 exceptional games about the things we live each and every day. This is where the tour ends, my job here is done. For the rest of the exhibition, you’ll be on your own. Go and play whatever caught your attention, and share this exhibition with anyone who might appreciate it. The links, of course, are in the description. See you next time.