http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/index.html A thirty year old programmer named Jason Rohrer, after thinking about life and death, came up with this amazingly simple "game." The arrow keys control your character (you can also use an Xbox 360 controller), and you can move up or down in the world (don't forget this) to explore "life." This little app will take five minutes of your time, but hopefully it'll hit the emotional mark it was going for. Screenshots: Warning: These spoil the entire point of the five minute playthrough. You might as well play it. Spoiler: show spoiler hide spoiler I think it's awesome, really. It's quick, to the point, and very emotional. I hope that when he shows it to his wife, she loves it as much as everyone who's played and enjoyed it. There's even an article on his feeling's about it, but I wouldn't read it until after you've played it. http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/pa...statement.html NOTE: I hope this isn't considered site whoring, since I've given just about all of the info on the little bugger I can without giving it away. It's something I simply wanted to share, and maybe discuss the point, but mostly just share.

INCREDIBLE game.

Damn when. Spoiler: show spoiler hide spoiler The girl died. Man that's pretty impressive levels of power from a damn pixel game like that Just, PLUNK! Now your wife is dead.

My guy only got one treasure chest. It was empty.

Spoiler: show spoiler hide spoiler I didn't want to leave the spouse's grave behind. Thankfully I dropped down when it was still on the screen.

In retrospect, I probably should have never picked her up so I could get more treasure chests.

I guess I did this wrong

Spoiler: show spoiler hide spoiler He should make a sequel where instead of a line, it's like a circle that keeps rotating as you keep walking, and when you reach the end you reincarnate.

Spoiler: show spoiler hide spoiler Whoops, I didn't get the girl. I think I need a walkthrough.

In retrospect, I probably should have never picked her up so I could get more treasure chests. The ol' ball and chain weighed you down eh? I liked it it was short and to the point, but I think I get what he was trying to get across.

So your options are either more money or a woman. Seems appropriate.

1289, bitches. Lets see you do that with some whore riding your back!

Every time I try to run this I get a dialog box with an error message, it says: 16 bit MS-DOS Subsystem c:\Passage.exe The NTVDM CPU has encountered an illegal instruction. CS:0565 IP:02d4 OP:63 68 61 72 73 Choose 'Close' to terminate the application. Idea ideas? EDIT: Fixed, Firefox didn't download it correctly I guess, IE did though.

I don't think I did this right.

Needs more robots.

I got over a thousand points. I am the clear winner here. Edit: Yeah, seriously. This game clearly teaches that other people can only BRING YOU DOWN.

Yep the only message I got here was if I grab the girl at the start it fucks me over.

I don't think I did this right. And when you think about it, do any of us really do it right? but seriously what the hell is this about treasure, i sure didn't find any

I never saw Spoiler: show spoiler hide spoiler the girl. I spent my whole playthrough wondering whether the environments were supposed to symbolize the Stages of Life in some way. :|

Pfft. That's it? Terrible game. I mean, I get the point... It's talking about how life is a long road full of obstacles... And the the only thing you get in the end is death. Woah... Shit. What a great as game. The music was actually really good.

At first I thought the game was trying to convey that moving through life quickly is a very shallow way of doing it. I mean, if you move really quickly the entire background becomes fuzzy, as do your character, so I interpreted that to mean that shooting through life makes you lose perspective. When you stand still you are able to see things a bit more clearly. Of course, I don't think I saw one treasure thing and when my wife died I was seriously like

Whoa... I feel like I just played an epic. Spoiler: show spoiler hide spoiler The moment my partner went *plunk* into a tombstone, I felt a lump in my throat. And then the character I controlled went soon after. And then reading the article? Yea...double sad smiley.

If you intend to collect boxed treasure for a living, you should hold off on marriage? Am I doing this interpreting thing right?

I played this a few weeks ago, and yes, it's brilliant. But I think it only just qualifies as a game, riding mostly on its pixel graphics. Still, gorgeous. Anyone played the wonderfully irreverent destructoid mod? (not to be played by anyone who hasn't played the original, obviously)

Hunh. I was going to make this very thread here today, but I did a search and saw that people had verbally crapped all over Passage in the "Indie Games" thread, so I figured why bother. I did, however, make a thread about it over at the SomethingAwful forums which spawned a fair bit of discussion, so these comments are mostly copied from my comments there: What impressed me about Passage was that with some definitively Atari-esque graphics and almost no gameplay, he managed to convey an emotion (and arguably a philosophical perspective) through a very straightforward nonlinear [in a sense] experience, rather than through simply reading / hearing / watching a story. Spoiler: show spoiler hide spoiler Honestly, on a conceptual level, everything he did impresses me more the more I think about it. The "future"/"memory" device is really clever, having the area around you be clear, but having the future be very hazy when you're young, and the past get hazier as you get old. Also, the very simple, but eloquently implemented, "limitations" of marriage. You have a companion who will help you (you get more points for finding chests if you have her), but your travel options become limited and eventually you have to deal with her loss. The moment when she very suddenly is replaced by a tombstone is more jarring than I expected. Really well thought out, for what it is - which is a five minute experimental title, NOT an earthshattering artistic statement, as some people were criticizing it at SA as though it were supposed to be. I felt kind of like it was a poem, in game form. And its being in game form means it is partially written by the player, which is notably different from any other kind of poem. It doesn't have to change the world to make that pretty neat. I do hope he shows it to his wife someday. It's certainly sad at the end, but I also found it touching, and not really depressing in retrospect. We DO all die, but this game is pretty much 100% focused on the choices we have before that happens. I would think (hope) that his real spouse would find their choices reaffirmed by this sort of thing.