Let's Lander

i have this really cool game called Lander and I used to play it when i was like 7 years old or something. actually i couldn't play it myself because it was really tricky to control, so I would watch my dad play it. Otherwise if my dad wasn't playing it I'd watch the screen-idle auto gameplay video that comes up when you don't press any buttons. if you left the game still on the menu screen and didn't press any buttons, it would show a random gameplay of a level played by some anonymous person. probably one of the game developers or something. But once I was older, I could play the game myself... and it was so good!!!!!!! It's got this industrial electronic music and dark atmosphere, and it's difficult to manoeuvre this lander craft without crashing into everything. At the time it was an achievement to get to the 3rd level or so, it seemed like the big mega impossible level, but now I realize it was only the 3rd level out of about 30. and buying new lander craft seemed impossible because they were so expensive. They were like some kind of distant unreachable technologies. We didn't know about the save function, and we had been playing from the beginning every time. But it didn't seem to matter, because the ship was so difficult to fly, you could play the same level and not really mind.

the game was released in 1999 so it had quite low poly graphics. These low polygon graphics is one thing that seems to work well with the game in my opinion, because it's futuristic and spacey, and everything is angular and sharp and just looks really good like that I reckon. The game has this kind of e-mail system in it where you check your inbox for new missions, and there'd be other messages like something about some LOTTO RESULTS. these kind of random e-mails created the sense of things going on somewhere else. You never see people in the game, there are no human models or faces anywhere. there's evidence of people because vehicles have windows, you get these e-mails, and you get the impression humans are behind these things. But that's something I find interesting, how you don't ever see people. there is a rescue mission, you have to rescue DOCTOR MISHIMA, but he's unseen in this small capsule that get's bashed around when you try to escape with it. I would imagine how this Dr. Mishima would be feeling in that capsule as it get's swung about under my lander craft, knocking into every wall. But it didn't seem to matter because you would win the level once the doctor was lifted up to 3000 feet in the air.

Lander gameplay by someone who knows their Lander

I think Lander was my first 3D game to play. I didn't know how games worked then, and wasn't able to recognize similarities this had to other games. I would interpret the game differently from how I do now because of age and because of more gaming experience.

i think something I try to capture in the games that I make now has something to do with this. I feel like a lot of my games are based on this not knowing of how a game works, and the misinterpretation of things happening in the game that you get when you aren't familiar with other games. At the moment I like my games to have a childish feeling, very crude and naive in their workings or/and presentation. I feel this is partly to do with me playing Lander when I was 7, and the way I saw the game, or from how I remember the experience.

that's also something I miss from playing games now, is that I feel I 'get' them too well, which is really my own problem not the game's. there isn't much point playing them for more than a few minutes. well, other than as entertainment with a friend or something. Not that I particularly want to play games for longer actually, I think it's good to play them really briefly and try and remain enthusiastic about them instead of getting sick of them/or just losing interest after hours of playing. I don't think it's a problem with the games, but I think it's just for me to remember to only look at the game really briefly and then come back to it later, and have another brief go. so it remains exciting. and so I feel good. and it's probably a better idea to only look at the game a few minutes a time...... and so I am able to misinterpret the game because I played it for a short second and then exited, and it's just a kind of abstract blur of something happening a moment which is more interesting to think about. And then I make a game based on that blurry abstract blur