Hey everyone, excited to schedule a date for our first Killscreen gaming club of the year. I'm sorry it took so long to make this happen, but if you're interested in joining us, we'll be doing it on February 18th at 6 p.m. Pacific Time. It's basically a book club, but we talk about a game instead.
This time around will be 2013's Proteus by David Kanaga and Ed Key. It's a walk through the four seasons.
Just a little bit of backstory about this game: back when we released the Great Outdoors issue, I was really interested in trying to do a live event in New York City. The folks at MoMA PS1 kindly lent us their basement auditorium to do a live scoring play-through and conversation with musician David Kanaga.
Proteus is a really special game in a lot of ways:
It was part of the first big round of walking simulators that were heralded by games like Dear Esther. That's become a real template for artists making games today, but Proteus always did something a bit different for me.
It uses the scenery as an entry point to broader conversations or immersive experiences, guiding players to think more deeply and contemplatively about the place they're in. It comes from a strong meditative tradition rather than a narrative one, which is why I think it still makes the game distinct.
Here's what Ed told Killscreen back in 2013 about his approach to design:
If you reward people for doing these quantifiable things, it devalues everything else. “Oh, I just found an squirrel.” It’s nice to have that on the same footing of, “I just came over a ridge and looked down on a valley and saw a sunset.” That’s an aesthetic experience. I want players to feel they have to visit all of these places and find all of these things, but I never want to ever say you’ve seen one-hundred percent. It makes the world feel richer if you don’t methodically validate and track everything.
Could have been right out of C. Thi Nguyen's new book...
The game is still available to play on PC/Mac. It's pretty short, which you know I love. Hope to see you there. Please sign up here or below.