The Infinite Ocean

[davidn]

Continuing my attempt to highlight MMF success stories here, The Infinite Ocean is something that its creator made seven years ago and that never got much attention at the time. However, now that it's been retooled with the Flash exporter, Armor Games have picked it up and showered boatloads of cash on to it, and it comes recommended by Terry Cavanagh QC as well.

One of the more cheerful rooms. Just wait until you see it without the brightness turned up.

It's a sort of bleak Mystalike adventure game, with you starting in a room in a bad state of repair with very little idea of what's going on, and with the storyline gradually revealed through the discovery of records left on the various computers. The interface is simple enough, with you being directed to pick up objects and then use them from your inventory while being chanted at Gregorianly, along with some password finding and manipulation - this and the narrative style of your character may well conjure up memories of MOTAS. Except darker. And just in case you're rubbish at adventure games, a guide is provided right in the bottom right corner.

The Infinite Ocean

It occurs to me that the name "Fusion" is getting more and more appropriate all the time... I don't know of anything else where you can have one source file and export that to EXE, mobile Java, Flash and (soon) iOS, with just the device-specific limitations to worry about.

Comments

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

Was MOTAS ever finished? I remember playing it and it was in a state of still being created.

This was an interesting piece of work. I always enjoy a good story to make me think, even if the environment was making me a bit confused since everything looked quite similar. The Adventure-gaming part of me kept wanting to pick up the Coffee and Tea since it was there.

[davidn]

I think the last time that I played MOTAS I did get to some sort of satisfactory conclusion, but it's difficult to remember - it was always strange playing it so many years apart from each other, and coming up to a section which I thought was new, but then recognizing something further ahead...

The game is certainly one of the most... monotone that I've ever seen! Like a lot of adventure-styled games now, there wasn't really a huge amount of game there, but I can see why people enjoyed the storyling even if it was slightly obvious what the twist was going to be from the very start. :)

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

I think this is what's missing in games these days - a little more of a decent plot. "Kill Space Aliens" is all fine and good, but I like a more involving story that keeps me interested (see: Digital: A Love Story). I guess it also involves being in the right mindset as well, because not all games can be thought-provoking, existential concepts.

Huh, now that I think about it, there's a little bit of a connection between Digital and Infinite Ocean, isn't there - even down to reading e-mails.