CHENNAI: If you can use the terms ‘abandonware’ and ‘Duude, my emulator crashed’ in regular conversations, then you are one of the ‘indie’ gamers who form the underbelly of the gaming world. They are like those in the real world, who go for book club meetings and discuss Nietzche. The excess of programming creativity is quantified by the amount of such indie games freely available on the digital highway.
These games are helpful too! After playing Atomas on ‘droid for a significant amount of time, I finally learnt the elements and their numbers on the periodic table, so I can move on from my high school nightmares now.
Though I have 9GAG and Tumblr amongst my top visited sites, I was acquainted to ‘Leo’s Red Carpet Rampage’ by a friend. It is difficult to play on a phone screen, and out of fear of thumb spasms, I played it on the computer. Taking a dig at Leonardo DiCaprio in view of the looming Oscars, the game takes the meme to a level of experiencing it. While running to get the award, a wild Lady Gaga appears to throw him off the race. There is also a round to ‘Find the Black Nominee’ (Spoiler: There are none). In frustration of failing to get Leo his Oscar, I proceeded to play ‘FlipFlip’ where I need to flip tables in an endless room filled with tables within 2 minutes.
There are a lot of other games that can’t be played as easily on the phone, and if one of your life-aims include ‘getting a high score on an internet game’ and ‘actually completing a game’ (it isn’t a joke ok? It is difficult, and I feel validated after this happens), then you should work hard for it. Kidding, you can play it on the computer also, which is easier. To cross over the shifting sands of stressful small screen mobile gaming, Bluestacks released software of sorts which acts as an emulator for Android. Most android games are available on this interface, and the idea behind this is a more leisured mobile gaming, with controls modified to lessen the impact of ‘WhatsApp-itis’. It works like a browser would, and you can play multiple games running at the same time. One-up for the glorious PC gaming master race.
(The writer is an economics graduate who spends her leisure time preparing for the zombie apocalypse)