Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

Too many games are so terrified of me not understanding everything that they spew nonsense at me about their world, their characters, their story, and their magic/technology/I don’t care. For some reason, many video games believe that we’re incapable of understanding something we didn’t see happen, that we’re incapable of inference. Huzzah, then, for Thirty Flights of Loving [official site].

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Not sure we’ve posted about the Humble Weekly Sale yet. This is because all we enlightened souls on RPS all dispute the concept of ‘weeks.’ It’s an artificial tyranny imposed upon us by the secret world government in order to keep us from the independent thought that would allow us to realise there are in fact 417 days in a year. The world leaders spend these hidden 52 days at a giant orgy the rest of us aren’t even aware of, let alone invited to, because we’re too busy working, paying the taxes which fund that immense, secret international flesh-fest. It makes me so angry! Thus, I’m sickened that the Humble Bundle guys feel they can make light of the insidious concept of ‘weeks’, that they can appropriate this tool of ultimate opporession for a pay-what-you-want bundle of awesome indie games. This week – OH GOD THEY MADE ME SAY IT – it’s the turn of the incomparable Blendo Games. Atom Zombie Smasher, Flotilla, 30 Flights and Loving and more are yours for a low, low, customisable price. (more…)

Scouse scoundrel David Valjalo gets taken on a tour of one of 2012′s indie highlights, Gravity Bone follow-up Thirty Flights Of Loving, by creator Brendon Chung. Together, they unravel the myriad movie and game references buried deep in this short, sharp burst of first-person, spy-themed adventure.> (more…)

When I beat the absolutely wonderful Thirty Flights Of Loving over the weekend, I had precisely one immediate reaction: “Wait, what just happened?” I cannot even begin to tell you how much that excites me. But then I decided to write an article about it, largely because one of my greatest passions in life is defying nonsencial figures of speech. At any rate, Thirty Flights Of Loving packs loads of information into not-even-30-minutes with hardly any dialog or exposition. But, in some ways, it’s even more of a supposed “un-game” than, say, Modern Warfare 3. I mean, all> agency is illusory. Without spoiling anything (note: that’ll happen a little bit after the break), you’re along for the ride – and that’s it. In a couple bits, it doesn’t even matter where you walk. The game will just jump-cut you to your intended location.

So why is it one of my absolute favorite games – and yes, I one hundred percent believe it’s a game – of the year? Because it made me think about what happened. No, scratch that. It required> me to think.

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Like its predecessor Gravity Bone, Blendo Games’ Thirty Flights of Loving is a short-form tale of cool criminals in a cuboid world, told from a first-person perspective with a hyper-compressed, non-linear narrative that focuses only on the drama and comedy, not the filler. Here’s what I made of it.> (more…)