Expedition 7
The Bathysphere
Welcome to the seventh expedition of the Bathysphere. We should have paid subscriptions set up now so that you can opt for the annual option (Thank you so much Ben from Buttondown!), but please do let us know if you have problems. In the meantime, enjoy our latest cruise through the bathypelagic zone of video game culture.
The Bathysphere crew
Christian Donlan
Florence Smith Nicholls
Keith Stuart
Contacts us at bathyspherecrew@gmail.com
Delightful games
Helionaut, by Sokpop, is a fidgety spin on the whole No Man’s Sky dream: a universe where you can zip through the ether and then land on a planet and see what’s going on.
Because this is Sokpop, though, the confines of the universe are wonderfully snug, and the planets are colourful little playsets, all delivered in pastel colours and looking, from a distance, a little like viruses covered in spike proteins.
Helionaut’s not a long game, I suspect, but I have been portioning it out to myself over the last few years because it’s a delightful, playful thing and I don’t want it to end. It’s a perfect example of the kind of thing this collective is so good at making. CD
Roadcraft is the latest slow-paced offroad driving sim from Saber, the creator of SnowRunner and MudRunner. It’s about very methodically clearing up after natural disasters using big trucks and diggers – and sometimes accidentally steering into a ditch. I find these games fascinating, but I also really want you to watch the surprisingly beautiful trailer which perfectly encapsulates their appeal as grown-up embodiments of childlike play. KS
Interesting things
That brilliant thing happened last week when you’re reading two books, purely at random, and they start to spark off each other in interesting ways. The first was Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer, which is so well known I don’t really need to chuck in a link. It tracks a group of uneasy allies as they explore a strange zone where nature has started to make unusual choices. The second was The Bathysphere Book, by Brad Fox. This is a poetic revisiting of an early series of bathysphere trips down into the depths of the ocean. It feels so writerly a subject that I had to google around to make sure it actually happened. I don’t want to spoil either book, but I will say that they’re both a bit like literary Roguelikes, offering repeated runs into the unknown in search of beauty and horror. CD
Bathysphere subscriber David Eastman recently emailed us to recommend a current exhibition at the Royal Academy: Astonishing Things: The Drawings of Victor Hugo. David felt the great author’s sketches of imaginary castles and monsters will resonate with fans of modern role-playing games, especially Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Of course, the Bathysphere crew particularly appreciates his wonderfully inky drawing of an octopus. KS
The beautiful Sagaiden site has a new post listing early Sega peripherals, including photos of the original packaging. How did I not know there was once a Sega-branded cassette player? KS
I just returned from visiting Japan for a conference, and one of the highlights of the trip was attending Tokyo Game Dungeon, a biannual showcase of indie games made by small teams. I saw everything from an exercise ball used as a controller, to countless examples of gorgeous pixel art. It’s also the only event of this kind I’ve ever attended in which everyone applauds at the end. FSN
If you’re into immersive experiences you’ve likely already heard of the international collective teamLab. In their Tokyo exhibition “Borderless,” I wandered a labyrinth of interconnected installations, with interactions in one area having a ripple effect on those around them. With no map, and only curiosity to guide me, I spent hours following parades of animals that stalked between rooms. There’s really nothing else like it. FSN
Essay: Yes, but be specific
I read Strange Pictures by the mysterious Japanese writer Uketsu recently. It’s a wonderful thing: a series of interlocking stories, all of which hinge on horrible murders and the investigation of simple drawings. Understand the art to understand the crime.
And somewhere in the pages of this book I sensed a feeling I’d been chasing for a while. I sensed that here was a private world where very precise rules were being followed in some places, while they were being toyed with, teased and gently pushed against in others. I thought I was reading a crime novel with a touch of the macabre, but that’s because I didn’t know how better to explain it - I didn’t understand the true intricacies of the fiercely specific genre I had fallen into.
I thought about this stuff again yesterday when a TikTok introduced me to the genre of “surf noir”. Surf noir! I looked and thought: of course! How beautifully those things would clip together. The sun and the boom and rush of the waves on Malibu, but there’s a car nearby with a body in the trunk, and there’s an alleyway behind an office block where the inane sun-bleached grey of the concrete is suddenly scarlet with blood. Surf noir.
Literature is full of great genres. Surf noir. Whatever Uketsu’s doing. And they’re great, I think, because they’re very precise. Surf noir. Enemies to lovers. Mysteries, sure, but how about locked-room mysteries?
And then I thought, inevitably, of games and how genre always depresses me in games. It doesn’t seem to entice with strangeness, like those locked-room mysteries, say. Instead, it suggests the blandest boundaries imposed on imagination.
I tell myself that I prefer what you might almost call vernacular games - games made without an architect, without a plan and a spot on the shelf in mind. I’m thinking of games like Gravity Bone, here, the strange five-minute delight from Brendon Chung and Blendo Games. You’re at a cocktail party and you have to poison someone. Then you’re photographing birds. Then you’re in an incredible cinematic chase that ends in an explosion of memory. What genre is that? Plenty, or none. What it is, I reckon, is a ludic doodle that got wonderfully out of hand. He was making the game without a plan and the more he made the more ideas he got for what he might do next. That’s my take anyway.
But maybe I feel this way because game genres are too broad - or maybe they’re too broad because I’m a flitting generalist and I’m called upon to review all sorts, so I never go that deeply into the demarcations of what something can be. Visual novel. FPS. Puzzler. Tactics.
Go in even a little closer and it gets far more interesting though: falling-block puzzler, turn-base tactics. Last night I watched another TikTok for Bungie’s Marathon. What’s this game? A shooter, yes. An online shooter, sure. But also an extraction shooter? That’s the depth I needed. I was hooked by the idea - a whole genre focused specifically on getting in and then getting out again. A whole genre that hinges on the notion that things might go wrong at the absolute worst time, and that could be brilliant.
Surf noir. Locked-room mystery. Extraction shooter. Yes. I want to play that. I want to learn all about its secret intricacies. I want to learn about the way it toys, teases, and gently pushes against the contours of the box it has put itself in. CD
Retrospective adventures
I don’t just hoard video game magazines, I also have a ridiculous collection of 1980s video game hint books. These illustrations come from How to Master Video Games by Tom Hirschfeld, published in 1981 by Bantam. In those days, a full game experience could be communicated on a single diagram, like a map or some sort of public safety leaflet. For each game, Hirschfeld divides his tips into three sections: Dangers, Observations and Strategies, which gives it the feel of a military field manual. It’s interesting how these books began to appear at the same time as instructional manuals on how to beat Rubik’s Cube. Both sets of publications needed to develop new descriptive and illustrative conventions in order to standardise the experience of learning about game mechanics. Anyway, I sort of miss the days before screenshots, when illustrations and diagrams were required to show us the meaning of games. KS