24/09/24: Three games about mapping

I’m playing games that deal with mapping. These are some rough notes I took while playing. For LANDART I wrote them to the game’s creator, Mateus Domingos, for Nothing Beside Remains, they’re written as part of playing the game. For 4m3ric4 they’re just loose thoughts.

4m3ric4

How much information do you need to feel like you’re on a journey? This is pretty abstract, but somehow so comprehensive. I’m getting a matchbox sized snapshot of a dozen points of reference. One of which is a map, but that doesn’t feel like the most important part. It’s one part of a meditative whole that show me that I’m still moving.

I’m in Fremont County, Wyoming, listening to a local rock station, scrolling through the classifieds – someone wants a new truck – and food reviews – 5 stars for Liquid Courage Sports Bar & Grill. It’s amazing how comfortable this is.

I left a cairn – near someone else’s, I’ve never seen one in the game before today – it felt like a moment of connection to place it near another person’s act of memory. I’ve never been to Wyoming before. I still haven’t, but I feel like a know it a little bit.

LANDART – written to Mateus

1. I really like it. It’s like if you were the architect of Conway’s Game of Life

2. [21:30]

   The aesthetic and narrative of it, against the actual mechanic of it, makes me think about the extractive practices of trad landart

3. [21:31]

   I can’t return the earth to the way it was. I can only dig and replace it with anthropocentric artifacts

4. [21:31]

   I really enjoy the mud spatter effect as you dig (that’s what I saw it as anyway)

5. [21:32]

   Interesting how easily I fell into my own narrative for what was happening. I didn’t explore for ages, I didn’t think there was much to see at first. I dug and I built.

6. [21:33]

   Eventually I did go exploring to find the edge of the map, as hinted at in the manual

7. [21:33]

   I found a little peninsula that I like. Then I landarted it.

8. [21:33]

   I think, given a bit of time, and if I treated it like a capital G Game, I could make some structures that I would be pretty pleased with.

9. [21:34]

   Also, there’s something about the combination of the colour palette, the abstraction, the narrative hint of another creature that you never see, that makes the whole thing feel very gently like a survival horror game!

Nothing Beside Remains

Notes on surveying ruins

• Remains of Madamantian statue
  • A humanoid figure holding a trident
  • Now in ruins
• What may have been mistaken as an altar. Potentially a mess hell
  • Lots of tables with plates on. Some with small bones on.
• The settlement remains are at the edge of a marchland. It’s impossible to move through it.
• Despite the sandstorm, and the passing of time, there are signs of life. Initially non-human.
  • Trees in an old orchard that have survived and are even blooming.
  • The seeds must have been planted here a long time ago. The mark of human hands remains.
• Some weed or desert plant has taken root against the far wall of the orchard. I wonder if there is some shared benefit down in the root systems.
• The formerly farmland(?) stretches out further than the built settlements.
• A chapel sits alongside the northern corner of the region.
  • There are signs of nature worship. Possibly pagan.
• There is nothing further north. No sign of civilisation. No sign of anything.
• Only now I start to wonder how I got here. (Now that I have surmised that there is no way out.) I don’t know if I arrived with a team. Though I must have. I wouldn’t have decided to survey this hostile landscape on my own.