Mackerelmedia Fish

Last updated

Mackerelmedia Fish is a 2020 experimental ARG-like browser-based video game developed by Nathalie Lawhead. The game explores themes and settings related to 1990s and early 2000s Internet culture (its name being a parody of Macromedia Flash), especially the loss of digital history through deprecations and data decay. Some of the game is directly implemented on a website's open .htaccess directories, while other portions of it take the user through other previous art projects by Lawhead, such as an application titled Electric Zine Maker.

Contents

Development

According to the developer's blog, [1] much of the game was built with Tumult Hype, an HTML5 development application. Lawhead mentioned wanting to have some sort of fictional context for Electric Zine Maker, and created Mackerelmedia Fish as a tie-in to that project as well as future ones. [1] They also mentioned wanting to create an interactive project that made use of open directories for a long time. The project's code has been released on GitHub. [1] [2]

Reception

The game was named one of the Games of the Month of April 2020 by itch.io staff writers, who called it the "perfect entry point for alternate reality games". [3] Writing for Rock, Paper, Shotgun , Lauren Morton praised the game for its 'clever oddity', calling it a "portal back to my childhood when the internet was, if not weirder than now, differently weird". [4] Writing for The Verge, Adi Robertson referred to it as "a strangely adorable ode to dying websites". [5] PC Gamer and The Verge both compared the game favourably to Hypnospace Outlaw . [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Browser game</span> Video game played in a web browser

A browser game is a video game that is played via the internet using a web browser. They are mostly free-to-play and can be single-player or multiplayer. Alternative names for the browser game genre reference their software platform used, with common examples being Flash games, and HTML5 games.

Dropsy is a 2015 point-and-click adventure video game developed by US-based indie developer Tendershoot and indie development studio A Jolly Corpse, and published by Devolver Digital. The game was released on September 10, 2015 for Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux. The iOS port of Dropsy was released on December 17, 2015. The Nintendo Switch version was released on September 29, 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Itch.io</span> Website for distributing games

Itch.io is a website for users to host, sell and download indie video games, indie role-playing games, game assets, comics, zines and music. Launched in March 2013 by Leaf Corcoran, the service hosts over 700,000 products as of April 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OpenMW</span>

OpenMW is a free and open-source game engine recreation that reimplements the one powering Bethesda Softworks' 2002 open-world role-playing game The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

<i>DMCAs Sky</i> 2016 video game by ASMB Games

DMCA's Sky is a 2016 open world platform game developed by ASMB Games for Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux. As No Mario's Sky, it was a fangame of both Super Mario Bros. and No Man's Sky.

<i>Rise of Industry</i> 2019 video game

Rise of Industry is a business tycoon game developed by Spanish indie team Dapper Penguin Studios and published by Kasedo Games. The game sees players build and manage their industrial empires as they attempt to grow and expand in the early 20th century.

<i>Tracks – The Train Set Game</i> 2019 video game

Tracks – The Train Set Game, commonly referred to as Tracks, is an indie simulation video game developed by British indie studio Whoop Games and published by Excalibur Publishing for Microsoft Windows. Originally released onto Itch.io in February 2017, the game was added to Steam's Early Access program in September. Tracks – The Train Set Game sees the player build a wooden toy train track. The video game was fully released on 11 October 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nathalie Lawhead</span> Net artist and independent game designer

Nathalie Lawhead is an independent net artist and video game designer residing in Irvine, California.

<i>Dustnet</i> 2019 video game

Dustnet is a 2019 asymmetrical, action, sandbox video game developed by Canadian studio SCRNPRNT. The game explores the theme of "dying" or disappearing multiplayer video games and their player bases, with the gameplay being set around a copy of the Dust II multiplayer map, originally created for Counter-Strike in 2001.

<i>Grimms Hollow</i> 2019 video game

Grimm's Hollow is a 2019 role-playing video game developed by Mahum Najam under the alias "Ghosthunter". It was released as freeware on Steam and Itch.io on Halloween for Microsoft Windows, running on RPG Maker 2003.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GDevelop</span> Open-source, cross-platform game engine

GDevelop is a 2D and 3D cross-platform, free and open-source game engine, which mainly focuses on creating PC and mobile games, as well as HTML5 games playable in the browser. Created by Florian Rival, a software engineer at Google, GDevelop is mainly aimed at non-programmers and game developers of all skillsets, employing event based visual programming similar to engines like Construct, Stencyl, and Tynker.

CraftStudio is a collaborative cross-platform game engine used to create voxel-based video games, developed by Sparklin Labs.

<i>Nowhere Prophet</i> 2019 video game

Nowhere Prophet is a roguelike deck-building game developed by German developer Sharkbomb Studios and published by No More Robots. The game was first released in early access for Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux in October 2017 on Itch.io. The game was fully released for these platforms in July 2019. A version for PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One followed in July 2020.

No Players Online is a short horror game released on Itch.io, a website for indie games. It was created by Belgian university students Adam Pype and Ward D'Heer and sound designer Viktor Kraus as part of the Haunted PS1 Jam in November 2019. Initially intended to be a twenty-minute horror game, the developers continued to expand the game into an alternate reality game (ARG) involving cryptic messages and secret passcodes. Players quickly solved the ARG on a dedicated Discord server.

<i>Ode to a Moon</i> 2022 video game

Ode to a Moon is a video game under development by Colorfiction, the professional name of independent developer Max Arocena. Described as a "first-person thriller" with an "exploration focus, light action and puzzle elements", the game is a horror game with surrealistic visuals. Ode to a Moon was released as a demo in 2019 and appeared on the 2020 horror game compilation Haunted PS1 Demo Disc by Irish developer Breogán Hackett.

<i>Everything is Going to Be OK</i> 2017 video game

Everything is Going to Be OK is a 2017 work of digital art by alienmelon, the pseudonym of independent net artist Nathalie Lawhead. Described by Lawhead as an "interactive zine", the work is a vignette of several non-linear and interactive elements informed by Lawhead's experiences with "struggle, survival and coping with the aftermath of surviving bad things". The work received positive reception from publications, with attention directed to the game's use of humor to humanise and relate to experiences of trauma and victimhood, and received several awards and nominations at the Independent Games Festival, IndieCade, and A-MAZE. Following release of the work, Lawhead experienced online and offline harassment when showcasing it at Double Fine's Day of the Devs event in November 2017, prompting a discussion from Lawhead and media publications about the challenges of publishing and exhibiting experimental or art games and the risks of online harassment relating to streaming of these works.

<i>Missed Messages</i> 2019 video game

Missed Messages is a freeware visual novel game published by indie game developer Angela He. It was released on itch.io on May 1, 2019 and on Steam on May 21. The game has four different endings that explores the themes of depression, suicidality, and family pressure. It was originally developed for the Ludum Dare game jam.

<i>Tetrageddon Games</i> 2016 video game

Tetrageddon Games is an online compilation of video games and digital art by alienmelon, the pseudonym of independent developer and net artist Nathalie Lawhead. First published as a website titled Tetrageddon, hosting web games designed by Lawhead from 2008. Lawhead combined the releases into a compiled form on the website from 2012, receiving several iterations and revisions over time, and released a downloadable desktop release titled ARMAGAD in 2016. Following release, critics praised Tetrageddon Games for its eclectic mixture of aesthetics and gameplay styles. The project received several awards and nominations, including a Webby Award for the website version and a Nuovo Award at the Independent Games Festival.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Lawhead, Nathalie. "Mackerelmedia Fish: an ARG-like text adventure game (with sourcefiles)". nathalielawhead.com. Retrieved 20 August 2020.
  2. ↑ "alienmelon/mackerelmediafish". GitHub. Retrieved 20 August 2020.
  3. ↑ "Games of the Month: Treachery in Beatdown City, Mackerelfish Media and More!". itch.io. Retrieved 2020-08-20.
  4. ↑ Morton, Lauren (2020-03-30). "Look at this wacky fish ARG about exploring abandoned websites". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Retrieved 2020-08-20.
  5. ↑ Robertson, Adi (2020-04-25). "Play Mackerelmedia Fish, a strangely adorable ode to dying websites". The Verge. Retrieved 2020-08-20.
  6. ↑ Macgregor, Jody (2020-04-05). "Mackerelmedia Fish is an odd, fun, retroweb adventure". PC Gamer. Retrieved 2020-08-20.


This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.