The Company of Myself

Last updated

The Company of Myself
The Company of Myself screenshot.jpg
Screenshot of the game
Developer(s) Eli Piilonen
Platform(s) Browser, Flash
Release2010
Genre(s) Puzzle platformer
Mode(s) Single-player

The Company of Myself is a 2009 Flash platformer by Eli Piilonen featuring a hermit as the protagonist whose depressed inner thoughts appears as writing on the "walls" of the game. [1] Piilonen has stated that the "core intent [of the game] is to be half puzzle game and half character study". [2] It's been frequently cited as an early example of an art game and has received praise for how it deals with issues of mental health. [3] [4] [5] [6] Tom Fronczak of Destructoid called the game "brilliant". [1] It was included in Michael Rose's 2014 book "250 Indie Games You Must Play" [7] and has been frequently cited in video games research. [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] Piilonen later released a prequel for the game called Fixation.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Music video game</span> Video game genre

A music video game, also commonly known as a music game, is a video game where the gameplay is meaningfully and often almost entirely oriented around the player's interactions with a musical score or individual songs. Music video games may take a variety of forms and are often grouped with puzzle games due to their common use of "rhythmically generated puzzles".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Video game genre</span> Classification assigned to video games based on their gameplay

A video game genre is an informal classification of a video game based on how it is played rather than visual or narrative elements. This is independent of setting, unlike works of fiction that are expressed through other media, such as films or books. For example, a shooter game is still a shooter game, regardless of where or when it takes place. A specific game's genre is open to subjective interpretation. An individual game may belong to several genres at once.

<i>Tiny Toon Adventures: ACME All-Stars</i> 1994 video game

Tiny Toon Adventures: ACME All-Stars is a Tiny Toon Adventures-based sports video game released on the Sega Genesis video game console. The game was developed and published by Konami in 1994.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Role-playing game terms</span> Words used in a specific sense in the context of role-playing games

Role-playing games (RPGs) have developed specialized terminology. This includes both terminology used within RPGs to describe in-game concepts and terminology used to describe RPGs. Role-playing games also have specialized slang and jargon associated with them.

The learnable evolution model (LEM) is a non-Darwinian methodology for evolutionary computation that employs machine learning to guide the generation of new individuals. Unlike standard, Darwinian-type evolutionary computation methods that use random or semi-random operators for generating new individuals, LEM employs hypothesis generation and instantiation operators.

General game playing (GGP) is the design of artificial intelligence programs to be able to play more than one game successfully. For many games like chess, computers are programmed to play these games using a specially designed algorithm, which cannot be transferred to another context. For instance, a chess-playing computer program cannot play checkers. General game playing is considered as a necessary milestone on the way to artificial general intelligence.

Dynamic game difficulty balancing (DGDB), also known as dynamic difficulty adjustment (DDA) or dynamic game balancing (DGB), is the process of automatically changing parameters, scenarios, and behaviors in a video game in real-time, based on the player's ability, in order to avoid making the player bored or frustrated. The goal of dynamic difficulty balancing is to keep the user interested from the beginning to the end, providing a good level of challenge.

<i>Today I Die</i> 2008 video game

Today I Die is a short 2008 Flash game created by Argentinian game designer Daniel Benmergui. The game has been classified as an art game and requires the player to pull apart and reconstruct a poem by clicking on a number of words contained within it, changing its narrative meaning piece by piece. Kevin Veale has referred to it as an example of "interactive cinema."

Brad Borne is an American video game developer mainly known for his Flash game series Fancy Pants Adventures and the game Mirror's Edge 2D, an official browser game take on the console/PC game Mirror's Edge. Borne has had no formal training in game development - he majored in psychology. Borne began releasing Flash content in late 2003 with an animation called Clay Needs Tea on the at-the-time popular content website Newgrounds. He released the first part of Fancy Pants Adventures in 2006 to immediate acclaim. The game has been called "one of the most well-known Flash titles to date" in 2021. He is well-known as a champion of the Flash format.

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

Heather Kelley is a media artist, writer and video game designer. She is a co-founder of the Kokoromi experimental game collective, with whom she produces and curates the annual Gamma game event promoting experimental games as creative expression in a social context. She regularly appears as a jury member for several computer gaming festivals. She is also a frequent public speaker at technology events.

<i>I Wish I Were the Moon</i> 2008 video game

I Wish I Were the Moon is a short Flash game by Argentinian game developer Daniel Benmergui. It has been described as "a short love story told in the form of a puzzle game." The game was, as part of a collection of Benmergui's games, a finalist at the Sense of Wonder Night at the 2009 Tokyo Game Show. The game brought its maker, Benmergui, to international attention.

Mattie Brice is an independent video game designer, critic, educator, and industry activist. Her games and writing focus on diversity initiatives in the games industry, discussing the perspective of marginalized minority voices to publications like Paste, Kotaku, and The Border House. Her games are freeware and do not require programming to create.

Lisa Anne Novelline is an Italian-American author from Lexington, Massachusetts.

<i>Physicus</i> 1999 educational adventure video game

Physicus: Save the World with Science! is a 1999 educational adventure video game developed by Ruske & Pühretmaier Edutainment and published by Heureka-Klett-Softwareverlag and Tivola Entertainment. It aims to teach players about physics concepts. It is part of a series that includes the chemistry-themed Chemicus and biology-themed sequel Bioscopia. It was the second learning adventure game by Ruske & Pühretmaier after the music-based Opera Fatal. The game's website had a minigame called "PHYSICO DriveIn" that players could download and complete in to get the highscore, which would win them a free copy of a game by the studio. A sequel entitled Physicus: The Return was later released, and was remade for the iOS.

<i>Smart Games Challenge</i> American video game series

Smart Games Challenge is a video game series developed by American companies KnowWare and Smart Games. Three games were released between 1996 and 1998.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TIGSource</span> Indie game blog and online community

TIGSource, short for The Independent Games Source, is a news blog and Internet community centered around the creation of independent video games, founded in 2005 by Jordan Magnuson but soon taken over by Derek Yu, both independent game developers. The site has been described as having been an important "cultural nexus" for the creation of indie games development in the 2000s and early 2010s, and a key player in changing the perception of independent video games as merely casual games to that of an art form. Its forums were the launchpad for several award-winning games, including the best-selling video game of all time, Minecraft, BAFTA-winning dystopian immigration officer simulation Papers, Please, viral phenomenon QWOP, puzzle-platform game Fez, and Yu's own Spelunky. The site was in 2009 referred to as "one of the primary sources of information about the indie scene on the web and host to one of indie's best forums, bringing creators and fans together to share novel new ideas and the greatest new games." In 2008, it was chosen as one of "100 top sites for the year ahead" by The Guardian.

Eli Piilonen, also known under the pseudonym 2DArray, is a Nebraska-based American video game developer working as lead designer at indie studio Messhof. Piilonen is however mainly known for his earlier, independent work on browser games such as Spewer, the art game The Company of Myself, its prequel Fixation and the roguelike Not The Robots. The Company of Myself and to a lesser extent its prequel Fixation have frequently been cited as an early art game that successfully explores issues of mental health.

<i>Achievement Unlocked</i> 2008 video game

Achievement Unlocked is an Adobe Flash video game written by John Cooney in four days and published by Armor Games in 2008. The player controls an elephant who moves and jumps around a level with the goal of completing every achievement. Such achievements include finding hidden numbers, dying, or even doing nothing for a period of time.

<i>Picos School</i> 1999 Flash game

Pico's School is a 1999 Flash game developed by Tom Fulp for his website Newgrounds. At the time of its release, it was "one of the most sophisticated" browser games, exhibiting "a complexity of design and polish in presentation that [was] virtually unseen in amateur Flash game development". It has been widely credited with kickstarting the Flash games scene and helping launch Newgrounds "as a public force".

References

  1. 1 2 "Monday Mind Teaser: The Company of Myself". Destructoid. 27 April 2010. Retrieved 7 August 2021.
  2. "The Company of Myself". 2darray.net. Retrieved 7 August 2021.
  3. Salter, Anastasia (2014). Flash: building the interactive web. Cambridge, Massachusetts. pp. 108–109. ISBN   9780262028028.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  4. "A medley of meanings: Insights from an instance of gameplay in League of Legends". Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology (1/2015): 228.
  5. "These Games Explore the Struggle to Seek Psychological Help". www.vice.com. 16 August 2016.
  6. Childs, Mark; Peachey, Anna (2013). Understanding learning in virtual worlds. London. p. 11. ISBN   9781447153702.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  7. Rose, Mike (2011). 250 indie games you must play. Boca Raton, FL. p. 162. ISBN   9781439875759.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  8. Demi̇Rbaş, Kerem Yavuz (6 August 2015). "DİJİTAL OYUNLARA "OYUN TÜRÜ" YAKLAŞIMLARININ SORUNLARI: "PLATFORM OYUNLARI" TÜRÜ ÖRNEĞİ". SELÇUK ÜNİVERSİTESİ İLETİŞİM FAKÜLTESİ AKADEMİK DERGİSİ. 9 (1): 363. doi:10.18094/si.05694.
  9. Orsini Martinelli, Felipe; Armando Valente, Jose. Os Jogos Digitais Vistos Pelo Jogador: análise de aspectos narrativos (PDF). SBGames Proceedings of SBC (ISSN 2179-2259). Retrieved 21 July 2021.
  10. Andersen, Erik; O'Rourke, Eleanor; Liu, Yun-En; Snider, Richard; Lowdermilk, Jeffrey; Truong, David; Cooper, Seth; Popovic, Zoran (2012). "The Impact of Tutorials on Games of Varying Complexity". Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington. pp. 59–68. doi:10.1145/2207676.2207687. ISBN   9781450310154. S2CID   2524148.
  11. Eurídice Cabañes, Eurídice; Rubio Méndez, María. "IDENTITY AND SIMULACRUM: THANK YOU MARIO, BUT YOUR IDENTITY IS IN ANOTHER CASTLE".
  12. Adellin, Riannatta; Khuan, Chen Tet; Gertrude, Leo David (2019). "Conceptual Framework Puzzle Game with High Replayability". Journal of Physics: Conference Series. 1228 (1): 012070. Bibcode:2019JPhCS1228a2070A. doi: 10.1088/1742-6596/1228/1/012070 .
  13. Marinescu Nenciu, Alina Petra; Rughinis, Cosima (2015). "Every Day the Same Dream? Social Critique Through Serious Gameplay". 11th International Conference eLearning and Software for Education. Vol. 2. Bucharest. pp. 65–72. doi:10.12753/2066-026x-15-100. S2CID   257196140.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)