Wordcraft

  Photo from the Facebook Page With a title like Helpless, it would be hard to imagine a cheerful game. Indeed, the game takes place in a harsh and cruel world. We step into the shoes of a young man who is on the road with his sick mother, both doing their best to survive. The game probably has a few other themes, but I would like to focus on what I thought encompassed everything. There are few things as scary as the fear of being left alone. It’s a crushing feeling, knowing that no matter what we do, solitude is where we’ll end. It makes you feel helpless. I don’t want to talk about the plot. It’s a thirty minute game that’s free on Steam. This beautiful work of art needs to be experienced first hand.  Anyway, let’s go ahead and talk about level design. During the day, we play as the boy and explore the desolate world as we look for items. The city is in ruins and there is no sign of human life. We run into two animals, a dog and a snake, but that’s it for other lifeforms. We...

The probability of you knowing about Enderal is slim, but if that’s incorrect, feel free to skip this paragraph. Enderal is a total conversion mod made for Skyrim. For those unfamiliar with that, a TCM is a mod where the final product is a different game from the original one that was modded. A very popular example of this is the original Counter-Strike, which was a mod for Half-Life that was later acquired by Valve. So, Enderal is kind of a game that was made in Skyrim’s engine. It was made by a group of German devs called SureAI, and this is actually their fourth project. The first two were TCMs for Morrowind, and the third – called Nehrim – was a mod for Oblivion. Both Nehrim and Enderal are available on Steam with their own storefronts, and available for free given as long as you own a legal copy of the original game. In this piece, I want to talk about the core theme of the game. Suffice to say, I intend to spoil everything I can, so if you haven’t finished or even played the game...