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A EZGAME 2015 RELEASE

RELEASE INFORMATION            A Slow Year - Digital Edition

GAME TYPE___: Indie
DEVELOPER___: Ian Bogost
PROTECTION__: -                RIPPED______: -
PLATFORM____: MacOSX           DISKS_______: 02x05 MB
LINK________: is.gd/Ql8NSU     PRICE_______: 4,99 Dollar
LANGUAGES___: English

DESCRIPTION

A Slow Year is a collection of four games, one for each season,
about the experience of observing things. These games are
neither action nor strategy: each of them requires a different
kind of sedate observation and methodical input.

The game attempts to embrace maximum expressive constraint and
representational condensation. I want to call them game poems.
The set comprises a little collection, a kind of videogame
chapbook.

A Slow Year was originally available in two editions, as a
paperback book of poetry with software for PC and Mac in a
custom Atari emulator, and for Atari as a numbered, signed,
boxed limited edition with cartridge and leatherbound hardcover
book. The paperback edition is officially out of print, but
some copies remain for those who are interested.

As games, these rely on the procedural representation of an ide
that the player manipulates. As poetry, they rely on the
condensation of symbols and concepts rather than the
clarification of specific experiences. As images, they offer
visually evocative yet obscure depictions of real scenes and
objects. They are inspired by ideas or experiences I encounter,
as attempts to capture something fundamental about how they
work. Game poems aspire, perhaps, toward a kind of videogame ve
rsion of Imagism, if we expand "image" to include a logic or be
avior as its subject.

I created A Slow Year for the Atari Video Computer System (also
known as the Atari VCS, or the Atari 2600). A standard Atari
cartridge rom is 4 kilobytes in size. Each game in A Slow Year
occupies 1K of space in the ROM. The player can select a
particular season or play the games in order.

While it's true that I am very fond of the Atari VCS (I co-auth
red a book about it), I did not choose it as a platform for thi
work arbitrarily, nor in the interest of retro nostalgia. The
Atari applies certain constraints that contribute the ideas I w
anted to get across with this work.

For one part, it all but eliminates the need (or indeed the
possibility) of creating complex instantial assets like images
and sounds. Many of today's "artgames" adopt coarse visual and
sound design as a way of recovering the simplicity of earlier
games while extending them to new subjects. The Atari invites
such designs by necessity. Its limited technical abilities and
small file size demands invite symbolism.

For another, it lets me harness the platform's history of more
abstract gameplay, even if such gameplay was once about
concrete things like dogfights or dungeon crawling. This fact s
hould remind us that older forms are worth returning to for
their aesthetics. Just as we might still choose to write a
sonnet, take a photograph with a view camera, paint with
tempera on panels, or construct relief prints with a letterpres
s, so we can also choose to write new games for a machine like
the Atari.

For yet another, even in its commercial heydey Atari games were
created by a single person, which mirrors the production proces
s for a poem. And for yet another, it imposes serious
constraints on development while still allowing for many
different kinds of games. And finally, it gives me a natural
excuse to adopt a very small file size as a constraint.
This game was released in 2014!

INSTALL NOTES

1. Unzip/Unrar
2. Enjoy another easy and smooth game :3

GROUP INFORMATION

Most modern games are more focused on graphics and technical
gimmicks, rather then on smooth gameplay or a good story.
We bring you back the feeling and fun of those old classics
polished up for nowadays platforms.
Enjoy the game and remember the good times!