Tweet
For 30 seconds this morning, the most important word in gaming was BEEFER. That's if you happened to be on the number 27, racing along the south coast towards Brighton, anyway, and if you were the man sat next to me on the upper deck, who was trying to play BEEFER in a game of Spelltower. Seriously, the stars had almost aligned for this man: he had the letters he wanted and he had a workable layout. What he did not have, and I am very sorry to report this, was access to a universe in which BEEFER appears in the dictionary.He had tenacity, too. As I got off at my stop, he was still trying to get it to work. And why not? BEEFER has clearly touched many lives. It has certainly made me think - and not just thoughts like: Hey! BEEFER would be a great term for the guy at a party who clears the room with loud and intricate explanations of his exercise regime. BEEFER has made me think about Spelltower: about games, and about the new ways that old games now have of hanging around.
Spelltower is not old. A Google search suggests that it came out at some point in 2011: an ingenious puzzling riff that used an American newspaper aesthetic and some devious countdown rules to make the hunt for words in a constantly evolving grid surprisingly tense and punishing. 2011 for games, though, feels like an aeon ago - or at least it should, because four years has traditionally been a very long time in this world. It is long enough for many titles - and a lot of hardware - to begin the tech equivalent of the dusty march into the distance that the dinosaurs make in The Rite of Spring. You know: first tech "gathers dust", and then, it's "consigned to the attic." This process has been around so long, we now have terminology for it.
Read more…
More...