As we race to the end of 2024, the number of new video games has slowed to a trickle. Thankfully, those looking for grand, sweeping fare have Indiana Jones and the Great Circle to keep them busy. But for anyone looking for something more compact and under the radar, here are two recent debuts from tiny development studios that are noteworthy for their winning strangeness.
30 Birds
30 Birds stands on the elementary pleasure of peeking around corners and seeing how one space opens up and merges with another.
Set in the world of Lantern City, this vibrant game draws narrative inspiration from the 12th-century Persian poem “The Conference of Birds” and visual cues from the work of Persian miniatures, a resplendent art form that blurs interior and exterior spaces by depicting, for example, the inside of a room nestled among its outside surroundings. The genre’s panache, notes the art historian Robert Hughes, stems from “a combination of utter vividness, precision of detail and fantasticated, rhythmical design.”
Players take on the role of Zig, a plucky young detective. We’re introduced to her on a train where a fellow passenger says the floating city (of veritable lanterns) was painted on the sky by Simurgh, a goddess who assumes the form of a giant bird. (In Persian, “Simurgh” can be read as a double entendre meaning “30 birds.”) For the past 50 years, Simurgh has immersed herself in a dream, but she is expected to awaken and Lantern City is in a festive mood. Alas, the high point of the awakening ceremony is spoiled when a mysterious figure kidnaps the goddess.
Putting her professional skills to use, Zig makes her way to a bathhouse where she finds a djinn luxuriating in a bubble bath who tips her off about a hoopoe bird that fell afoul of a local merchant. From the hoopoe, she learns that Simurgh can be contacted if enough birds gather for a ritual.
Finding the requisite number of birds takes Zig on quests that will have players performing on odd instruments, doling out relationship advice, poking around the insides of a crocodile and taking an art class with a haughty instructor. The birds themselves are a kooky cast of characters that made me chortle several times. I especially liked two philosopher pigeons who can be flattered into cooperating with talk of spiritual things and money.
The game’s artistic director, Coline Sauvand, and creative director, Laurent Toulouse — who work out of Brussels and founded Ram Ram Games in 2022 — told me that their overarching creative goal was to combine traditional aesthetics with joy. It struck me as an accurate statement given 30 Birds’ zany approach to storytelling and gameplay.
Sauvand said the seeds for the game came out of a trip to Istanbul where they read Orhan Pamuk’s novel “My Name Is Red,” which introduced them to the world of Persian miniatures. “I discovered Persian arts and I was really inspired because I think it’s so far from me,” Sauvand said. “It’s so specific; it’s really sophisticated in a way really far from my culture.”
If the seismic events of this year have left you hungry for levity and whimsy, 30 Birds offers that in the form of a brisk fantasy. It’s charming from the get-go and knows how to tell some good jokes.
Threshold
Picture the worst possible first day that you could have on a job. Now picture a game that has cooked up something far worse.
Threshold is a short, atmospheric work by the French developer Julien Eveillé about an employee’s brief tenure at a secretive government facility. Your character signs a nondisclosure agreement before stepping into an ominous elevator that goes to the top of a high-altitude enclosure bisected by water. In the distance are two small buildings. On the other side of the water are tracks that transport an infinite train of cargo.
After getting off the elevator you meet MO, “the purple clerk,” who shows you the ropes. Because of the low oxygen levels in the high-altitude environment, clerks are told not to talk to one another. MO jots down his words in a notebook and flashes them to you. Since you don’t have any paper or writing tools, the only way you can communicate is by pointing to things you’re curious about. From here the spirit of alienation rolls in and sets up shop.
Your ultimate task is to keep the trains that pass through moving at the optimal pace as determined by a panel of lights. How you do this is by giving yourself over to a process that seems designed by a sadistic surrealist. When the train falls behind its optimal speed, the lights flash red and an alarm blares. It falls to you to blow a whistle next to a giant horn that will signal the train.
But blowing the whistle — as well as running, jumping and wading through water — taxes your oxygen levels. To stave off suffocation and death, MO hands you a glass container with notched ridges in the center for teeth and tells you to bite down. Doing so releases compressed oxygen. Unfortunately, injuries are expected; fortunately, your employer provides free dental care.
A few air canisters are sprinkled throughout the environment, but most are given out via a punch card ticket at a machine when things are in good order. Among other things, the game presents a performance-based culture run amok.
Threshold — it’s brief, a bit illogical and haunting. Eveillé told me that certain aspects of the game were inspired by a grisly statistic he learned from his wife about the millions of animals slaughtered in France every day. “We are used to hearing about millions and billions,” Eveillé said. “It’s hard to actually fathom how big it represents. So I wanted to visually represent something that looks a bit shocking, that you would remember.” He credits the website Drowning in Plastic, which calls awareness to the mind-boggling numbers of plastic bottles sold worldwide, as another inspiration.
Eveillé is not vegan but noted that he wanted players to be able to consider (or ignore) the game’s allusion to the fate of industrial livestock. “I want it to have that thing that we have in real life: It’s not a topic, but it becomes a point, at some point, for the narrative,” he said. “If you don’t want to see it, you can still not see it.”
MO’s recently deceased co-worker, who left messages in blood scrawled about the workplace, is also there to claim your attention.
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