I’d heard of Johnathan Mak’s game in the context of “independent things worth playing”, but I didn’t think much about it until I heard it discussed at a lecture on “art-games”, up against games like Ico, Braid, Bioshock, and Gravitation. In all honesty, I don’t remember what position the lecturer held: if this was truly a piece of art, or just something arty, or a game with nice graphics (which it is). Looking at it myself, I’m struck by how much it feels like I’m playing through a piece of visual art.

In presentation, the game feels like an album, actually: a series of musical tracks in a particular order, through which I’m allowed to play with some beautiful visual pieces for my enjoyment*. Not much of a message here; the game doesn’t require much of myself, doesn’t have a clear statement on what it means to be a human being, not does it come across as an important (by which I mean self-important) game. On the other hand, it also doesn’t offer the sort of contemplation and questioning that much of modern art does. I’ve always felt that you have to bring a lot of yourself to a Rothko or a Paul Klee before it means something to you, but with Everyday Shooter my mind is caught up in the simple pleasure of shooting, gaining points, and surviving. I come out of it relaxed, happy, and entertained – which for small games like this one is highly underrated – but I don’t feel as if I’ve learned something momentous.

Much of this can be summed up in what I think of as the artist’s statement, Mak’s notes on the game. Paraphrased, his original work involved the “new game”, art, innovation, meaning, profound statements, and was, as he discovered, absolutely a mess, and not fun. Lost in “a ridiculous concoction of self-indulgent, games-are-art-theory-innovation wankery,” he decided to return to the games that got him into games in the first place: the simple, everyday top-down shooter, where “even the simplest of things can be the most beautiful of things”. And so we end up with a small, quirky, fun game.

I don’t think art has to be serious, certainly. If the message here is to take ourselves a little less seriously (whether you read the artist’s statement or not), he’s certainly succeeded. Everyday Shooter is a game I’m actually quite bad at (so far, I haven’t passed Level 3), but it’s one I keep returning to, every day since I installed it, a few minutes at a time. And it makes me smile. On a Monday morning, that’s all really need.

A note on the music as well: I haven’t yet found a game that lets me really interact with the music, and most of the heavy lifting in the game’s soundtrack has already been done by Mak himself. Each level has some simple guitar riffs and pleasing chords, which isn’t much in music theory. But I like that every action you take in the game adds something to the soundtrack, and makes it feel a little different every time. It’s a far cry from interactive sound, but it’s closer to dynamic sound than most games get.

Everyday Shooter is available on Steam and elsewhere. Go on – support your indie artists. It’ll make your morning.

*As someone not very good at this game, I would like the ability to shuffle through the other tracks. Happily, I can unlock them with the points I’ve earned. Unhappily, it takes somewhere in the neighborhood of 8000. Can’t have everything…