You’ve come to sit on benches and chew bubble gum, and you’re all out of bubble gum.
These days all you hear about are hardcore and casual games, but what about games for art’s sake? Enter The Graveyard, a uniquely European meditation on mortality disguised as a video game.
You guide an old woman down a graveyard’s path to reach a bench and...sit down. Yes, the level boss is a bench. While the woman rests, you’re treated to a morbid musical interlude (sung in Flemish, with English subtitles) that would make Edward Gorey proud. Leave the graveyard, and the game is over. The free trial lets you “play” to your heart’s content, but pay $5 and you unlock another ending: Not long after sitting down, the old woman dies.
For a game about death, The Graveyard sure feels lively. Your character may not raid tombs, but she does shuffle past them with a convincing limp. Meanwhile, transparent fuzz wafts on the breeze, tiny birds zoom in and out of view, and soft shadows gather under moving clouds. All that black-and-white eye candy might slow down older Macs, but you can adjust it to suit your computer. The Graveyard lets you set screen resolutions from 640x480 up to 1,920x1200, and play in a window or in full-screen mode.
The scenery is so nice, you’ll feel compelled to explore. Sadly, the game’s camera will only follow you to the bench; there’s no branching out on the side paths. The subdued soundtrack—just the ambient sounds of a summer’s day—helps make playing The Graveyard feel like stepping into an interactive film. Belgian developer Tale of Tales has also created an interactive screensaver (sadly, for Windows only) called The Endless Forest, in which users play as deer, exploring the tranquil environment and interacting with the more than 30,000 other deer. The Graveyard is Tale of Tales’ only Mac product to date, but it continues the company’s tradition of pushing the boundaries of the word “game.”
More an art object than a videogame, The Graveyard is a nice place to visit if you’re looking for some truly unusual gameplay on your Mac.
An intriguing experiment. Beautiful black-and-white environment. Universal binary.
A very short experiment. No quick menu.
