Now for something different - Walden, the anti-video game video game

[Frankie]

Apparently, there's more to gaming life than fight, die, spawn, fight, kill, kill, die, respawn.

 

As featured in CNN today here. David G. Allan, CNN, the writer of the CNN article says. "... "Walden, a game" is no mindless mindfulness app.

It's an introspective "Oregon Trail" that reminds you it's all well and good to sit and reflect by the fire at pond's edge, but there also needs to be a fish cooking upon that fire".

Walden, a game, is a first person simulation of the life of American philosopher Henry David Thoreau during his experiment in self-reliant living at Walden Pond. The game begins in the summer of 1845 when Thoreau moved to the Pond and built his cabin there.

Players follow in his footsteps, surviving in the woods by finding food and fuel and maintaining their shelter and clothing. At the same time, players are surrounded by the beauty of the woods and the Pond, which hold a promise of a sublime life beyond these basic needs. The game follows the loose narrative of Thoreau’s first year in the woods, with each season holding its own challenges for survival and possibilities for inspiration.

Walden, A Game is fundamentally a simulation of Walden’s time by the lake, with players foraging for food through in an Elder Scrolls-like wilderness, assembling their cabin, taking boat trips on the lake, growing beans and even darning their clothes.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion." - Walden Pond by Henry David Thoreau.

In this game, you get to live a simply life, the life that HDT wanted to live, surrounded by nature's sights and sounds, and allowing time to reflect on the true meaning of life. How profound, eloquent and quaint. Something truly alien to the everyday gamer, if we are honest to admit it.

The game's website is http://waldengame.com/

For a riveting and thought provoking review, you can do no wrong than RPS's writeup here: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/04/29/sojourn-em-up-walden-a-game/#more-151189

[Asid]

This was interesting Frankie.

Thanks for posting 

[Greybriar]

Thanks for sharing. Here's another video: