Can We Put a Price on Imagination?
If we look at things that way, how much would you pay for a product of good imagination? Throughout human history, we’ve learned that most of the things that make us truly human came from creativity and, more often than not, pure imagination. From our earliest steps, when we were still children, we were building our own little worlds. Worlds only we could understand. Some of us grew up with toy cars, some with Barbie dolls, and some with imaginary friends... Some of us will never grow up, and will always remain children, at least on the inside. There are those who know how to share such important things with others, and for that, I’m forever grateful.
The ones to whom I owe a special standing ovation go by the name Amanita Design. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, I’ll introduce that team of geniuses a bit later.
During the war, there was a long stretch without any video games, until I got my first PC and with it, the first floppy disk games. Some of them were so big they required several disks! Later came CD-ROM titles, followed by the first DVD-ROM games...
As a gamer, I’ve developed a pretty specific taste in games. I never liked first-person (or any-person) shooters, but I still enjoy watching my wife’s younger brother play them on his beast of a computer, with everything maxed out. Every time he asks if I want to try, I just wave it off.
Point-and-click adventures, puzzle games, and all the titles that defy traditional genres are what I prefer. Even though Need For Speed and Test Drive franchises have gotten a bit bland lately, I still make sure to check out every new release. I’d love to get a PlayStation or Xbox and really dive into the Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport series, but that’ll be solved very soon. Racing games are pretty self-explanatory, so I’ll focus more on the ones I mentioned at the start:
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| Need For Speed: The Run |
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| Test Drive Unlimited 2 |
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| Forza Horizon |
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| Gran Turismo 5 |
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| Secret Of The Monkey Island |
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| Abe's Odyssey |
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| Grim Fandango |
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| The Neverhood |
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| Braid |
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| Limbo |
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| Trine |
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| World Of Goo |
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| Super Meat Boy |
But back to those lovable lunatics from the Czech Republic, Amanita Design. Their first game is called Samorost and it’s incredibly sweet and free to play online. I suggest you go do that right now before continuing this post. It’s not going anywhere. Here’s the link to Samorost.
Machinarium is quite possibly one of the five best games in the world. What a fantastic world they created! When I play it, I feel like I’m playing something exactly the way I would have made it, if only I had that kind of creative energy in me. Now that it exists, it’s just… perfect. If only it were that easy to make a masterpiece like this...
Your jaw will drop constantly, especially when you consider the fact that it was made on a tiny budget of $1,000! I don’t want to spoil anything, I just want to encourage you to dive into this magical world and discover how brilliant it is. I’ll just say that the main character is a little robot named Josef (named after the man who coined the word robot). You can buy it on Machinarium’s official site (or download it elsewhere), you’ll thank me later.
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| Machinarium |
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| Machinarium |
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| Machinarium |
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| Botanicula |
I hope this post inspires you to dig up some of your own childhood favorites and long-lost gems. Feel free to share them in the comments so we can all enjoy them together.
P.S.: Get the soundtracks from Amanita Design games too, each one is as delightful as the game itself.
