now playing: "The Calendar"

To say that The Calendar (The Mind of Michael Games, 2012) is far from what I expected out of a casual game, much less from one that I noticed had Facebook integration (*le gasp*) (*insert a five-paragraph rant on my standard prejudice toward any and all Facebook games*) is a gross understatement. Appearances can be deceiving, and I have such a fetish for narrative-driven games these days that it takes a lot for me to even try out another game that doesn't advertise a storyline in a hundred-forty characters or less, much less actually follow through with reviewing it. If it doesn't have muted colors and a melodramatic speaker, it must not be hipster enough to get a spotlight on transcending pixels. With all my casual gaming resources in the queue like JayIsGames and Kongregate and YetAnotherFlashGamingSite*, I'm a little jaded, you could say, when it comes to finding games without a storyline that aren't mindless teenage experiments in making MS Paint graphics move. *shudders*


So when I noticed the game pop up in my inbox as a suggestion from the indie developer himself, I was a little more than intrigued. If he had gone out of his way to promote it on such a personal level, he must take some stock in his work. And so while I might've passed by its plain-jane name in a catalog from a corporate gaming portal, I gave it some personal attention.


And almost away, I found the narrative I never expected.


Playing Calendar reminded me of what Columns on the SEGA Genesis should have been--a little more well-rounded. (Bah-dum-tss!) But in all seriousness, what with all the ancient-civilization imagery and the sparkling rocks that tumbled down like waterfalls somehow managing to calm me despite the high stress I willingly put myself under fidgeting with the controls as a seven-year-old trying to avoid building the Tower of Babel**, I got more than a little nostalgic seeing one of my childhood adventures reincarnated thematically and mechanically, but with the narrative reenacted as more of a storyline than the cryptic hieroglyphs so characteristic of Columns. In Calendar, I'm the timekeeper of an alternate-universe Aztec civilization, one in which they read and write in rainbow-colored tiles. And I'm not just any timekeeper--I'm playing games with the gods. Maybe they have some kind of personal vendetta with me or a grudge against my whole civilization, I'm not really sure, but one thing is certain; they're trying to steal the days away.


I'm a timekeeper, playing with time. And like any casual timekeeper, I'm not really sure what the pattern is to the rainbow tiles. Is there a geometric sequence, a code in the colors, that reads out words or phrases that would help me understand the gods' logic behind their decrees? All I know is that three tiles in a row or column cancels out space. And space is time. But there's more to the correlation. Somehow, space and time relate to wealth. What is wealth, really? Is it gold and jewels and colored tiles? Is it happiness? Is it crops? I have no idea. I'm trapped in front of a dial, a wheel, a portal really, for days on end and years go by. At the center of the portal is the sun. The sun is the ultimate god in Aztec culture. The sun can also be the death of all things. If I'm pushing colored tiles toward the sun, postponing the gods' judgement, am I killing time? What does that phrase mean, "killing time"?

And while you could argue that I have a very extensive imagination naturally, I'm not making any of this up. It's a philosophy written out right there in the graphics and in the gameplay. The Calendar is an exercise in the ultimate killing of time. It literally interpreted that cliche phrase we so often use and gave it a purpose. That's what we call narrative.

Calendar may not have characters or an orchestral score or dialogue or even a linear plot. But it has a story. It has a philosophy.

At some point in the very near future, Mr. Michael is hosting a Kickstarter to upgrade Calendar to a more adventurous-narrative perspective. Good for him! Fortunately, whatever revisions he does make is only going to create more awesomeness on a game that's already solidly rounded in the things that make a game truly fun and transcended above the muck in the gaming portals. Calendar is not just an addictive amusement (as important as the quality of addiction is); it's already its own adventure for the mind, when you've already got it full of design theory and appreciation for the meaning under the surface tiles.

*Anyone who wants to start their own casual gaming site can credit my creative genius with inventing this catchy and clever domain name. Featuring YetMoreAdsforCrackMMOs and 50ShadesOfBubbleShoooters.

**Biblical allusions in Columns. I swear I'll write a five-paragraph rant about this someday.