I have to give thanks to my friend Minh for showing me Pixelante’s Immortall. You can find this quaint little flash game here. It casts the player as an alien who has crash landed on Earth and ends up experiencing a wide breadth of humanity. What follows is my brief discussion about whether the game succeeds or fails at its attempt in eliciting emotion so if you don’t want spoilers, first go play the game. It’s only about ten minutes long.

You’ve played the game? Good. What I can praise Pixelante for is their minimalist rendering of a poignant story. The player-character’s finger-like walking animation was a nice touch. The acoustic guitar soundtrack reminded me of Everyday Shooter.

Maybe it was the game’s brevity, but I never felt an urgency to protect the family. The mechanics of blocking artillery never challenges the player enough to produce fiero. Not that an urgency was necessary to tell this story. I guess I’ve just been spending too much time playing Heavy Rain.

The game succeeds in illustrating both the beautiful and ugly sides of humanity. For me, at least, the “humanity-is-bad” story is a tad cliché, but here’s a game that charges the player to protect and sacrifice rather than destroy and advance.