Welcome back to our regular feature where we dive into the games we’re playing and share our experiences. This week, Mat J ponders the nature of “self-playing” games; Connor finds solace in the classic Minesweeper; and Bertie continues his epic Big Walk adventures with the wonderful Eurogamer community.
The Games That Play Themselves
A fascinating discussion is brewing on Bluesky about games that essentially play themselves. If you’re curious, head over to Jank to read the initial observation. The core question is: how much are we really playing a video game when it largely plays itself? What value do we derive from the experience if we don’t actively participate?
As critic Chris Franklin would point out, this line of thinking was previously limited to narrative games, where the absence of meaningful player interaction highlighted the predetermined nature of the experience. Now, it’s being applied to games like Vampire Survivors, where the goal is simply to survive for a set amount of time by strategically selecting items. You could arguably apply this logic to almost any game: stacking blocks and clearing lines, or even just chucking orbs at targets.
Mat J explores this concept with “sobosuba,” sobosuba: “you merge little blobs together. It’s like that game where you merge types of fruit together. The blobs get bigger the more matches you make, and they’ve got soft-body physics so they’ll all wobble about. I hate it; I’ve been playing it all week.”
Minesweeper: A Timeless Classic
When data was scarce, Connor turned to a timeless classic: Minesweeper. “The gaming equivalent of playing with rocks you find on the ground during a power cut,” he jokes.
“It really is a brilliant little game. A puzzle where you try to find mines hidden in a big grid using numbers to work out how likely nearby they are.” Connor appreciates the satisfying moments when the numbers “just make sense” and safe spaces become apparent, or when clicking reveals a large area of clear space.
Big Walk: Wholesome Hilarity with Eurogamer
Bertie continues his Big Walk adventures with the Eurogamer community, building on their previous escapades our previous Big Walk adventures for Optimism Week. With a third adventure planned for Tuesday evening (join them in the Eurogamer Discord), they’re “in danger of making this a regular thing.”
“We managed a week-two! The Eurogamer readers – you, Eurogamer readers – and I took to Big Walk for a second week of extraordinary adventures. We sort of did that. We found a megaphone, which was a mistake; we hacked our way up a rocky cliff by alternately picking each other up and throwing people, and then got lost; and we made a tower of people sitting on fold-out chairs, for no apparent reason other than a nice screenshot.”
“There are too many micro-stories and moments to share – Big Walk is a game of such things, of being beside people, of noticing together – but I continue to be impressed by how generous a package it is. There is a whole world here, an island playground, and it’s just dense enough to provide things to do without giving you so much to do that you fill your time doing rather than being. Big Walk is about being around people and enjoying that.”
“Can I also just quickly praise the puzzles? My partner – who was in the other group – told me about a puzzle that involved just, well, sitting together… Without anything to actually do, people simply talked, she said, talking about their lives and themselves. I find that remarkable – subtly, quietly, unremarkably remarkable. Which other game encourages that?”
Beyond Big Walk, Bertie has also been enjoying “The Lord of the Rings: The War in the North” and getting some “decent runs in Hades 2“.
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