Snow is a game about a girl buying a cup of coffee.

Not in a symbolic sense or in a pretentious artgame sense where you have to decipher what the actual mechanics and input buttons mean on a metaphorical level, and then that metaphorical level eventually reveals itself to be about a girl buying a cup of coffee.

It's just a five minute adventure game with no puzzles or inventory management where you go buy a cup of coffee and make some very small, but perhaps very important decisions regarding how she deals with other people. It is small in scope and length, and remarkably all the more personal for it. It is intentionally undramatic and unspectacular.

I quite enjoy it. I'd highly recommend it.

Download it here if you want to see it for yourself, or hit the jump as I try to explain why I find this small game so interesting.

Most story-based games, even within the comparatively down-to-earth adventure game genre, tend to focus on the fantastic. You're not just a college student vacationing in Paris, you're a college student vacationing in Paris who sees a mad clown blow up a restaurant and subsequently gets drawn into a Templar conspiracy. You're not just a gentleman thief, you're a gentleman thief who stumbles upon the machete-wielding ghost of a shunned child.

The reasons for this focus on excitement and intrigue, even within a more cerebral and down-to-earth game genre, are obvious. Adventure games traditionally revolve around obtuse puzzle solving, and over-the-top plots usually result in more "fun" or "challenging" puzzles. This is why I stop playing 90% of adventure games I pick up after about an hour; like, say, Syberia, they tend to start on a very small, very personal, very intimate scale only to needlessly expand the scope of the plot (typically to include a Conspiracy With a Capital C) just for the sake of adding harder puzzles. Additionally, adventure games use puzzles as an emotional crutch in the same way shooters use violence; puzzles are satisfying and relatively easy to design when compared to how difficult it is to include believable, down-to-earth human drama that the player can actively engage with. Facade, being the failure that it is, proves how goddamn hard it is to mix simple, unspectacular human drama with player interaction.

That's why I like Snow so much. It avoids Facade's major design flaws by restricting player choice to only a few scenes, and the repercussions of those scenes really only have relevance in the player's mind. If you choose to let the coffee shop clerk walk over you but lie later on and say you didn't, the entire world doesn't change around you -- you're just asked to think about the choices you've made, and consider what they might mean for this one character's life. Just as in real life, the events of the ordinary day chronicled in Snow do not necessarily have immediately evident, permanent, or far-reaching consequences, but they can be easily interpreted to mean something more. Snow is the simple, unpretentious virtual equivalent of having an exasperated friend tell you a story of something that happened to them today while they were at work. It's a small, personal, intentionally unspectacular examination of day-to-day life that trades out the needless puzzles and inventory management of typical adventure games for simple dialogue choices and the crafting of a small, yet wholly believable world. It's an American Splendor comic delivered by way of Monkey Island.

While Snow will probably come off as laughably simple to a fair number of players, it does something that even most contemporary art games are frightened of: it attempts to present a moderately realistic view of reality and allow the player a believable degree of agency within that world. It doesn't fall back on excessive symbolism or require the player to interpret its actual mechanics to find meaning; it just tries, in its own quirky way, to let you live a day in the life of a meek young woman without indulging in any spectacle or miring itself in high-fallutin' bullshit. It takes the slice-of-life style of so many contemporary American indie comics (Snow is actually based on a graphic novel of the same name by the game's creator) and transposes it into a medium where straightfaced chronicles of everyday life are all but nonexistent.

Snow does absolutely nothing spectacular, or awe-inspiring, or life-changing, and that's why it's so goddamned good. Play it.

If you like it, check out the comics of Jeffrey Brown, Chris Ware, or Harvey Pekar. There are simply no other indie games made in this style, even though this sort of thing is essentially the norm in American indie comics. 

Legacy Comments (will be imported soon)

Darren Nakamura

I liked this Snow better:

HORRORBOROS

For a while I was wondering what purpose the inventory could possibly serve - and then I realized how ridiculous the concept of an "inventory," with items you use on other items, is to begin with in real life. Nope, this game's about the day-to-day, pure and simple. I only felt I owed it to Dana to be as confident as possible, though if it's only because it's markedly easier to do so in a game, I can't say.

eskimo bob

I played it three times and did it slightly differently each time. I must say, it was a really unique experience, yet at the same time it felt so familiar... I think this is the first time a game has really made me think over the consequences of my actions. then again, it's late and I could be forgetting something. good job, people who made this!

Caspis Sinclair

For some reason the arrow keys didn't work for me. She would take one step in any direction and then hit an invisible barrier.

The number pad worked, though.

woodPecker

I used the arrow the mouse to walk, much easier. Quite pleasant.

peachboy

no way! the guy who made that teaches at my school, the college of art and design here in tee-ronno. the fact this game was based in my neck of the woods made it all the more interesting.

another great find mr.burch

Chronic Logic

Facade was hilarious, I always ended up failing to patch up the couple's relationship, so I always tried to make witty comebacks, but the game never registers that for some reason. I even tried to seduce both the wife and husband.

IronPikeman

Indie Games suck... This is a prime example of that.

HORRORBOROS

Indie games are what are going to save us, son

IronPikeman

no

MoonStorm

Well that was an intelligent argument IronPikeman. HA HA HA.
I will say that the game is not that good, but it dose reminds us that life suck. The 'game' whether of not you want to call it that or not, is just reminding us that our lives is an every day adventure. To bad those adventurers then to be boring, pointless and have no effect one the outcome of the world.

MoonStorm

Well that was an intelligent argument IronPikeman. HA HA HA.
I will say that the game is not that good, but it dose reminds us that life suck. The 'game' whether of not you want to call it that or not, is just reminding us that our lives is an every day adventure. To bad those adventurers then to be boring, pointless and have no effect one the outcome of the world.

Rosseh

Or do they? Every action we take has an effect on the world. You sat there on your computer and typed that. I read it, which caused me to write this right now. You have affected a person's thinking all the way across the ocean. I think a negative effect the internet has is making the consequences of our actions even more invisible, but they are there. It also helps us affect the world a lot more too.

I guess we tend to think we aren't the world sometimes, maybe even think that thinking that's a bit egotistical but it's not. This is the world we know and people are part of that. We sell ourselves short too often I think.

This is a great game. I haven't even played it yet and it's stimulated thought. That's art.

superbrothersca

SUPERBROTHERS salutes Anthony Burch for an excellent write-up!

'Snow: The Adventure Game' was created entirely by local Toronto comic hero Benjamin Rivers. The videogame is a tiny slice of the comic, currently at issue #1. http://www.benjaminrivers.com/games.htm

'Snow' is a quiet, subtle thing. As Mr. Burch correctly points out, it's a rare example of a videogame taking a carefully observed approach to a real-life situation. If you listen, it has some thoughtful things to say about self confidence and initiative. It's presented in a likeable, straightforward way, and although it's only a vignette it can be a strangely memorable experience.

It may not be apparent to people who aren't familiar with downtown Toronto, but both the comic and the videogame function as time capsules, capturing the details and mood at the corner of Queen St and John St in 2008. The area, generally known as Queen West, has been a highly visible part of Toronto, a music and cultural hub for years. In the 80s it was one of those low rent sketchy neighborhoods that attracted a lot of cool people; in the 90s the counterculture shops and record stores moved in, along with MuchMusic; nowadays the boutiques and condos are starting to take over, and the rent has been going up.

The bookstore in 'Snow' is a nicely drawn portrait of Pages Books, easily the city's finest independent bookstore, a cultural survivor in a changing neighborhood. For me I think it'll be interesting to play this videogame again in five or ten years, to reflect on the little snapshot of a changing Toronto neighborhood that Benjamin Rivers has preserved in his story, and to remember the years I've spent living in this city.

It occurs to me that there are a handful of other videogames that may function as time capsules for specific neighborhoods, such as SquareEnix's 'The World Ends With You' and SmileBit's 'Jet Grind Radio' re-creating aspects of Shibuya, or Rockstar's 'Grand Theft Auto 4' re-creation of New York City 2008.

fyi: Snow was created alongside Miguel Sternberg's experiment in narrative excess 'Night of the Cephalopods' and several other notable creations as part of the Artsy Games Incubator, a brilliant initiative that gets non-technical creative people familiar with the videogame creation process over the course of about eight weeks. The A.G.I. is lead by Toronto indie kingpin Jim Munroe, sponsored by indie rockstars Queasy Games (Jonathan Mak, creator of Everyday Shooter) and Metanet Software (Raigan Burns and Mare Sheppard, creators of N+). In some ways it is similar to Montreal's GAMMA and Giant Robot and Attract Mode's 'Game Over/Continue' in San Francisco.
http://nomediakings.org/artsygames/

Naim Master

Indie games rocks , but this one sucks .

Jonathan Holmes

Great game. I'd be happy to buy a full version of it.