One of the things that video games can do magnificently is create worlds. These posts are an occasional exploration of games that I love because of where they take me.

Over the last ten years or so, the technical advances in video games have been breathtaking, even if this progress hasn’t always been matched by the creativity on display. I’ve walked Renaissance Rome and Victorian London, I’ve driven through a parodic version of Los Angeles and ridden a horse through the dying Old West. One of the most venerated gaming series, named simply Flight Simulator, is about to release its latest instalment, which lets you take off and land anywhere on earth. Judging from pre-release material, the way the game looks is out of this world – except it is this world. I half expect that if I were to buy the 2020 Flight Simulator and fly over its representation of where we live, I’d be able to catch a peek of a little virtual me, sitting at a computer and playing Flight Simulator. In terms of scope, fidelity and detail, video games offer amazing worlds – though all too often these worlds take a real, considerable toll on the people that create them.

What we’re seeing more and more, though, is small but beautifully realised worlds created by indie developers. Worlds that are more lo-fi and homespun, clockwork universes, even worlds made almost entirely of words. Worlds that don’t strive to recreate reality as much as possible so much as create a distilled version of a very subjective reality. These games may be much smaller in scope and shorter to play from beginning to end, but this needn’t make them any less breathtaking.

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