I have a mountain in my pocket. Several times a day I鈥檒l take out my phone to check up on it. It floats in space, gently rotating on the screen. Its sides are strewn with rocks and trees that I can play with my finger, like a xylophone.
Lately, my mountain has become home to a top hat, a slice of cake and an old-fashioned gramophone that plays ragtime jazz. It likes to tell me what鈥檚 on its mind. 鈥淚鈥檓 so bored,鈥� it says.
Advertisement
Released in 2014, Mountain asks almost nothing of the player. It was made by, a Los Angeles-based film-maker and artist also known for designing the fictional games seen in the film Her. 鈥淚 wanted to make something beautiful for people to enjoy,鈥� he says.
It鈥檚 a goal shared by a new wave of developers who are making mobile games that reward you for doing very little. , made by game studio ustwo, gives players a beautiful world of Escher-like buildings to traverse (below). There are puzzles, but solving them simply involves pulling a few levers.
In development for smartphones is Viridi, which asks even less of you than Mountain: your task is to tend a pot of succulents.
鈥淲e look for fulfilment from our phones,鈥� says Zoe Vartanian at developer . 鈥淵ou constantly have your fingers moving on the screen.鈥� Games like Candy Crush Saga plug the gaps when we aren鈥檛 checking emails or social media. Vartanian wants Viridi to be an antidote to this frantic activity.
At the start of the game you can pull up weeds and water your pot. 鈥淎fter that we want people just to look at their plants,鈥� she says. If you want, you can name them. If you zoom in, you start singing to them, which helps them grow. They鈥檒l tell you they鈥檙e happy.
Not another Tamagotchi
But you don鈥檛 have to do anything. Your pot will die if you don鈥檛 water it for three weeks, but otherwise it makes no demands. 鈥淲e didn鈥檛 want this to become like Tamagotchi,鈥� says Vartanian鈥檚 colleague Kevin Maxon. 鈥淭he whole point is to get away from things you feel nagged to check.鈥�
In fact, you get the most out of Viridi if you ignore it; the plants grow slowly in any case. Come back after a few days and the game will play an animation of what you missed. This is the only way you can see your garden grow. 鈥淲e want to reward you for staying away,鈥� says Maxon.
Asking people to be patient is one of the hardest things to do these days, says game developer Robert Morrison. With that in mind, Morrison, who is based in Kingston, Jamaica, made The Substance of Things 鈥� a game that pushes patience to the limit. As in Viridi, you wait for plants to grow, but it is a test of faith that anything will happen at all.
Players start with a seed but are not told what to do with it. All you have is an expectation that something will happen if you keep touching the screen, says Morrison. Eventually, after trial and error, a flower blooms. Then the game gives you another seed.
The second seed needs less interaction 鈥� touch it too much and nothing happens. By the third seed, the game expects players to behave in ways we鈥檙e not used to with our phones, says Morrison. The flower only blooms if you do nothing. You just wait.
And The Substance of Things makes you aware that you鈥檙e waiting. Unlike in Viridi, the seed will not bloom unless you check in on it now and again. If you鈥檙e paying attention you notice subtle clues about when the flower will appear, says Morrison. It is easy to miss as it blooms for one hour a day.
鈥淵ou have to ask yourself if it鈥檚 worth it,鈥� says Morrison. He knows that for many it won鈥檛 be. There are seven flowers in the game and few people 鈥� if any 鈥� will ever see them all. One blooms only on one day of the year.
Morrison hopes that the game will give some people something different to do with their phones. 鈥淲e can鈥檛 stop ourselves picking up our phones,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ut maybe we will find something pleasant when we do.鈥�
Players are already finding respite in the PC version of Viridi. Maxon says feedback indicates that some users launch it after killing lots of people in Call of Duty.
There are plenty of little simulation games that people use to zone out, says Vartanian. Some let you dress up an avatar, others let you cook a meal. 鈥淭here鈥檚 one where you toast marshmallows and share them with your friends,鈥� she says. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 so weird, but then a lot of people think watching plants grow is dumb.鈥�
My mountain slowly revolves in my hand, a clear night sky behind it full of stars. 鈥淭here is nothing to do,鈥� it says. Sometimes that鈥檚 not a bad thing.
