Games that Break all the Rules
1,151,969
Published 2023-09-15
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.”
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Typically, fictional worlds strive for immersion: limiting themselves to certain parameters — even if those limits are more fantastical than reality. But there’s another kind of fictional world, the kind that shatters the confines of the status quo. So say goodbye to gravity, say goodbye to time, say goodbye to space, and prepare for a voyage across realities with no restrictions...
0:00 Worlds that Break Rules
1:11 Into the Rabbit Hole
2:57 Dreams within Dreams
4:29 Optical Illusions
6:22 Goodbye to Gravity
7:53 No Exit
9:18 Curiouser and Curiouser
10:34 Jazzpunk!
13:00 Serious Business
14:49 An Airport for Aliens Currently run by Dogs
16:52 Beyond All Limits
18:25 Everything is an Illusion
20:08 A New Perspective
Media Shown: Viewfinder, Superliminal, Manifold Garden, An Airport for Aliens Currently run by Dogs, Jazzpunk, Cuccchi, Bioshock Infinite, Lord of the Rings, Elf, Brats, Top Secret
Copyright Disclaimer: Under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education, and research. All video/image content is edited under fair use rights for reasons of commentary.
I do not own the images, music, or footage used in this video. All rights and credit goes to the original owners.
Sources:
Alice in Wonderland Interpretations, Article by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst: www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/20/alice-in-won…
Project Acoustic Kitty, Article by Becky Little: www.history.com/news/cia-spy-cat-espionage-fail
Project Blue Peacock, Kyle Mizokami: www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a2564579…
♫ Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio:
Galaxy, Home, Floating, leaving earth, alien ruins, edge of tomorrow, lucid dream
♫ Additional music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com):
Beauty Flow, Bittersweet, Floating Cities
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
#CuriousArchive #Worldbuilding
All Comments (21)
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You can hear Curious Archive’s computer absolutely howling for help while he’s recording these games.
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A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a good example for a satire of the real world. In the beginning of the book the protagonists house gets demolished to allow building a highway, a very real thing, but then the earth got destroyed for a space highway!
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"Baba Is You" would also be a game worthy of discussing here. It's a 2D block-pushing game where the rules are defined by the blocks themselves. You start by controlling a rabbit named Baba, and the titular "BABA", "IS", and "YOU" are three adjacent blocks on the screen. But if you push away the first block and replace it with "ROCK" then immediately you are in control of the rock(s) instead of the bunnies. This gets complicated fast...
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I’m surprised Antichamber wasn’t mentioned. It’s whole premise was disobeying conventional rules to find the way forward.
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I liked this video so much I sent it to my mom, who is an art professor. She doesn't really play video games, but she knows I love them beyond a form of entertainment. Thanks!
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It’s a good day when Curious Archive uploads
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its a shame you didnt talk about the stanley parable, it definitely fits into the category of games/worlds that break all the rules
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The alien airport run by dogs sounds like it could serve as a fun sort of Autism simulator. Trying to understand what people want or why you’re expected to do something makes me feel like an alien navigating on Earth sometimes.
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like usual, the ammount of imaginative power a single video of this channel can give me, can hardly be matched.
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Please make a a documentary video about The Eternal Cylinder! The speculative evolution in that game is crazy as hell! 👽
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Viewfinder feels like someone just really wanted to flex their coding skills and whatever engine it used.
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that transition between Viewfinder and Superliminal at 2:56 was beautiful
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Would love to see Curious Archive’s take on Outer Wilds.
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The more I watch your videos the more I realise we're fans of a lot of the same channels on YouTube; namely Jacob Geller and, more relevant to THIS video, Tom Scott's Technical Difficulties. (I mean, you could very well be getting these topics and talking points from elsewhere, but that's where I first heard about Acoustic Kitty and Blue Peacock). I think it's really cool how you put your own perspective on them and cross-analyse them in different ways! Awesome video as always!
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It's trippy stuff like this which is why I sleep and dream so much.
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It's really awesome to see just how much Curious Archive has progressed.
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Loving the shift to more personal essay content. I still love the objective synopses of fictional worlds, and I came to your channel for the spec evo in the first place, but am always excited by videos like this
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could've used a warning for flashing lights during chunks of the jazzpunk section. it could be seriously dangerous for someone with photosensitive epilepsy, and even though i don't have any form of epilepsy, the flashing was strong enough to start hurting my eyes.
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feels like antichamber paved the way for a lot of these perspective games. totally worth a play if you havent yet
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Curious Archive makes one of the best game documentaries I've ever seen, good explanations good showcases, and good gameplay.
