Hey, kids! Excited about the new Nintendo 3DS? Can’t wait to play Portal 2? Forget such trifles: Your world is about to be rocked, courtesy the Council of Samarian Settlers, which recently released a series of three video games designed to capture the hearts and minds of those crazy kids who like them noisy computer thingies.
The old-timey tone isn’t mine, and it isn’t ironic: The games’ homepage contains a letter from a fictitious figure called Grandpa Abraham. “I know you love computer games,” coos the made-up paterfamilias, “so I made a special Bar/Bat Mitzvah gift for you: A series of three-dimensional computer games.” The three-dimensional feature isn’t quite as revolutionary as Nintendo’s new gaming console, which is, um, actually 3D. These games rely on graphics and game engines that were all the rage in, say, 1992, the sort of long-since-forgotten stuff that could have just as well been designed by an actual elderly man named Grandpa Abraham. And the games’ narratives—their raisons d’etre, since the council is an ideological body and the games clearly educational and political tools—are just as stilted.