What do Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, H. P. Lovecraft’s The Nameless City, e.e. cummings, and T. S. Elliot have in common? They all feature in a delightful game called “Silent Conversation” by Gregory Weir and Armor Games.

I’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s technically a platform game. But the platform is lines from books and poems and the character is the letter/word I. The object of the game is to touch all the words as fast as you can. There are some “bad” words, which float off and cause you to not get points for a while if they hit you. These tend to be freaky words like death, corpse, ominous, etc. But you can’t really die (you just respawn at the point where you left off, no big deal). It’s all very relaxing, especially with the atmospheric piano music in the background. Kind of like typing (I really like typing. I know, I know, I’m a nerd.) At the end of each piece, you are given a letter grade, depending on how well you did.

There are three modes to play: straight up completion – you get scored on how many words you touch, speed completion, where you are judged by how long it takes you to touch every single word, and “race” which I haven’t unlocked, because it requires getting and A+ – touching every single word – on the longer pieces, and I haven’t done that.

All in all, I love this game! I have never read H.P. Lovecraft before now, but I was amazed at the words he used. Such a rich landscape. And that landscape is shown quite literally in the game…the words form the desert, the sky, the cave and stairs. Even swooping sandstorms, the fall in Alice and Wonderland, and the white rabbit who runs away. Very interesting, and very fun.

This game really has to be played to be appreciated. Try it out here:

http://armorgames.com/play/4287/silent-conversation