Tuesday, May 17, 2016

The definition of dense?

Why the name Dense Games? What makes a game dense? Well, there are at least two answers to that, as the word itself has two meanings:

  1. informal (of a person) stupid.
    "Am I being dense? I don't quite understand"
  1. closely compacted in substance.
  2. "as the storm cleared, a dense fog came down"
The meanings are in practice quite different from each other, but that's the beauty of it.

On one hand, a game may have depth in its mechanics, ideas or even story, and do all this while also managing to avoid needless filler content, being sort of "dense" in that way. A game like this can be seen as having a high level of "density".

On the other hand a game may be downright goofy and have a retarded concept, and at the same time be entertaining for that reason exactly! This goofiness can be seen as the game being so dense that no sense can ever be forged into it. Even at the risk of potentially making a native English speaker cringe at the definition, I call this kind of a game as having a high level of "denseness" in order to separate it from the other homonymous characteristic.

Although my current plans involve more around the "high density" type of games, in general I have an interest in both types of games - be it making them or just playing them. And who knows, perhaps there is or will be a game out there that is the perfect embodiment of both concepts!?