ATTA - My latest obsession

I recently watched a playthrough by Gab Smolders of a game called 'ATTA Spot the Oddities in the Strange Hotel' by Idea Fruition which is available as early access through Steam. I was intrigued by their playthrough and decided to buy the game for myself and I'm kind of obsessed with this game at the moment.

I love games like The Witness, Manifold Garden, Antichamber, and Superliminal that all share one thing in common, they create complexity by layering simplicity. Each game starts with a simple mechanic and introduces rules or encourages different ways to use the same mechanic to get different results. What you end up with is a game that can at times seem very complicated but is not beyond your comprehension if you break it down into its individual layers. In The Witness you do this by analysing a puzzle panel and noting which mechanics are present then accounting for each when deriving a solution.

ATTA is a game that has a very simple mechanic, the player enters a hallway on floor 10 that serves as a template that they must observe, they then progress to floor 9 where some things have been changed, their task is to count how many things changed - spot the difference. At the end of the hallway you enter an elevator and input the number you counted, if you get it right you advance to the next floor down and if you get it wrong then the floor is reconfigured and you try again. Reach floor 1 to finish the game.

I've been playing through ATTA and although there are no achievements added to Steam as yet (it's still Early Access so technically the game is unfinished) I have set myself a few goals. I've managed to finish every difficulty mode for a start, the Standard and Standard+ difficulties don't differ that much from one another, and both aren't that much harder than Easy, so I am hoping in the final they make the curve a little steeper. My record at the moment for completion is just over 13 minutes and 28 seconds - I want to get that under 10 minutes as a personal goal.

I miss going to game stores and buying physical copies of games, not because I consider myself a purist or out of rebellion against the likes of Steam as a company, but rather for the simple reason that it was a lot easier to browse games in a physical space. I would visit a game store and browse for maybe a half an hour or more looking at different boxes checking out the games before deciding on what to buy. Steam is quite difficult to navigate when you're just browsing. It suffers the same problem as online shopping more broadly, you have too many products to choose from and can't adequately create a space for similar products that is conducive to impulse buying.

I know some people will suggest game curation sites, or online versions of gaming magazines that were yet another medium that has mostly died in print form, but the trouble with those platforms is that the people who write for them over time become increasingly impersonal. The author's voice is silenced by the editor, neutrality modifies their expression of what they like and dislike about games, and in the end it's very difficult to get an honest opinion of a game out of those media sources because in effect they're advertisers for games, they're not really giving you their opinion as a player.

Even with Youtube at times it can be argued that some gaming channels only play certain games because of sponsorship deals, or because they were gifted the games for free from the developer, but that creates the same implicit bias that corporate sites suffer from, the bias that comes from the transaction. If you're a review channel, site, or other form of authority on a subject, a developer is only likely to send you a copy of their game if they think your review is going to be positive. A developer isn't going to send a copy of their game to an outlet they know has a high chance of giving it a bad review. To be clear, a good game can still get a bad review if the person playing it doesn't like that type of game - this is the same reason I don't read film reviews.

If you do decide to play ATTA and enjoy it there have been a bunch of games in this genre released on Steam, two others I want to mention are 'Platform 8' and 'The Exit 8' both created by Kotake Create which I haven't played yet but they're in my queue of games to get around to so they will be played at some point - both of these games appeal to me for the same reason ATTA does, the premise is simple, the mechanics are simple, the complexity comes from the layering. There's nothing inherently difficult or complex about these games, they're very chill and enjoyable to play but they still pose a challenge which is what I want when I need a break mentally.