Other Places ⌊Reshare⌉

Photo credit: Ultrabrilliant

Other Places was the first Share I made on this website, and I have been battling the urge to edit and expand that rather diminutive post ever since for want of doing the work proper justice. With each new addition to the Share category, my written accompaniments for these plugs have slowly grown in length, which has done likewise for my niggling dissatisfaction with their ground zero. Thus it is only right that my solution to the problem—to share the work again—has again made Other Places the first of what will surely become a recurrence. Reshares.

I originally intended this Reshare to be in the vein of my post on Matthewmatosis, another games-focused Youtube channel (albeit a totally dissimilar one), wherein I provided a sampling of some of my favourite pieces and commented on them individually. An approach along those lines, however, hardly gels with creator Andy Kelly’s vision of gameworlds free of (and from) distraction. I’m happy therefore to shut up and let the work speak for itself, wordless as it may be.

The result of this is, as I hope the montage video above imparts on you, freeing. There is something about seeing these ordinarily hostile or objective-laden environments stripped of their chockablock, and in such blissful, playerless repose, which strangely brings out both the layeredness and the life in them. Even games which already inherently elicit similar serenity during play are buoyed from this treatment, though the sensation of observing versus participating in a virtual environment is, obviously, distinct.

You are free to discover your own favourite destinations by visiting Kelly’s website, Ultrabrilliant, or the Other Places Youtube channel by the same name. Just make sure to do so, would you kindly, in distraction-free mode.