A Critical Review of Lim 

Lim is a web game developed by Merritt Kopas. Kopas is a multimedia artist, game designer, and writer. She is well known for her creation of Lim, HUGPUNX and Consensual Torture Simulator. Lim is a game based on violence and more importantly about the violence of standing out. It is a very simple game as you are not told what to do except to follow a maze. The object of this game is “to convey care relationships; either to provide a sense of care to the player or to invest her in the project of caring for another” (Kopas, n.d.).

Screen Shot By BenSpalding | Published May 31, 2013

In Lim players navigate a maze through a multi-colored square, they encounter brown and dark blue blocks throughout the series of  different rooms. These blocks react violently to the player’s presence in each room and they shake aggressively and seek to collide with the player. As the game progresses the blocks tend to push the player’s block around. As a result they can kick the block out of the maze entirely and force them to continue the game from the outside, which happened to me. This isolates the player from the experience of the game inside the maze.

LEARNING ELEMENTS
The game teaches about violence and about being attacked when you stand out from the crowd and even when you try to blend in. The player, being us, has to navigate through a maze using the arrows on the keyboard. The player navigates the game as a multi-colored square, this is what supports the purpose of blending in and standing out from the other squares. This game design is mostly affected by social processes because of the experience of violence in blending in.

FORMAL ELEMENTS
There is one player that is controlling the game, there are computer programmed blocks that are acting as the other players trying to isolate and bully the block that is being controlled. The players are competitive as they go against each other. They complement the game as they show us that being isolate can result from trying to blend in with the crowd. The items that are being accrued would have to be the coding for the game and the computer where everything is being done. The conflict in the game is that there are instances where the other blocks make it impossible for the player to get into the other room. Even with blending in with them they make it ever harder to move. The game ends when you reach the last block and both of the blocks begin to flash. In my case I reached the end from outside of the maze and when the block both began to flash in different color there screen became black. The outcome shows you whether or not you are capable of taking the attacks of the other blocks or whether or not you get blocked before reaching the end.

DRAMATIC ELEMENTS
The main player would be the block that we are controlling. The motivation is to get to the end of the maze. The relationship between the character and the player is one to one because wherever we move the key is where the character (block) goes. If we decide to give up the block gives up as well. I think this game is an emergent narrative because it puts the player in a extra-normal situation which shows whether or not they can handle the violence from the blocks. The interactions measure if the player can sustain patience to violence and reach the end or not.  It is prevalent as it gives you barriers to try and get to the next room and closer to the end. I think the socializers would most likely enjoy this game because there is a lot of role play to interpret from playing the game.

SYSTEM DYNAMICS
Since it is a HTML coding based game, the objects are simple colored blocks.
You have to move the player block with the arrow keys in the keyboard.
You move left, right, up and down and navigate through the maze.
The basic relationships are that you navigate as a block throughout the maze and avoid getting beaten by the other blocks. We as the players control the system.

FUNCTIONALITY, COMPLETENESS, & BALANCE
The game is fully functional as it doesn’t glitch. It is complete as it has a beginning and end. All voices are being represented. The game is not balanced because there are a lot of opposing blocks in each room that make it difficult to escape and continue to the next room. The game is not symmetrical because you do not know if moving a certain way will result in the blocks attacking you or not. The imbalance is intentional to emulate the experience of violence and blending in.

FUN AND ACCESSIBILITY
This game is easy to play but it requires a lot of patience. It took me about 30 minutes with breaks to learn the game and finish it. You learn to play the game through exploring the maze and seeing that each block does to your block when you go from room to room, if you get the chance to move and make it to the end.

Kopas, M. ABOUT. merritt kopas. Retrieved from http://mkopas.net/about/