#loopgame

Yesterday my professor showed me Loop. It's a free mobile game where you spin little shapes around to join them to form larger, self-enclosed shapes. It's beautiful. It is elegant. It feels like the visual equivalent to sudoku: logical, somewhat mindless but deep enough to give room for strategy.

Today I played it a lot and I often find myself in a situation where I think the puzzle is almost solved only to then discover that it isn't quite so simple. It's not just a small problem in this corner, but the entire section that's just plain wrong.

I think life is like that. Sometimes you think that you have most of it down, that mostly everything is good, it's just this one niggling thread in the corner that's giving you grief. You pull on it hoping to quickly fix it up then move on.

But as you pull you find it getting longer and it's ripping up the fabric next to it, until you realize that the little problem was really just the tip of the iceberg. In reality, your life is in quietly organized shambles.

Loop is an intriguing game. The sound effects are visceral and its soundtrack hypnotic. Its just difficult enough to keep you engaged yet still give your mind space to be free to wander. Space to think.

Tomorrow I turn 23. Given the contemplative mood that puts me in coupled with the spartan design of Loop, is it no wonder that I find myself mulling over some kind of meaning within this game?