Where to play: Mac, Windows PC
If you really want a short game, how about an epic, multilayered spy caper packed into 15 minutes? This is the stunning achievement of Brendon Chung's 2012 miniature masterpiece Thirty Flights of Loving, a hectic, surreal, hilarious, and even moving narrative game experience that won't outlast a cup of coffee. It's a first-person narrative game -- like a walking simulator played on fast-forward, punctuated with startling elisions and jump cuts. And car chases. And magical-realist hallucinations. And a wedding.
Chung's genius is to realize that his very basic graphics engine -- the characters are textures wrapped around basic blocks, like in Minecraft -- is so fast that it enables film-like editing techniques, with instant smash cuts from one scene to the next. He employs these to brilliant comic and dramatic effect, including a sudden jump from the preparation of a heist to its aftermath that's worthy of Tarantino. Someone should try using those fancy SSDs in modern consoles to do something similar. -- Oli Welsh
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