Yes, I know the name of the blog is “Horror Game Analysis”. And I do a lot of that.

But there is always space to talk about more. There are so many thousands upon thousands of games, that we are frankly spoiled for choice. So today I wanted to recommend this neat little walking simulator.

Argh, the reviled pest of the walking simulator! A pox on thee! yadda yadda, and so forth, on into infinity. It seems to be the place of the “elitist” to spit on games that demand less than utter perfection, that require you to kneel twenty times at the foot of a mountain, spinning three (no, four!) plates without dropping one, while balancing an egg on your nose and fighting seventeen enemies (all with hard AI!!!)! But Grace Bruxner, developer of the short and sweet and adorable Frog Detective series, has a number of other smaller games available on itch.io. I played one of them today – Alien Caseno.

It’s the kind of game that you don’t do very much in but walk around and look. Again, the term “walking simulator” is hurled with vehemence. That’s a term I hope to discuss later, and why walking simulators are just as valuable as games as other games, but I’m getting bogged down here. What I really want to talk about right now is Alien Caseno.

If I could describe Alien Caseno in one word, it would be “splendid.”

Come on. It is splendid to just look at the screenshots.

As obsessed as one can get with horror media with the meaning of a lot of very grim and nasty things, important as these questions are, it’s often nice to reflect on society in a less harsh light. Alien Caseno is all about looking at just one aspect of human society and making it splendidly nonsensical.

Walk into a room filled with one armed bandits and the aliens have scrawled an explanation on the wall as to how humans believe these machines somehow increase their wealth exponentially. Another room laments that the humans get so frustrated when the spot on the roulette wheel isn’t the spot they wanted.

Image has text: "Worning: laud tunes 506 space years or older"

It’s sweet satire, framed through the lens of an “educational” game; a lolly wrapped in delightfully crisp paper. It’s not a very chewy lolly, granted. You’ll be finished with it in less than ten minutes at the absolute most. But there’s a sense of wonder and discovery for that time. Poking around the outskirts of the place reveals “hidden” aliens. The inscriptions on the walls lampooning us are all smile-worthy, if not “exhale-through-the-nose” worthy.

Bruxner said in an interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun that she “isn’t a fan of the term ‘walking simulator’, preferring to think of her games as dioramas or museums. They do have something of the museum about them, encouraging a meander from place to place where you poke your head into each area with eyes wide.” And I think that’s wonderful. They’re little museum pieces that encourage exploration and maybe a little contemplation, but just most of the time you see something that makes you honestly, genuinely smile.

And what more do you really want than that?

Alien Caseno is free on itch.io, though you can pay Grace Bruxner if you like – I recommend doing so!