If you’ve been on the Game Jolt homepage recently, you may have seen a featured game that seemed to have a broken image for a thumbnail. If you looked more closely, you may have noticed that it wasn’t quite the default broken image link image. If you went ahead and clicked on it, you may have realized that the broken link image was actually the intended thumbnail and you’d just arrived at the page for ARMAGAD (also Tetrageddon Games)!
That’s a good example of creator Nathalie Lawhead’s sense of humor. Another is this cat floating in space:
ARMAGAD (also Tetrageddon Games) is hard to describe. It’s a digital playground riddled with trapdoors and rabbit holes. It’s a showcase of interactive art and a satire of internet culture. It’s a mix of sophisticated satire and steadfast silliness.
To put it straightforwardly, ARMAGAD (also Tetrageddon Games) is a custom-made environment that contains games, digital toys, virtual characters, and a set of easter eggs that rival the rest of the content in scope.
You might have played the original versions of the Tetrageddon Games on the original website, where they are still available (at least for now). In addition to everything on the site, the ARMAGAD package has tons of new animated cutscenes and weird, repurposed public domain film clips, as well as the ridiculous amount of “hidden” content (like a melancholy ghost, a potato farmer, a fictional webring, and a monkey jailbreak).
The games themselves are cool and funny and well-worth playing, but the deeper joys of ARMAGAD lie in discovering all the weird, wacky stuff around the games. The real game is an epic easter egg hunt, wherein the easter eggs are like the TARDIS inside.
If you (like me) are smitten by Nathalie Lawhead’s dinstinctive style and sensibilities, you can get a lot more background in this interview we did.
If you clicked that “missing” thumbnail image and wound up on the page for ARMAGAD, and if you enjoyed the sense of humor and artistic flair on display there, chances are good that you’ve already snapped it up. Good for you! If you haven’t, but if you enjoy being surprised and laughing—or at least grinning maniacally, I urge you to grab a copy for yourself.
ARMAGAD (also Tetrageddon Games) (for Windows and Mac) is available exclusively on Game Jolt for (shudder) $6.66 (but it’s been pay-what-you-want for launch week, so if you act quickly, you can still grab it for less—although it’s worth at least that much and more)!
3 comments