Editor's note: Every time I read Jon's take on Bit.Trip Runner, a smile breaks across my face. I can't offer much higher praise than that. Read this story. -Brett
Bit.Trip Runner wants to destroy you. The game's collection of flying spheres, bug-eyed creatures, and subterranean water pipes do everything in their power to stop your forward progress. And in a game where unceasing forward momentum becomes as imperative as breathing, such obstacles are akin to bad cholesterol or a family history of congenital heart failure: In the end, they will get you.
And yet Gaijin Games' fourth title in their Bit.Trip series for WiiWare is ultimately their most hopeful effort. For all the teeth-gnashing difficulty of their previous games, Runner is at once the most masochistic and, well, saintly.
I say this not only because the player for the first time controls series protagonist Commander Video himself, allowing for a more direct connection between player input and the onscreen chaos. No, the real saving grace of Runner is the design choice to eliminate Game Over screens. As much as you die, you can never fully perish. You will always be given a second chance. Sure, because of this you feel more vividly the pain of endless frustration. But within this lack of choice exists an extension of — dare I say it? — love, offered to you when all else seems futile.
In the first Bit.Trip game, Bit.Trip Beat, seemingly random dots fly at you in mind-warping patterns. If you miss enough of them, you fail, leaving you feeling miserable and slightly nauseous but also exhilarated. That, you think, was insane.
In Runner, your little black stickman runs and runs and more often than not falls into a pit or smacks into a wall. Unlike Beat, your failure hurts this time, because instead of losing at an abstract game of acid-laced Pong, you see yourself fall, over and over again. Where Gaijin Games turns what might be a distressing case for suicide into a reverie for hope, however, is in their decision to automatically thrust the player back to the beginning of the stage immediately after a mistake.
In the midst of Runner's apocaplyptic wasteland of forgotten garbage and graffitied walls, you will fall and fail repeatedly. But you will run again. The binary lords of the Bit.Trip realm witness your trials. They observe your constant seeking for…what, exactly? This remains unclear. But the destination lacks importance. They acknowledge your persistence, your undying push to just keep going. And for this, they absolve you of your gaming sins. Press start to continue.
Only here, you need not even press start. Die a simple death, and boom: You're back on your feet, running forward into that familiar, imprenetratable landscape. The genius of Runner's design is in this constant feedback loop. The game almost rewards you with your utter failure at competence. To beat the game is not to win; to beat the game is to deny yourself the satisfaction of playing, losing, and trying all over again.
As gamers, nay, as people, we are all inherently flawed. Bit.Trip Runner knows this, lays its sweaty palm on our foreheads, and says, "That's okay." To be loved in such a state of mediocrity is a rare gift, one too many are without.
You might think the Bit.Trip games are unfair, soul-punishing affairs of cruelty. And you'd be right. But with their most recent gem, the minds at Gaijin Games have not only delivered gamers a retro-fantasia of light, sound, and rhythm, they have delivered us from our own lacking selves. They have showed us the grace to be found in defeat. They realize that, in the end, we all lose. But what's most important is playing the game.