Alice's Daily Walk: Abstract Ritual

Maybe Alec and Ben were taking the piss in suggesting this. I certainly don't intend to back down on rhetoric, though. We'll see who starts a regular (?) series about walking simulators, shan't we?

Welcome to Alice's Daily Walk! Isn't walking great? I hugely enjoy wandering semi-aimlessly, looking at stuff and thinking about things. Now modern technological advancements mean we can compliment walks with virtual walks from the comfort of our own homes. What times we live in!

Today, let's take a stroll in Abstract Ritual. Purists might object to it having an objective, sprinting, and a mighty jump, but hey, let's not bicker! You know what'll help shake that stress out? A nice walk.

Abstract Ritual drops you into a quiet nonsense city to find a portal to a secret world. Ramps and catwalks fill the space between the wonky buildings, overlapping and interconnecting. I sometimes try to include specific skywalks, catwalks, or road bridges in my wanderings. Forced by cities' weird growth, they feel slightly unreal. Roaming all Ritual's absurd ones is great. While many walking simulators have slow movement, Abstract Ritual is playful with a zippy sprint and a high leap. (What's parkour but an exuberant and dangerous form of walking?) As well as being jolly good fun, you'll need these skills to clamber around and find some of its residents.

Spirit monsters with grand titles but poor manners wait in the buildings, see, and will perhaps offer a clue before telling you to clear orf. They're colourful and pleasant to look at, if lacking in the social niceties--a bit like London's feral parakeets. Or perhaps they're me. Oh no, that's me.

As you might have guessed from the geometry style and tell-tale colour palette, Abstract Ritual is the procedurally-generated work of Strangethink Software. (We're quite fond of Strangethink here on Alice's Daily Walk.) It's a pay-what-you-want download on on Itch.io, playable for free in your browser there, or is on Gamejolt with ads to support Strangethink. The downloadable version has the bonus of taking super-huge high-res screenshots if you press R. Just imagine what you could do with those!

I also recommend following Strangethink on Twitter. Several times each day, Strangethink will make a colourful and pleasant picture appear in your Twitter stream.