Playlist 8/6: Counting up Metrico, blasting through a Lovely Planet, and setting sail for 80 Days

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METRICO (PS VITA)

BY DIGITAL DREAMS

It’s Monument Valley meets Mario in Metrico, the preeminent “game about infographics” by developer Digital Dreams. Using the PS Vita, you touch, drag, pull, tilt, and even use that hidden Vita Microwave function to navigate your way through Metrico‘s constantly shifting world. It’s puzzle exploration abstracted to input mechanisms, showcasing both the Vita’s strong suit and the surprising lack of dexterity in your own fingers.

Perfect for: Aspiring infographicists, low-poly purveyors, and control freaks

Playtime: A few pretty literally touching hours.

LOVELY PLANET (PC, MAC, LINUX)

BY QUICKTEQUILA

First-person shooters—in which we play as a floating hand connected to a gun, our only influence on the world often its destruction— have become known as a very “aggressive” style of game. (When your great-grandpa is Doom, that’s bound to happen.) Lovely Planet is a lovely corrective: a twitchy first-person shooter that is packed with sprightly chiptunes, flowers, and, good heavens, the colors. Other shooters should take note.

Perfect for: Kawaii kids, FPS purists, crayon-users

Playtime: A few jumping, pointing, and shooting hours.

80 DAYS (IOS)

BY INKLE STUDIOS

Sometimes, despite a thing called “the Internet,” we forget how big the world is. Well, 80 Days will keep you painfully aware of it, as you race across the globe to win a bet. In this alternate-reality, steampunk version of Jules Verne’s classic 1872 tale, you’ll come across everything from mechanized camels to submarine trains. With so many cities and cultures to explore, you’ll almost forget all your travel funds could be gone by the end of those quickly passing eighty days.

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