Title: You, A Very Meaningful Game

Artist: Lindsay D. Grace

Medium: Mobile Game

You is a game about play and the illusive pursuit of meaningful play. Each level of the game is about problem solving a space for You to meet objectives while making sense of the in-game content. Using the player character You, the player is both making meaning out of nonsense and finding meaning where it is absent.   The game is designed as a light-hearted critical reflection on the intersection of narratology and ludology. Players must play with You, I and Them in the immutable structure of meaning making that forms the challenge of the game.

Borrowing from the rhetoric of research on narrative, play and the illusive pursuit of meaningful play, the game takes as its subject you. A character who is backwards, if it not traveling forward. A character that moves playfully, although permanently bound to the awkward limitations of its unmasked pursuit of meaning and place. 

The player must put You in its place. At times, the player must manage You and I in simultaneous concert, in opposition or in cooperation.    Each level of the game is about problem solving a space for You to meet objectives while making sense of the in-game content. From this mechanic, the player is both making meaning out of nonsense and finding meaning where it is absent.  

The game is organized around the notion of a game poem, where rhetorical device is a combined application of narratology and ludology.  The game is not designed as a serious experience, but instead as a critical experience in meaning making in play. 

It is the 10th game in the Critical Gameplay collection, a 5 year project to offer alternative ways to play.