[…] time ago, I made a post about artsy flash games. A lot of these are very interesting, rewarding and worth checking out but they lack one thing […]

I suppose the flash game one chance will due for an “artsy” game. Although I’m sure you’ve play it by now. http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/555181

ow! thanks for brining all these artsy flash games together; I have only played 3 of these (Company of Myself, in fact I came from 2darray.net, The Majesty of Colors, and Coma)

I will gladly check the others

Hey man, I’m the dude who made The Company of Myself–Thanks for the shoutout! I agree with pretty much all the things you said about whether or not games can be considered an art form. Part of the problem, I think, is that a lot of people don’t realize how broad the term “art” can be. It’s kind of like when people debate about whether or not alcoholism is a disease. It’s not an infection or a cancer or a virus, but diseases aren’t always infections and cancers and viruses. A disease can be anything involving your body that is out of the ordinary (and generally harmful). So, yes: alcoholism is a disease, and video games are art. Maybe a bit of a dark analogy, but a valid one, all the same.

Another element of it is that even if you ignore the semantics, a lot of people genuinely don’t believe that video games have the same potential as the more widely accepted art forms. Honestly, though, I think the opposite: The more you make the audience do, the more powerful the impact can become. The tradeoff is that it’s a hell of a lot harder to make a piece of art behave the way you want it to when you know, with absolute certainty, that the audience is going to interact with the work. It’s not like a painting where they can only see what you want them to see, and that’s all. When you make a video game, you know that it’s not going to sit behind a banister to be viewed from afar. They’re going to pick it up, examine it from all the angles they can find, and often, they’ll even spend time specifically trying to figure out how to break it. And even so, you have to make sure that the audience still sees what you want them to see.

As a side note, I liked Passage, and loved Passage in 10 Seconds. Good on you for mentioning those two.

I know your google-fu is strong, but I should have left a link.

They aren’t flash, but cactus arcade has a nice mix of artsy and non-artsy games. See, for example, “God Came to the Cave.”

For just “artsy flash game” (no story or anything) I would say its “flOw”, I am too lazy to find a link for you… but its like spore… but simpler, and more beautiful.

Many thanks for mentioning Passage! I stumbled upon that game some time ago and it made a huge impression on me. Here’s one of my favourite flashes in the “life/artsy” genre (it’s not a game, just some rather well done presentation of a comic of sorts).

Hope to see you up and about, spamming us with posts ;)

Theres this one: http://dai5ychain.net/breath/