One of the biggest rules of writing about any topic is always introducing it. Always assume that your audience has no idea what your talking about, and you'll always write better. Because of me wanting to write about Masked I have the task of trying to explain it to those who don't know what it is. And, judging by the fact that it came out this week- I highly doubt most of you know about it.

Masked is pretentious, vague, and artsy... and I say that in the kindest way. It's a ten minute or so long point and click, escape the room adventure, all done simply and available for free as a .zip file. Before you read on, you should spend ten minutes and play the game. C'mon- do it...

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Anyway, hopefully you have just completed the game and did not blatantly not listen to my request that you play the game before you moved on. If you didn't play the game, you are kinda a jerk...

Let me just get this out there: Masked geniunely creeped me out. Near the end of the game, as I 'escaped' the room I literally had to take my headphones off. The music was ramping up, and I was afraid of what would happen next. For ten minutes, I had found videogame valhalla for a hipster like myself. Being a big fan of the point and click genre, I literally couldn't stop beaming happiness at my computer.

The story of Masked is wonderfully vague. There is little set-up, you simply wake up in a dark room with a maksed woman talking to you. Though you cannot recognize her, she obviously knows you well. The woman, despite giving away no emotion with simplistic animations and a plastic mask, practically radiates anger purely through her words. Her dialogue immediately interested me, and I wanted to know more about this strange woman, and how the hell she knew me.

The puzzles in the game aren't very head-scratching. They serve a purpose to space time between slightly deranged monologues, in much the same way I felt some of Portal 2's puzzles existed as filler between Cave Johnson's recorded antics. However, solving them still took a few minutes, so they were decent.

The thing I love about this game is the story. What started as a hatred for this wretch of a woman, tormenting you with vague hints- you, throughout ten minutes of gameplay, start to feel genuinely sorry for her. She was ruined and left heartbroken and suicidal because of your actions. I feel that very few games succeed quite so well at creating a feeling of guilt and sympathy for a character. And it's crazy that it works, because you (as a player) didn't cause her disfigurement.

I love that this game so deftly encaspulated how short-form narratives in games can work. It told an interactive story that could not work in any other medium half as well. Instead of thinking the main character is a d-bag, you instead are put in the shoes of the d-bag. I was fascinated and sickened by the story behind this woman.

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Now, I could keep rambling on about this game, but I guess now would be a good time to get some feedback. What did you think of the game?