Small Worlds

Small Worlds turns the usual platformer logic on its head - the farther the player travels across the map, the more the surrounding world shrinks and presses in around them. The controls remain classic, walking and jumping across platforms, but the underlying principle forces you to think about every step differently, since the level's boundaries literally shift along with the character. The short playtime paradoxically hides a surprisingly dense and well-thought-out design, since every next platform or jump has to account for the space around it shrinking even further in the next moment. The player thus gradually learns to anticipate where the world will contract before it actually happens.

Visually it's spare pixel art in a muted color palette, which lets the main idea - the gradual shrinking of space - stand out instead of drawing attention to details. The quiet, meditative atmosphere and the absence of any text give the game the character of a short poem rather than a classic game challenge, which is also why it's often mentioned among examples of the so-called "art games" of the late 2000s. There's no score or time limit of any kind, so the pace of play is set entirely by the player, which makes the game resemble a short interactive poem even more than a classic arcade game.

The author is David Shute, who released the title in 2009 into a browser gaming scene that was, at the time, only just getting used to working with conceptual experiments like this. The strong, fresh ending, where the map shrinks to an absolute minimum, is part of why more people remember the game than one would expect from such a short title. Small Worlds thus still serves today as a frequently cited example of how a single well-crafted mechanic can carry an entire game without needing extensive content.

Why play it: Those looking for a fresh idea packed into a few minutes of play will find Small Worlds rewarding with an original mechanic and a surprisingly powerful ending.