Today we have a game of discovery, a game that focuses on nothing but exploring the unknown, a game of entering the darkness and making the unfamiliar familiar. Oh, and it’ll only take you fifteen minutes to play from start to end.

It’s called Small Worlds, and was created earlier in the year by David Shrute for the Casual Gameplay Design Competition #6: Explore. This is a competition run by a flash games site called JayIsGames since 2006 which takes an aspect of game mechanics and asks developers to build a short game around it.

Small Worlds starts you as a tiny pixellated figure surrounded by blocks. Using wsad or the arrow keys, and the space bar,  you explore your surroundings, getting rid of the “fog of war”, or “shroud” so beloved by strategy game. As you uncover more of the environment, you zoom out so you can see things better.

It seems a little ridiculous to avoid spoilers for a game that’s only 15 minutes long, but given that exploration is the whole point of the game, it seems cruel to discuss the environments in too much detail, suffice to say that you’ll want to uncover the entirety of each of the five available maps before progressing.

It’s tightly focused on its goal – it doesn’t have coins, powerups, scores or lives. There’s no way to die, and it seemed impossible to get stuck for long. But what it does do, expertly, is conjure up the magic of beginning a game of Civilization, or Age of Empires – a lone settler in an unknown land.

The concept of that single character starting alone in a dark, featureless expanse of nothing is one that’s unique to videogames. It’s a fantastic feeling – full of promise and possibilities. Will there be a mountain in this direction, or the sea? Ohcrapohcrapohcrap, I’ve stumbled into the enemy base.

It’s something that’s kinda echoed in reality, too. When you move to a new town for the first time, you begin to form mental maps in your head, and although you might know one road like the back of your hand, the next one over could be a complete mystery.

If you have 15 minutes, spend them on Small Worlds. You’ll get a surprising amount of joy from the lovingly created and detailed places that you end up. It’s certainly one of the most pleasant fifteen minutes I’ve spent in some time.

(via Kotaku)